looking for a new lap top ... advice

anyone have advice as a friend of mine is looking for a lap top

what are the best lap tops

any price range as she may fianance

anyone have advice as a friend of mine is looking for a lap top

what are the best lap tops

any price range as she may fianance


It really all depends on what she wants to do with it. There's a bunch of different routes you can go..

As much as it pains me to say Apples are great for video editing and the like.

If she's just an "average" pc user, I think the most important thing to look for is a warranty and what it covers. Desktop PC's are easily fixed but trying to work on a laptop can be hell.

From what I've heard Dell's and Gateway's have some pretty decent deals. Look for a good amount of RAM, some people tend to overlook that.

Get one with a lot of RAM and at least a 20-30 GB hard drive, maybe built-in WiFi too (it's been growing in popularity and it will only get bigger).

I think even the cheap laptops from Dell have CD burners, it's useful for making backups.

Processor isn't that important depending on what it's needed for, a 1+ GHz chip and 512 MB RAM will do just about everything anymore.

If she wants battery life, then look for a Centrino based laptop

If she wants a cheap capable laptop, then look for P4M or Celeron based

If she wants performance, then look for a Athlon64

If she wants uber performance (athlon64/P4/P4EE 3Ghz+/3000+ with lots of RAM and video card) then IMO, just stay with desktop or get a shuttle

Since its a she, then Ill assume video card has no impact on choice

RAM, 512mb DDR will be sufficient

Harddrive, try gettin a 5400RMP or faster one, most have 4200rmps (which are slower than the average desktop harddrive)

Widescreen vs normal, if she wants to watch movies, then go for the widescreen

15inch vs 17inch screen, I would go with 15inch for portability

Harddrive, try gettin a 5400RMP or faster one, most have 4200rmps (which are slower than the average desktop harddrive)

Even 5400 RPM is slower than average desktop hard drive (de facto standard has been 7200 for a long time now).
And besides, the faster a hard drive spins, the more battery life it sucks up. Getting a laptop with more RAM will prevent it from needing to page stuff from RAM to hard drive and back again. You want to access the hard drive as less as possible.

You want to buy a laptop for a woman? The two most important features are low weight and long battery life. Small size is also important. The Toshiba Portege R100 is the ideal laptop. However, is she willing to shell that much money.

BTW, if you want to compromise anything, absolutely do not compromise weight because if it weighs too much, your friend will never carry it around and the laptop will be useless. I know because I have many friends that don't carry their laptops because they did not care for weight and now they find it too heavy. :lol

Also, on a laptop, performance of the system is not important: all your friend will do is surf the net (90% of the time) so get WiFi card and do homework on it the rest of the time. Maybe play solitaire or some other low graphics game.

Get a Dell. Took my Toshiba laptop 2 weeks before I had to replace the motherboard.

Dell's the one I'd look at, they have some very good deals right now, so i'd recommend checking them out.

I have a Dell Latitude and love it. It's not too light but I have a shoulder bag, so no problem. The Dell Inspiron is smaller, cheaper but very adequate. I've bought 8 over the past 3 years for the office and 2 for my family without any problems. The second most important thing next to RAM for a laptop is WARRANTY, IMHO. Only the brave will try to repair a laptop themselves.
CD burners are great for backup of important pix, documents, etc., as well as for music.

anyone have advice as a friend of mine is looking for a lap top

what are the best lap tops

any price range as she may fianance

I have a brand spanking new Apple G4 laptop. I can run the virtually impenatrable Macintosh operating system for most programs, and with Virtual PC for MAC run all windows applications as well.

The model I have has a DVD Player/CD Burner, memory upgrade, 15 in screen. Spend just about 2100. It rocks.

My last Mac Laptop lasted 7 years.

If you get it for youself, you might want to invest in a program like Mavis Beacon Typing.

anyone have advice as a friend of mine is looking for a lap top

what are the best lap tops

any price range as she may fianance

Battery is a key thing for a laptop. I used to work for Gateway Tech Support in Colorado Springs so I am biased that way. These days, there is less difference between models. A cool thing is adding a Firewire capable port. If she does any photo editing work she will thank you to no end. I would not get anything with less than 1024 RAM unless I had to. Also, Office Suite (Word, Excel) are really a must these days.

Hope that helps...

she gotthe laptop

now she needs to install her cam
so i can see how happy she is caming on her new lap top:O)

I have a brand spanking new Apple G4 laptop. I can run the virtually impenatrable Macintosh operating system for most programs, and with Virtual PC for MAC run all windows applications as well.

The model I have has a DVD Player/CD Burner, memory upgrade, 15 in screen. Spend just about 2100. It rocks.

My last Mac Laptop lasted 7 years.

You can run Mac OS X on a PC, I just got Panther running under XP, now I have get the networking running so I can test out some of the other apps.