Looking for a new Laptop

pappi said:

I-pads are popular item to school and can be used instead of PC or Mac for the same purpose. They are now "must" items even in grade school. My students(grad school) don't take notes anymore. They video-tape lectures. They pass around lectures others missed in "full session". I was astonished to see charts and graphs I had shown fully displayed in their I-pads or PC's. In bad weather, those unable to attend lectures, do improvised online "attendance" and not miss a beat.

It's always difficult to generalize because of unavoidable exceptions. But in general, teenagers do much more with electronics/computers than seniors...that's if and when they get a break from obsessive texting. For those of you who would disagree, perhaps I should add a disclaimer: this is my experience with teenagers and seniors in Manhattan. I dunno about Sweden, Germany or Florida. I personally do not know any teenager who does not own either an I-pad or PC. Most of them have both plus smaller handheld electronics---for non-stop texting.

Haha yeah. Im a poweruser but i have never gotten into the non stop texting :P
as you said all teenagers have to have some sort of electronic.
I am using my latop at school and i can do soo much more than the others who have laptops.
But our principle is an complete apple fangirl so there is bitten apple's everywere now. even if a microsoft surface would be more effective in soo many ways.
Intresting thing about using your ipad to tape the class.. Can be useful in many ways accually.
Here in sweden we are evolving extremely much in technological terms. About the whole country has fiberoptics and over 3-4 million people have ~300Mb/s
Schools are getting ipads or computer earlier etc. I like where this country is going!
Ive sadly heard a lot of bad things about the us and its internet and privacy issues
Hope it will get fixed lately.

But dont get to into this. We have to stay on topic here!

Emu! 'Tis an emu, not an ostrich (but thanks! ).

I agree that a net book is probably going to be inadequate (I somehow missed the netbook part; old age? ). I had one (an Asus, even) and, while slow as a turtle, it was usable for all but my heaviest needs (and, even then, there were workarounds). If you are using it in school, you have only a few months left this semester which would then leave you the summer to rack up a few more shekels to allow you to buy a better one.

Just about everything I've seen at Frys can be had for significantly less online. Same for BestBuy. The exception is when they put things on sale. I buy very little from BestBuy. I will buy things from Frys (assuming they have it stock) when they are on sale (that's how I got my current Lenovo G570 notebook), I'm in a hurry for the item, I want/need to actually see it before I buy it (it's only fair to buy it from where I looked at it instead of looking at it, then going online to buy it), or there is an excellent chance I may want to return it if I don't like it after I try to use it (less hassle and expense to return to a local store plus the return window is longer after shipping and return approval times have been factored in).

Lenovo is proving to be a reliable brand for me. The G570 I have is no longer available at a reasonable price (pity; I wouldn't mind having a spare). It has been replaced with the G580 but that one comes with Win 8 installed and costs $500 at Amazon. Since I don't like Win 8 (personal preference; you may like Win 8), I've been eyeing the B590 series, which can still be had with Win 7. The i3 model with 4GB RAM is only $460 at Amazon. The i5 model with 6GB RAM is the one I'm lusting for and is $580 (I'm hoping it will go on sale).

nocomputerskill said:

Sorry, I like your Emu :). My net book is about 4 years old now and only has 1 gb of ram. It's not the best thing in. By the way, Fry's has a Lenovo G505 on sale right now. So I was looking on fyy's and they have HP 15-b119 with a AMD A8 processor but it's refurbed. Does anybody know anything about the Fry's refurb? It's back in-stock after being out for a while. I also don't wind wind 8, it's not the best but I have wind 7 I could put on it.

hi. i dont know about the refurb stuff. But i do know that the A8's are an extremely good choise in budget laptop. Happy owner of an A8 laptop and for laptops with intergrated graphics nothing beats the AMD A8 APU's. Im playing a ton of games on my laptop without problem. If you can find it. Go for an laptop with an A6 or A8 Or even A10 cpu.
Most budget laptops have intergrated graphics. You'll have to look a while to find a laptop with a dedicated gpu that beats the A8 and isnt too costly.
Also windows 8 ( im an owner of an windows 7 laptop ( upgrading to win 8 today )
and having a windows 8 desktop with startisback.
Windows 8 is way better for schoolwork due to its intergrated mailsystem, calendar etc. I really missed it in my laptop so thats one of the reasons why im upgrading, Also windows 8 does give you a pretty big performance bump. So for weaker laptops windows 8 is a very good thing

nocomputerskill said:

Sorry, I like your Emu :). My net book is about 4 years old now and only has 1 gb of ram. It's not the best thing in. By the way, Fry's has a Lenovo G505 on sale right now. So I was looking on fyy's and they have HP 15-b119 with a AMD A8 processor but it's refurbed. Does anybody know anything about the Fry's refurb? It's back in-stock after being out for a while. I also don't wind wind 8, it's not the best but I have wind 7 I could put on it.

Like I said, you can get good deals from Fry's when they put things on sale (that's how I got my G570). The G505 is an older model but, if it meets your needs and budget, go for it.

I don't like HP because I've had bad experiences with their tech help(less) and HP is notorious for dropping support for older models (such as not writing new drivers for newer OSes or manufacturing consumables, such as toner carts) which is a pity since they otherwise make good products.

Frys has a poor history for refurbs. Often, they were customer returns that were just put back on the shelf without anything being done to them; the same is true of open box items (at least they now wrap open box items with strapping and label them to show they aren't new). I will not buy anything from Frys that isn't new and unopened. For that matter, I won't anything from anywhere that is refurbed, recertified, or used. I've gotten burned when I've done so in the past.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

nocomputerskill said:

Sorry, I like your Emu :). My net book is about 4 years old now and only has 1 gb of ram. It's not the best thing in. By the way, Fry's has a Lenovo G505 on sale right now. So I was looking on fyy's and they have HP 15-b119 with a AMD A8 processor but it's refurbed. Does anybody know anything about the Fry's refurb? It's back in-stock after being out for a while. I also don't wind wind 8, it's not the best but I have wind 7 I could put on it.

Like I said, you can get good deals from Fry's when they put things on sale (that's how I got my G570). The G505 is an older model but, if it meets your needs and budget, go for it.

I don't like HP because I've had bad experiences with their tech help(less) and HP is notorious for dropping support for older models (such as not writing new drivers for newer OSes or manufacturing consumables, such as toner carts) which is a pity since they otherwise make good products.

Frys has a poor history for refurbs. Often, they were customer returns that were just put back on the shelf without anything being done to them; the same is true of open box items (at least they now wrap open box items with strapping and label them to show they aren't new). I will not buy anything from Frys that isn't new and unopened. For that matter, I won't anything from anywhere that is refurbed, recertified, or used. I've gotten burned when I've done so in the past.

Oh yeah about that HP stuff -.-
My fan is kinda going bad AGAIN after half a year of use.
My first fan broke after half a year.. Yay...
I will have to find a new one and replace it becouse my warranty is probably out

nocomputerskill said:

Thanks Lady Fitzgerald, but my current ASUS is a 10'' net book. It's just not good for what I need to do. Fry's is no more expensive than any other electronic stores, at least in my experience. I have found a few good machines around my price range but all are "out of stock". By the way, I like your ostrich.

What about this one. That's a good machine for the money. Look at the specs.

There is absolutely no reason that you need more than 4GB of RAM which is really ample for what you plan to do.