Outfit that laptop!(geek advice needed)

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Wed May 02, 2007 2:34 pm

Ok, so the daughter is going back to swing from the Panamanian treetops, and will need a laptop in the outpost.
I can get one for in the $500 range from Dell Outlet--refurb or scratch& dent.

What specs would I be stupid not to make sure it has?

How many GBs?
How much RAM?
Any special vid card to look for?

Other stuff I'm too un-PC-savvy to know about?

fearfaoin · Post by **fearfaoin** » Wed May 02, 2007 3:37 pm

Any particular reason you want a refurbished Dell?
I got a brand new Gateway from BestBuy for less than $600.

If you get a laptop that runs Vista (and that's probably what you
will end up with) you should have at least 1GB of RAM. More if
possible. The hard drive size depends on what you will be doing
with it. 80GB is pretty good for most current purposes, but you
can get away with 40GB if you don't store any DVDs on your
drive.

If the video card's memory is listed (the Dell Ispiron page seems to
have that) make sure it has at least 256MB of video memory. If
the video memory is not listed, that may mean that part of the main
RAM is used for video memory, which eats into that 1GB of RAM...

BillChin · Post by **BillChin** » Wed May 02, 2007 4:51 pm

I paid about $600 for my new Dell over a year ago. Goto techbargains.com. Check it every day for two weeks, and you'll almost certainly be able to get a new laptop for the same $600 that the refurbished one is being offered, either by sale, rebate or online coupon.

I would suggest 1 GB of memory and a 80 GB hard drive. If I had it to do over I would get a faster processor. Mine is 1.4 Ghz (I think). One application I never thought I would run is HDTV. For about another $100, I can watch HD TV on my laptop without any monthly fees.

Extra storage space can be purchased later if a person fills up the hard drive. Every year storage gets cheaper, so it doesn't make sense to buy more than you need today.

One negative with Dell's is all the trial software. Mine was loaded with five or six pop ups saying buy me now, that took quite a time to take out.

I use a freeware office package, OpenOffice, from Sun. It works well, and is file compatible with Microsoft Office. There are some minor differences, but for a person on a budget the $150 saved on a student edition of office is significant.

BigDavy · Post by **BigDavy** » Wed May 02, 2007 6:45 pm

Hi emmline

I had a look at Dell Outlet US notebooks site and the best deals to my mind are items

System FLWKTMJE
and
System 09E5AX8E

The second is refurbished and the other scratch and dent.

both are Inspiron 1501s with dual core turions, 80gig Hdd, 1gig ram and Vista Home Premium - Price $559.

The only difference between them seems to be that the scratch and dent one has the true life screen and the refurb one the basic screen.

David

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:13 pm

Thanks guys. I knew the Chiff would come through. I'll look into some of the suggestions and do something tomorrow.

Tony · Post by **Tony** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:25 pm

Two weeks ago, a friend dropped off a new Acer laptop that came with Vista basic pre-installed. He couldn't get MSN (that was pre-installed) or Norton to operate (they both needed patches to operate Vista) It had an 80 gig drive and 512 meg of ram. I don't remember what processor it had, but it was the slowest computer I've seen in years.

I'm sure processor speed is important. But, I would want to see the model I choose in operation and not buy solely on specifications.

chrisoff · Post by **chrisoff** » Thu May 03, 2007 2:28 am

Tony wrote:He couldn't get MSN (that was pre-installed) ... to operate

Strange. There's a new version of MSN for Vista that worked straight away on my machine. Haven't had any problems at all. Can't speak about Norton though.

The thing with Vista and compatibility bugs me. It's not like they've just released a service pack and now nothing's compatibile, it's a whole new operating system. The fact is that almost everything is compatibile with it (and some programs are even better on Vista than on XP, I've managed to get old dos and win95 programs to work that never ran under xp even with compatibility options turned on) straight out of the box and there's only a small percentage of programs which have problems. In time the vendors who produce these programs should fix the compatibility issues themselves (they should have done it prior to Vista's release, it's not as though it was a surprise).

emmline · Post by **emmline** » Thu May 03, 2007 2:32 pm

fearfaoin wrote:Any particular reason you want a refurbished Dell?
I got a brand new Gateway from BestBuy for less than $600.

I think I did ok. Came in at under $500.
The reason, in addition to a slight price advantage to buying a refurb is...ok...don't laugh,

but, it's for the nature child, champion of the Earth and all its resources. She will appreciate that the machine was recycled. She will.

fearfaoin · Post by **fearfaoin** » Thu May 03, 2007 3:18 pm

emmline wrote:but, it's for the nature child, champion of the Earth and all its resources. She will appreciate that the machine was recycled. She will.

Good enough for me.

I was just afraid that you might think new laptops still cost $1000's.
The nice thing about referbs is, Dell runs quite a few extensive tests
before selling them, so you know they've been vetted.