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Buying a laptop


Budweiser

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I'm going back to school this fall part time and want to buy a new lap top. I know my way around computers in terms of software and shit- but hardware makes my head want to explode. What i'm looking for is a general guideline of MUST HAVES for a decent $5,6,700 lap top. I was initially going to buy one online, however there's a new HGGregg opening up near me and I htink they're having like a 20% sale, so I might go there tomrorow and see if I can snag a good deal.

If you have any suggestions of laptops online that are good deals, let me know!!!

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I'm going back to school this fall part time and want to buy a new lap top. I know my way around computers in terms of software and shit- but hardware makes my head want to explode. What i'm looking for is a general guideline of MUST HAVES for a decent $5,6,700 lap top. I was initially going to buy one online, however there's a new HGGregg opening up near me and I htink they're having like a 20% sale, so I might go there tomrorow and see if I can snag a good deal.

If you have any suggestions of laptops online that are good deals, let me know!!!

We use different names in our IT shop, but HPs seem to be the toughest. Most popular names (HP, Dell, etc) should be fine, but get at least 4Gb RAM and 3Ghz of speed. More of each if you can. Takes a lot to run Windows and more than one application. And even more if you plan to run heavy multimedia applications.

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3Ghz of speed.

Negatron. Clock speed in newer processors is typically lower than that - there are other things to look for in processors that determine their effectiveness and overall worth. In a laptop a faster processor isn't always best because you'll consume more battery life for a minimal performance benefit.

Look at i5's or i3's for processors - extremely efficient and well priced bang for your buck. Make sure the notebook has a graphics card of some description in there or Windows 7 will bog down your ram to get those pretty graphics happening.

A big problem with most notebooks you buy, whether it be HP, Toshiba, Asus, Dell, etc is that they all come pre-loaded with HEAPS of crap that you absolutely do not need. You should have about 35-40 active processes running on a fresh Windows 7 install, most notebooks ship with 80+ running. A particular Dell model that I ordered 6 of the other week came shipped with 94 (WTF). First thing you should do when you get the laptop is reformat it, reinstall your drivers, leave off all the "HP Support Center" tools and shit that come preinstalled with it. Download Microsoft Security Essentials for your antivirus, get a copy of Office and away you go.

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A big problem with most notebooks you buy, whether it be HP, Toshiba, Asus, Dell, etc is that they all come pre-loaded with HEAPS of crap that you absolutely do not need. You should have about 35-40 active processes running on a fresh Windows 7 install, most notebooks ship with 80+ running. First thing you should do when you get the laptop is reformat it, reinstall your drivers, leave off all the "HP Support Center" tools and shit that come preinstalled with it. Download Microsoft Security Essentials for your antivirus and away you go.

Abso-fucking-lutely!!! It's amazing how much of a difference that makes!

Thanks for the other info, as well!

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Macbook.

7 > OSX.

Can't argue with value for money in this day and age, and the latest iPhone update has really rubbed a lot of Apple's sheen off for me. iOS 4.1 is a piece of shit.

Excuse me? Are you by any chance a developer for Apple because we haven't released 4.1 yet. As far as 7>OSX, lol 7 is OSX with less features and polish. And BTW, Android is clunky and unresponsive, WinMobile is full on LOL, and Palm is for smelly homeless.

Macbook.

Yea right.

Fine, MacBook Air.

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Macbook.

7 > OSX.

Can't argue with value for money in this day and age, and the latest iPhone update has really rubbed a lot of Apple's sheen off for me. iOS 4.1 is a piece of shit.

Excuse me? Are you by any chance a developer for Apple because we haven't released 4.1 yet. As far as 7>OSX, lol 7 is OSX with less features and polish. And BTW, Android is clunky and unresponsive, WinMobile is full on LOL, and Palm is for smelly homeless.

Sorry, 4.0.1 - is that better? I don't pay every bit of attention to detail when it comes to software version numbering.

All I can tell you is that since updating to it, my 3GS has gone from being almost the perfect phone to a complete pain in the ass - dropping 2/3 calls, freezing up (i'm resetting it 3 times a day), corrupting it's music library (bought a song off the iTunes store and the 30GB of music I had on the phone vanished) and it's constantly laggy, which it never used to be.

7 has been an absolute godsend for our business. I've deployed it to maybe 3/4 of our environment and in 6 months, I've rarely had issue. Less polish? Please, it's the most stable OS i've ever used. Less features? What important features is it lacking? Far less hassle in sticking with Windows then there is shifting to Macs. I'm also pissed with Apple's customer support of late. I stopped into an Apple store the other day to get a new SIM tray and two of the people I spoke to were the most condescending tits I've ever come across, telling me that I needed an appointment to speak to somebody in the store despite at least 10 staff standing around doing absolutely nothing. I would have thought the $900 phone I'd bought 4 months ago would be enough of an "appointment" when it comes to something as simple as walking out the back to check if they had a spare SIM tray lying around (turns out they did, one of the girls overheard me talking and just went out and got me one in the space of 30 seconds).

WinMobile

We'll see how "lol" Windows Phone 7 is.

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I'll give you that apple store employees are just douches, can't stand them. As for your 3GS problems, just restore it. WinMobile7 honestly isn't different from iOS3. At Cupertino we get to use it to see what the competition is up to. That's how we stay ahead.

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3Ghz of speed.

Negatron. Clock speed in newer processors is typically lower than that - there are other things to look for in processors that determine their effectiveness and overall worth. In a laptop a faster processor isn't always best because you'll consume more battery life for a minimal performance benefit.

Look at i5's or i3's for processors - extremely efficient and well priced bang for your buck. Make sure the notebook has a graphics card of some description in there or Windows 7 will bog down your ram to get those pretty graphics happening.

A big problem with most notebooks you buy, whether it be HP, Toshiba, Asus, Dell, etc is that they all come pre-loaded with HEAPS of crap that you absolutely do not need. You should have about 35-40 active processes running on a fresh Windows 7 install, most notebooks ship with 80+ running. A particular Dell model that I ordered 6 of the other week came shipped with 94 (WTF). First thing you should do when you get the laptop is reformat it, reinstall your drivers, leave off all the "HP Support Center" tools and shit that come preinstalled with it. Download Microsoft Security Essentials for your antivirus, get a copy of Office and away you go.

Yeah, I agree with that. We reimage everything and strip out a bunch of crap from the supplier and turn off a bunch of unnecessary auto start services.

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This may be a dumb question, but if you remove HP Support Assistant, does that somehow void your warranty? I wouldn't think that it would but I guess I'm just being paranoid. Like somehow "You don't want our stupid support toolbar!" equates to "We won't help you at all!"

But I mean, no one ever uses this stupid toolbar anyways, no sense in it wasting space on the laptop like that.

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This may be a dumb question, but if you remove HP Support Assistant, does that somehow void your warranty? I wouldn't think that it would but I guess I'm just being paranoid. Like somehow "You don't want our stupid support toolbar!" equates to "We won't help you at all!"

But I mean, no one ever uses this stupid toolbar anyways, no sense in it wasting space on the laptop like that.

Software does not void your warranty, keep the recovery partition in tact and just in case you could always recover it then bring it in.

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All I can tell you is that since updating to it, my 3GS has gone from being almost the perfect phone to a complete pain in the ass - dropping 2/3 calls, freezing up (i'm resetting it 3 times a day), corrupting it's music library (bought a song off the iTunes store and the 30GB of music I had on the phone vanished) and it's constantly laggy, which it never used to be.

My 3G has also been a pain in the ass since the new OS. I don't care if it's "just" a 3G, this is not how it used to be before OS4.

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Thanks for your help guys.

This is what I ended up getting:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115796

Excellent choice, with a decent screen resolution too. Screens with those puny 1280x760 resolutions are really annoying - you've got yourself 1600x900 there which will help with your productivity, particularly if you have multiple documents open at one time.

Decent graphics for the price, solid processor - you should get good battery from it too. Make sure you don't just uninstall the Acer stuff - reformat it and reinstall Windows...! Clean installs are the best.

This may be a dumb question, but if you remove HP Support Assistant, does that somehow void your warranty? I wouldn't think that it would but I guess I'm just being paranoid. Like somehow "You don't want our stupid support toolbar!" equates to "We won't help you at all!"

But I mean, no one ever uses this stupid toolbar anyways, no sense in it wasting space on the laptop like that.

It can void your support agreement - but they usually only run for like 60 days from the purchase date... That being like the technical support for the laptop itself.

Your actual hardware warranty can only be voided by doing something like opening the laptop and modifying it in some way.

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