Laptops (1 Viewer)

detroitdad

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My oldest daughter needs a new laptop for school. She starts her two year radiology program in a few weeks. I thought I'd purchase it for her.

It will be strictly for school work, research, internet. No gaming.

I'd like to keep it in the $500.00 range.

Not interested in a tablet/touch screen.

Thanks in advance.

B
 
I'd get a Dell with an upgraded screen (an IPS screen if they offer it) and backlit keyboard. Done.

sent from my phone
 
Find one with windows 7, go on tiger direct or amazon. Windows 8.1 has been giving a lot of users issues
 
I'd get a Dell with an upgraded screen (an IPS screen if they offer it) and backlit keyboard. Done.

Agreed. I'm on my third Dell laptop, and each one has given me lots of mileage with no major issues. The backlit keyboard is da bomb! I think they're good value. A 15.4" screen should be plenty of real estate unless she's doing lots of graphic work.
 
I ditched my desktop about 4 years ago and got a Dell Precision M6600 Mobile Workstation. I did some upgrades myself like adding more memory, 4th drive in the CD-ROM bay. The thing is a beast. 17" hi res IPS display, 4 internal SSDs, 32gb memory, backlit keyboard, FIPS fingerprint reader and all the other standard goodies. When I'm home I dock it to two 24" Dell IPS monitors, keyboard, and mouse. It's about 12 lbs. Lol.

Never had one issue with it.

sent from my phone
 
I gave HP and Dell each a shot and both failed. Back to MacBook Pro since 2005. I still run a cheap Acer for work sometimes but I love my mac.
 
Lenovo x230 Thinkpad with IPS screen. Troll the Lenovo Outlet and snag one when they come up. Cheap and solid.
 
For the bang/buck ratio, it's hard to beat Toshiba Satellite sale prices on their web site. Just stick with the Intel products, as I think the AMD processors run too hot for laptop use. Plenty of nice options for your budget.

Just between me, Karen, and work, I've purchased six over the past several years -- plus two more for employee bonuses, and three others for clients when I was doing computer consulting work. Our work environment is pretty harsh on electronics -- lots of dust and dog hair -- and the reliability of these things is pretty impressive.

Karen's latest and our office laptop both use Win8x touchscreen -- and it's really not as bad as everybody made/makes it out to be (although I still prefer Win7....).

http://www.toshiba.com/us/
 
Lenovo x230 Thinkpad with IPS screen. Troll the Lenovo Outlet and snag one when they come up. Cheap and solid.

I had an x220 when I still had a desktop. Nice and portable. :)
 
I've had many HPs and Dells over the years, no problems with either. Right now using a 17" HP, and my wife is using a 15" Dell (she travels with hers a lot more than I do.) The real estate of the 17" HP is nice as your eyes age! Plus I think HP has the price edge right now.

I have a couple of Macs, too -- typing this on a MacBook Pro, actually. Nice packages overall, but dog, do I hate Mac keyboards. I have to go back and make corrections on every line I type, because of missing spaces. And the lack of dedicated delete/backspace keys drives me nuts. Obviously, ymmv.
 
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And the lack of dedicated delete/backspace keys drives me nuts Obviously, ymmv.

every time i say this people think i'm being hyperbolic, but this is honestly at least in the top 3 reasons i don't have a mac.
 
Find one with windows 7, go on tiger direct or amazon. Windows 8.1 has been giving a lot of users issues
Ya, this!!! ^^^

I purchase my latest PC and had to pay more to upgrade back to 7 (lol). This was on the advice of some serious IT folks
 

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