Computer/laptop help please:)?

Question

I am in need of a laptop(only) and I can't find one that is awesome and yet in a good price range. So I was wondering what good, well-working laptop is out there? (I need it for iTunes, music, videos, writing docs. And school-work in general) all suggestions are welcomed.

Answer 1

This HP can be customized to what you need. If you want better performance upgrade the APU to a A10, the graphics to AMD Radeon HD 8750M + HD 8000 Series Dual Graphics. and increase the ram to 8GB. That will bring it to $700. Add the 1080p screen for just another $40. Starting at $530



http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/C9W57AV;pgid=c7twGfjc0ptSRpIq7ZUcoGXQ0000fb8mNv9y;sid=NID2W1inOb6JXwkRbh2qz4GoAJwzDmy78dUe8LW2AJwzDtPc7Kuhl6jI?HP-ENVY-15z-j000-Notebook-PC A8-5550M APU HD 8000 Series Graphics 6GB DDR3 750GB 5400 rpm HD



This HP can be customized to. Upgrade the Graphics to NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M, 1080p screen and 16GB ram brings it to $1000. Do not get this lappy without the graphics upgrade. Starting at $870



http://shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/E4T17AV?HP-ENVY-15t-j000-Quad-Edition-Notebook-PC i7-4700MQ 8GB DDR3 1TB 5400 rpm Hard Drive



Brand buying advise



You get what you pay for. Systems with high end parts with low prices are to be viewed with suspicion. They have to cut corners somewhere to get the price down. What cost you less today is going to cost you more tomorrow.



Apple makes a good quality laptop. The problem comes when it requires service or minor upgrades. It is near impossible to do anything with them. They even glue the battery and hard drive down so you can not change it. They solder the ram to the logic board so you can not increase it. They lock up most of the software so your stuck with what they approve.



Lenovo has serious stand behind their product problems. They bought IBM PC division and proceeded to drive the quality of the system into the ground. Their customer service is well below par. They even makes Dell customer service look good. Lenovo will not allow people to read instruction on how to access the BIOS menu or to get info on their puters on their web site unless you connect to them thru Facebook. They do this so they can spy on their users. The last and final thing to remember about them is they are a Chinese Government own company. It is up to you if you want to trust them.



Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony should be avoided because of their heavy modification of Windows and the drivers. If you remove some of the bloat they install, you can cripple the system.



Acer, Gateway, and eMachines should be avoided period. Low end system that are driving the race to the bottom.



Dell once made a good system and fell from grace. They are now struggling to regain their place in the market. Customer service is one of many problems with this company.



Alienware are glorified Dells and are more name than product. Priced extremely high for what you get. They do perform but you can get the same for less by looking around, just not packaged to be eye candy to the gamers.



Samsung has a history of using cheap parts in critical areas. Capacitors has been one area Samsung has a known history of going cheap, causing units to fail early. For that reason I would avoid them.



ASUS and HP do not modify Windows as bad as the other manufacturers. They have excellent build quality. They might add a lot of bloat but they also makes it easy to get rid of it.



Ultrabooks are the higher end of Wintel laptops but they have some of the same concerns as Apple. They make it next to impossible to change any hardware in them. Service of them will have to be done by the manufacturers. With most of them, you can not change your own battery or hard drive. They are designed to catch your eye but they are not any more special then other laptops except for the fact that they are slim or thin. Your paying for it being thin and slim. For the money your going to spend on it you can buy a much better laptop with more power.



Chrome books are useless. They are designed by Google to make you dependent on Google. If you can not access the web then you can not do anything.



Hybrids are the worse of the worse. The flip or detachable touch screens are just a disaster waiting to happen.



Never buy an All In One. They are far worst then laptops of any kind to service and they have a higher failure rate.



Always avoid refurbished units. They only come with a 90 day warranty and have a higher failure rate. The service contacts are normally just a one time replace contract.



Choose wisely.



:)

Answer 2

Try to find Refurbished Laptops. Search for them at legitimate online stores. They are slightly old models that may have been returned to the factory and then repaired and being sold at lower prices. Some of them are just returns that some one didn't like, but waited 30 days to return it and after using it for 30 days. They likely would be running Windows 7. Usually you will only find them online though. Stores don't stock them at the retail store fronts. You could also look for Chrome Books that are cheaper than Windows laptops. There is also buying barebones, although hard to find and you install Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora)

Answer 3

If you can sacrifice ease of carrying one around, go for a 14" matte finish laptop (not ultrabooks or sleekbooks).

Things you have to make sure is that,

-it has a quad core processor, i5 / i7 /or maybe AMD which is cheaper, with enough clock speed (anything above 2.4 GHz)

-it has at least 4 Gigs of RAM (2 won't do)

-it has a decent video card. Refer http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html for a list and buy one which is ranked at least 225 or lower.



Since you need iTunes, and you can't afford a mac (which has all of the above) go for windows (8 or 7) operating system.

Answer 4

Macs.

They're practically virus-free, tend to crash less.

Be well.