Need a new laptop, help!

[pauldun170]

Originally Posted by Phenix_Rider

You could just clean it... Get rid of anything you don't need, stop programs from auto-loading on startup, run a good virus scanner, and defrag. Maybe add some RAM.

If you're not doing anything major with it, there's really no reason to get a new one. Unless you just want to

agreed
I have desktops going back to 2004. I have an old P4 2.8 and an Athlon64 3800 of similar vintage.
Vista Business is running on the P4 and it runs just fine. Pretty quick loading up and running what I need to run on it.
The Athlon has XP on it and its pretty responsive, though nowadays its strictly the torrent box.

I have some newer stuff running Windows 7, a quad core desktop and an older dual core laptop (HP). The laptop is used as a media center (while all the libraries are hosted on the quad core).

Of all the computers I have the slowest one is probably the laptop due to the slow drives in it.


Now that I have yabble and rabbled about my crap.


Asus is the most reliable.
HP has pretty good service which you will need the day after the warranty expires (they have made some poor design decisions)
A basic Dell is a suprisingly good deal and you can nab one for bout $500. Service has alledgedly improved.
Apple is overpriced and the hardware quality can be iffy.
IBM\Lenovo Thinkpads used to be indafuckingstructable but nowadays they are bout average.
Toshiba's are ok, but I rarely see them price competitive with the competition. they alsways seem to be an extra 50 bucks.


Whatever you get.
3gig and over of RAM is desirable
2 gig is the absolute minimum. Matter of fact, if they are selling a laptop with 2gig of ram, chances are it sucks in other areas.

Watch out for laptops that are stingy with usb ports.
Stay away from anything with an "Atom" processor.