Ok, so I’m shopping around for a laptop. Just need something for school projects and internet. Has to have the basics, Microsoft office, etc. Since I don’t know anything about computers beyond turning it on and fumbling around, I thought I would ask you guys for your opinions. How much ram and other stuff do I need to get by. Don’t want slow. Don’t need all the extras.
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2 Responses to “laptop shopping”
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September 3rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Wait a couple weeks and get one with Windows 7 already on it.New computers won’t ship with Windows 7 until October 22.. There are lots of offers right now for “Free upgrade to Windows 7″ and stores are going to be pushing them out the door to make room for the computers that will come out with 7 on them. So you should be able to find some good deals here in the coming weeks.Integrated Graphics are perfectly fine if you are never gonna play any real games and just browse web/email/school project stuff. All the cheapest notebooks all have integrated graphics, but don’t worry, it should work fine for you. If the notebook says “dedicated graphics” that’s better (usually) but will cost you a little more for the performance.
Get at least 3 gigs of memory.. 4 should be tops in a notebook for you. 250gigs of hard drive space will be about the min.. more is better of course you’ll see 320gigs. You won’t need to get a 1T (terabyte) harddrive, it’s too much and too expensive.
A Dual Core processor is what you’ll want. It won’t matter to you if it’s Intel (core 2 duo) or AMD (Turion X2) but those are two to look for. If it’s Intel, make sure that it’s identified as a “Core 2 Duo” and not just a plain “dual core”. Speed will be around 2.0GHz +/- 0.2.. a 1.6 is kinda slow.. anything over 2.4 is more money than you need to spend.
Check out http://www.tigerdirect.com and http://www.newegg.com for usually great prices and solid merchants.
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I really do recommend Windows 7.. the best thing to do would be to wait until Oct 22 =) but if you can’t.. you should probably read this if you are wanting to take advantage of the free upgrade to Windows 7 option you will probably get… paying attention to the bit about it being impossible to do an “in-place upgrade” of any 32bit Operating System to a 64bit version of Windows 7… and vice versa. So if you get 64 bit Vista on a notebook next week.. If you want the easy upgrade path you will need to make sure you get 64 bit Win7.. etc etc.. and you can upgrade from 32 to 64 or 64 down to 32.. but it won’t be the easy “click here to upgrade!” option. Will require a fresh install on a blank hard drive.