Can anyone please give me some laptop advice?

My parents are apparently buying me a laptop for my birthday, or rather they're paying for it and I get to choose what I want. The issue is, I'm having trouble deciding what I want and I'm trying to compare the ones in stores here so I can figure out the best for what I want.

All I really know is that I want at least a 2.5 gHz processor, probably 4 GB of RAM, a non intergrated graphics card with a gig or so of memory specially for that and maybe a 500gb - 1tb HDD.

Honestly, I don't want to break the bank here, especially if my parents are buying. 1500 bucks is probably my uppermost limit for what I want them to spend.

Here are a few examples of what I've been looking at;

This one
This one
This one


Out of these 3, I'm leaning towards the top one, but if anyone else has any suggestions to the contrary, any help is greatly appreciated.

Of those three, the first one by far.

Also, that last one doesn't even have a decent video card. If you actually want to play games, you can ignore anything with an Intel graphics card, as well as pretty much anything that uses shared memory.

The first one certainly has nice specs, but I wouldn't touch a Toshiba with a ten foot pole.

Acer, on the other hand, continues to impress in terms of quality, and their customer service is amazing. Plus I really dig the A- series processors.

I didn't even click the third link after seeing Rawhide's comments on the graphics card.

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Originally Posted by Nepenthe

The first one certainly has nice specs, but I wouldn't touch a Toshiba with a ten foot pole.

Acer, on the other hand, continues to impress in terms of quality, and their customer service is amazing. Plus I really dig the A- series processors.

I didn't even click the third link after seeing Rawhide's comments on the graphics card.

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Acer is the one I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. They have... dodgey marketing tactics: http://davidbau.com/archives/2006/05...xperience.html

Owning that exact laptop (which I did not buy for bluetooth, thankfully, but did go looking to install it one day, which lead me to that article), I can confirm that everything said is true.

Acer's laptop build quality (as in strength of parts) is, for all the laptops I've seen (and I've seen a few) very poor and flimsy. The technicians I've spoken to that repair them hate to work on them because they're generally difficult to disassemble and prone to breaking or damaging parts while disassembling and reassembling.

What's wrong with Toshiba as a brand? I'm not super experienced with this kinda thing, I've only owned a Dell laptop and my current one which is a HP Pavillion dv6, and I'm never touching Dell again after all the issues I had with them.


If there is a specific brand I should look at, please let me know.

When you buy your laptop, get an extended warranty.

You will be happy you did.

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Originally Posted by Rawhide

Acer is the one I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. They have... dodgey marketing tactics: http://davidbau.com/archives/2006/05...xperience.html

Owning that exact laptop (which I did not buy for bluetooth, thankfully, but did go looking to install it one day, which lead me to that article), I can confirm that everything said is true.

Acer's laptop build quality (as in strength of parts) is, for all the laptops I've seen (and I've seen a few) very poor and flimsy. The technicians I've spoken to that repair them hate to work on them because they're generally difficult to disassemble and prone to breaking or damaging parts while disassembling and reassembling.

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I haven't encountered the bluetooth thing before, but I agree, that's not cool. Just proves that you really need to know what you're buying before you pull the trigger.

My beef with Toshibas: They get returned. A lot. Returns cost me money. My brother-in-law had one and the display went on the fritz within 8 months. Plus they're ugly.

Meanwhile, I own two Acers (and an HP) and in three years the only trouble I've ever had was caused by a drop. Acer's warranty technically doesn't cover drops, but they still fixed it for free. I also see far fewer returns on Acers.

Well, I'll take that under advisement.

Another question though - If I get a graphics card that has a gig or 2 of dedicated memory, can I get away with having 4 gigs of RAM, or would I still need 8 gig?

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Originally Posted by Moonshadow

What's wrong with Toshiba as a brand? I'm not super experienced with this kinda thing, I've only owned a Dell laptop and my current one which is a HP Pavillion dv6, and I'm never touching Dell again after all the issues I had with them.

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I came into this thread to recommend avoiding Dell, but I see you've already reached the same conclusion. They definitely have terrible customer service, especially once your warranty runs out. The other day I spent 90 minutes on the phone with them, nearly 60 of which were on hold, got hung up on once when I asked to speak to a supervisor, and was quoted two different prices for the same repair by the two people I spoke to. I will never give Dell another penny as long as I live, and am glad to know I'm not the only one.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lord Seth

When you buy your laptop, get an extended warranty.

You will be happy you did.

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Also, this is very good advice. If you know your way around computers enough to either do the repairs yourself or have someone you can trust to do that, it's probably not necessary. Otherwise, do this. If you don't and something goes wrong, you will be very unhappy.

My only 2 cents is to get something that's Bluetooth-capable. If you end up needing to use a lot of peripheral equipment, trying to maneuver even two sets of trailing cords in a classroom or computer lab can become hellish quickly. At least that way you can reduce the number of wires, since your mouse and other standard accessories can be connected that way.

Or I may be talking stupidly. I do that plenty, too. :smallwink: