Help Selecting a laptop

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

Ok, here's the run down.

I need to get one for my wife to use for her work from home. She needs a decent size screen, like in the 15-15.6 range. Moderate storage, since shes not going to be gaming on it, watching ripped movies and so on... so I figure maybe a 320 GB HDD. One that runs cool with decent memory, 4 gb ish?

Not sure on the preferred processor for a laptop, AMD or Intel ...I-3, ...I-5

Here's one on new egg that has a lot of good reviews and is listed at a top seller. Price is decent, and I'm not really looking to spend more than 500

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157822

what would you guys suggest.

[LA_MERC_Spark]

I would personally NEVER by anything from HP that wasn't a printer/copier... not ever... I've had 2 ASUS laptops and they have been pretty good to me. I have purchased toshiba, Lenovo(ibm), and ASUS over the past couple years for work. The last three have been ASUS. The price was REALLY good until recently for the mid range stuff. The last one I paid $1000, but they do have some cheaper if you look around. Try insight.. they actually do pretty well price wise even when compared with newegg.

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

I couldn't agree with Spark more. I would steer away from HP at all costs, especially right now. I have run Asus for my work laptop for the past 3 yrs and have been more than happy with it. I picked the Asus for the 13" screen size. I carry it a LOT. Plenty of power. I will look around.

Does it need to be Win 7 Pro or will Home Premium do okay?
What type of work will she do on it? This will let us hone down a CPU/GPU combo.
Is portability a factor? Weight etc....
Will she be typing on it or at a desk with an external keyboard/Monitor?
Docking station a need?

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

No docking station, she will more likely be using it on the couch, or sitting in the bed. I have to get her setup to print paperwork at the house as well as faxing, but that's not a big deal. It does not have to be WIn7 pro, home premium would be ok I think. She is using the remote desktop client to log into her workstation at her job site. Screen size matters, portability does not matter, most likely this laptops going to staying at the house. She will be typing on it, not using and external keyboard.

She does medical billing, so shes not running any application that would require a lot of resources. There is only 1 app she uses at work, and its will be running on a remote server...

[LA_MERC_DocSparky]

I use a 15.6" laptop for my development work. I have a Samsung (which is probably one of the better brands I've used) which works pretty well (i5), but that's not my point of writing. Consider pairing what you get with an external monitor. She can have the remote desktop session full screen on the secondary monitor and the laptop screen can be used for other stuff (checking email, posting on LaMerc, etc..). This arrangement works well for me.

[SnAkEbItE]

Take a look at http://www.bytespeed.com company in MN, I deal with them almost exclusivley for the school district I am the network admin for. They have good machines they are intell based and have 3 year warenty on all laptops and 5 year on all desktops. They are not gameing maches but are solid work horse boxes, we have several of their laptops as well and have not had any issues with them, well other than teachers dropping them and cracking the LCD panels...

[LA_MERC_FragFood]

Huh. My wife and I just bought an all-in-one HP from Worst Buy a week or so ago, after being really happy with her HP laptop for the last 5-ish years. Never a lick of trouble out of it, but it was pampered. I think it left the house under 10x in its lifetime. 17.3" screen, full numeric pad (she does/did medical billing as well).

Other than that, we've been all Lenovo/IBM at work up until last year, when we switched to Dell. I personally like the current Toshibas, my mom and daughter both have Acers from Wal Mart that have been nice. If you wanna stay on the cheap, then you can look at the Lenovo that my eldest son (a.k.a. Fishfood) bought from Office Depot. It was cheap cheap, but he's really happy with it. It's no gaming rig, of course, but a solid general purpose performer. Here's the link (http://tinyurl.com/3drcfv6) 4GB RAM, 64 bit Win 7 Home Premium, LED backlight. Hard to beat for $379

[LA_MERC_T4rg3T]

You can check the Dell Outlet store http://www.dell.com/outlet

They have good deals on refurbs are ones with a small scratch. You can the same warranty as a regular laptop at a lower cost. If you check out the Dell Outlet twitter, you find deals like 20% off.

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

17.3" screen, full numeric pad (she does/did medical billing as well).


I don't know if my wife has even thought about that, I'm sure shes got a lot of number keying to do, and without a full numeric keypad this could be a pain in ARSE.

[SnAkEbItE]

They do make a USB numberic keypad you can plug into laptop's, however I would look for built in when purchasing a laptop from the get go I think.

[LA_MERC_th33_r00k]

I am not arguing the quality of the build, just the direction of the company. I sold a lot of HP "business" class laptops and they all have performed well. I would steer clear of consumer level laptops in general. The "dv" series was a shot in the dark for longevity and there was a class action lawsuit against HP for their poor build.

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

ok, hp is out for me.. nit an option :)

She dose need a full numbers keypad

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

Huh. My wife and I just bought an all-in-one HP from Worst Buy a week or so ago, after being really happy with her HP laptop for the last 5-ish years. Never a lick of trouble out of it, but it was pampered. I think it left the house under 10x in its lifetime. 17.3" screen, full numeric pad (she does/did medical billing as well).

Other than that, we've been all Lenovo/IBM at work up until last year, when we switched to Dell. I personally like the current Toshibas, my mom and daughter both have Acers from Wal Mart that have been nice. If you wanna stay on the cheap, then you can look at the Lenovo that my eldest son (a.k.a. Fishfood) bought from Office Depot. It was cheap cheap, but he's really happy with it. It's no gaming rig, of course, but a solid general purpose performer. Here's the link (http://tinyurl.com/3drcfv6) 4GB RAM, 64 bit Win 7 Home Premium, LED backlight. Hard to beat for $379

Hey Frag Found it on new egg for the same price free shipping + no tax :)
(I think Office Depot since there's one here in SC would have to charge me tax)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246128

What you think? :)

[LA_MERC_FragFood]

Well, like I said in my original post, it's no barn-burner, but so far has been a good reliable machine for my son. As long as you don't set your expectations too high, I think she'll be happy with it. I checked his machine last night and the graphics for Aero are what pulled his Win 7 score down. Everything else scored pretty well.

Still can't beat the price, either.

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

Ok, so I take it this machine will run office apps with no issues, Word & excel primarily?
Other than doing some work from home that's going to consist of remoting into a server, while maybe running excel and word simultaneously. I cant imagine her putting much more of a load on the machine. Anything beyond that maybe streaming some tunes off of Pandora, or using widows media player.

I'm just trying to picture what she may be doing when she looks over at me and says, there's something wrong, this new laptop is running really slow. :)

And price... your right, that's a rocking little deal for what your getting.

Ohh. and I like the fact its has 4gb of ram... at least with the Win 7 64 bit, I know it wont be starving for Ram right from the start.

[LA_MERC_DocSparky]

Yeller, for a couple hundred more (~$500-600) you can get the same setup with a Core i5. This would provide a lot of head room in terms of speed. I have an i5 in my current latop and it's very quick. In fact, I saw a deal on the same laptop with the faster cpu here (http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/269182). Seems like they had a bunch of laptop deals come out today.

[LA_MERC_FragFood]

I'll see your i5, and raise you a lower price (?) here (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=411806&CatId=4939) AND Windows 7 PRO! :booyah:

IIRC, $599 was pushing the top of his price range.

[LA_MERC_DocSparky]

The other one had a Blu-ray this one has Win7 Pro (which is nice for Remote Desktop). But you should consider the i-series CPUs if you are will to push the upper limit of your range.