Solved! Looking to buy a new laptop

bonanzaguy

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1. What is your budget? <$800 Closer to $600 the better

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 11-15 --- 13 seems to be a pretty happy medium between the two, offering a full sized keyboard with a more portable screen. But I'm willing to get any size between 11 and 15 if it offers what I need.

3. What screen resolution do you want? at least 720p

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Portable

5. How much battery life do you need? Several hours. e.g. >3 More would be nice.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? No games.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
Youtube, general internet usage, HD videos and running iTunes.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? Enough for the OS + some breathing room. (I have everything on external drives)

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. NewEgg, Amazon.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? Couple years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? Don't need. And if it's cheaper without, don't want.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
I've had a Dell for around 4 or 5 years now. Never had any problems with it. I would prefer something namebrand, i.e. Dell, Acer, Asus, Toshiba...

13. What country do you live in? USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

I want something fairly portable and light but still with enough power to be able to watch HD video files from the HD without stuttering.
I've recently been looking at the Asus U series, the Acer Aspire TimelineX series and the Toshiba Satellite series, as these seem to be most in line with what I'm looking for: thin, sleek, portable and with enough power to get the job done. I just can't seem to decide between them with all the variations and differences.
 
Solution
There is a 13.3 in. Acer Aspire Timeline 3810t that might be worth a look.

It carries a 1.4 GHz 1.4GHz Intel® Core™ 2 Duo SU9400 Processor, 4 GB RAM, and 500 GB of storage. This should be enough since you say you keep everything on external drives. I think this would be able to do everything you need it to do.

Only downside is that it has no optical drive, and it is closer to $750ish than it is $600, although I think its worth looking at.

What do you think? Good luck on your hunt...

Kevin
Windows Outreach Team

WindowsTeam_Kevin

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There is a 13.3 in. Acer Aspire Timeline 3810t that might be worth a look.

It carries a 1.4 GHz 1.4GHz Intel® Core™ 2 Duo SU9400 Processor, 4 GB RAM, and 500 GB of storage. This should be enough since you say you keep everything on external drives. I think this would be able to do everything you need it to do.

Only downside is that it has no optical drive, and it is closer to $750ish than it is $600, although I think its worth looking at.

What do you think? Good luck on your hunt...

Kevin
Windows Outreach Team
 
Solution

bonanzaguy

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Jan 13, 2009
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Kevin:
That's definitely along the lines of what I'm looking for.

I'm a bit curious though; in the research I've been doing it seems like you can get machines with similar specs but with an i3 or i5 for that same price range.

Is there any reason you recommend this one over the others?


Also, can anyone explain why between these to models of the same computer, the one with the larger hard drive is $50 cheaper?

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-TimelineX-AS3820T-6480-13-3-Inch-Aluminum/dp/B004ETOBOO/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1298069065&sr=1-4

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-TimelineX-AS3820T-7459-13-3-Inch-Aluminum/dp/B003ZUXWX4/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1298069065&sr=1-7
 

Fadekyn

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Try slickdeals.net, they've been finding some deals that are along your criteria. However, for the $600-$800 range you can easily find 13-14' computers that have much better processors than a dual core.

In your case, you will want to focus on the GHz level of the processor. Currently, since you are playing no games, the majority of your content will only utilize two cores. For the foreseeable furture I don't believe that will change for non-gamers. Still, this shouldn't prevent you from finding a quad core i3 or i5 or even a tri/quad core AMD that should have a higher GHz than Kevins dual core. From a longevity standpoint I'd go the quadcore route just in case trends change.

P.S. As for the two Acers you posted. Amazon tech specs do not give enough info as to why the one $50 more is $50 more. Could be a graphics card issue. However, the cheaper one has a bigger hard drive and a better processor. You'll need to google the individual specs. If you could post them here we can disect both better for you.

P.P.S Both those procesors are twice as strong than the processor Kevin posted and as usual the computers you found are much cheaper. Chalk up another sucky recommendation to Kevin, as usual he's recommending junk to people looking for help.