new laptop

my wife is looking for a new laptop. anybody have any advice? this computer is going to be used at home only, no business use. also looking for a place to buy it………thanks tom

I have a friend who sells computers. He primarily sells to small/medium business systems but will be able to help you out with a home computer. Just tell him what you want/need and he’ll set you up with some different options. If you find something you like, he’ll send it right to your front door. linky There are plenty of other places to find what your looking for but he can usually match or beat anyone elses prices and you get some great personal service. Just drop him an email and tell him Randy sent ya and he’ll be able to help you out nicely.

you will want to set a price that you want to spend first.

I own a sony vaio lap top and i love it. Granted its faster then most desktops it can do anything and much more. I would stay away from HP and the cheap brands. IBM sony, dell, gateway and all the bigger name’s are great buys. If you are looking for portablility they have some small ones but if u are just going to be leaving it on a desk and might might it around from time to time i would get a bigger screen.

In todays world most of the majors manufactures Lap-Tops are pretty much the same most buy there components from the same vendors and they are all pretty good so customer service and warranty are very important.

I would definatly go with a 17 inch WideScreen that’s nice and big your eye’s will thank you, they are becoming more affordable also.

I’m guessing you will be using it for Internet, Photos, printing saving documents.

Just about any computer in the $1000 to $2000 range will come with a 40 to 100 gig Hard Drive, CD or DVD burner, built in wireless card, a decent proccessor and memory, USB 2.0.

I’m normally not a Best Buy or Circit City fan but for Notebooks I like the conveinence of being able to bring the Notebook to the store and hand it to a person versus saving a few bucks online and having to ship the Notebook back for repairs.
Again I’m not a big extended warranty guy but with a Notebook I would strongly consider a 3 warranty on top of the 1 year manufactors warranty.

Sams club also had some good deals on Notebooks.

I really like the 17″ WS Toshiba my neighbor just bought.

Good Luck….and where are the Perch biting….

Can be nosy and ask why you must have a laptop if you’re only going to have it at home? It costs money to make things tiny ya know.

I second the Vaio reccomendation, Mine’s almost 4 years old, and it’s only had two problems one user induced and the Hard Drive went bad, after countless hours, of running I couldn’t really expect a hard drive to last longer.

Best buy (atleast they used to) warranties batteries with their laptop with their extended warranty, with average life of a battery being around a year this was a good deal, for me anyways.

Compared my 4 year old laptop to a new Dell XPS laptop, and my screen is 10X better.

matt,

we have wireless and i like to sit in my chair, look out over cove bay, watch tv, and surf…..

it’s not a money thing, my wife does have a part time job with the dnr during the summer.

I’d get a laptop too if I had a view like that

I agree with what HookNFinger had to say. Stay away from HP and you wont go wrong. I have had several Laptops and currently running a compaq presario and like the performance and touch finger pad on this one. Preferance for small things like the pad make a big difference in my opinion. I have worked on a few with different mouse controls and I just don’t like those as well. Grant it, it’s takes a bit to get use to it also.
let us know what you go with and how you like it.

I would suggest not buying a gateway computer too, back in the day there were ok, but I know many people that were screwed by gateway

I have a Toshiba Satellite and love it. I got it at Best Buy, 3 year extended warranty. It is used five times as much as our desk computer.

Ron