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Laptop purchase help

Got a friend who needs to buy a laptop for their son who's going to college.

Will be using Office and downloading music, I'm sure.

They don't have big bucks so I'm thinking $1000 or less.

Any brand you would recommend? Any you wouldn't?

They don't want to do the \"over the Internet\" thing so Dell is out.

Also, Can you still buy w/ XP or is everthing Vista now?

HP Pavilion series. They are really putting out a quality product now. You get a lot for your money. I bought an HP dv9000 17 inch back in Nov and it rocks, I love it.

My GFs sister is going off to college and I put together a 14 inch model for her. (Unfortunatly hers came with Vista)

Here is a pic of mine from the PC pic thread:



17 Inch BrightView Widescreen
Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (2MB Cache)
1 GB RAM (2x512)
GeForce Go 7600 256MB
100GB SATA Hard Drive
DVD+-RW/CD-RW Burnable Drive
WindowsXP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2

http://www.shopping.hp.com/notebooks

Dell is another good one, but I do not recommend them anymore. I hear more people unhappy with these than happy. My GF's Inspiron kept locking up (2 days after the warranty was up) so I took it apart to see why, Dell cheaped out on the heatsink thermal compound. Applied some AS3 and its better than it was.

The board kept timing out when I tried to edit my post but also:


You can buy HP notebooks at Circuit City and Costco (probably other places too).

Wal-Mart sells Dells now.

As for XP... very hard to get on a branded PC now.

JMEaT wrote: Wal-Mart sells Dells now.

i just found this out myself

Not sure if it's a widespread brand in the US, but I absolutely love the Fujitsu-Siemens line.

Tricord wrote:Not sure if it's a widespread brand in the US, but I absolutely love the Fujitsu-Siemens line.

Fujitsu-Siemens isn't available in the US. However you can buy a plain ol' Fujitsu.

I work at dell and you can still get laptops with XP on them.

Get him a white MacBook, with a student discount it comes out to just under $1000.

JMEaT wrote:HP Pavilion series. They are really putting out a quality product now. You get a lot for your money. I bought an HP dv9000 17 inch back in Nov and it rocks, I love it.

My GFs sister is going off to college and I put together a 14 inch model for her. (Unfortunatly hers came with Vista)

Here is a pic of mine from the PC pic thread:

linky

17 Inch BrightView Widescreen
Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (2MB Cache)
1 GB RAM (2x512)
GeForce Go 7600 256MB
100GB SATA Hard Drive
DVD+-RW/CD-RW Burnable Drive
WindowsXP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2

http://www.shopping.hp.com/notebooks

X2 on the HP DV9000. I have two of them. 9034 I think was the exact model, comes with dual sata drives and everything else JMEaT.

VonVulcan wrote:

JMEaT wrote:HP Pavilion series. They are really putting out a quality product now. You get a lot for your money. I bought an HP dv9000 17 inch back in Nov and it rocks, I love it.

My GFs sister is going off to college and I put together a 14 inch model for her. (Unfortunatly hers came with Vista)

Here is a pic of mine from the PC pic thread:

linky

I'm actually looking to add a 2nd sata150 to drive bay number 2. Only thing is HP wants freakin 40 bucks for a damn converter (The drives mount in vertically vs slide in horizontally.)

17 Inch BrightView Widescreen
Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (2MB Cache)
1 GB RAM (2x512)
GeForce Go 7600 256MB
100GB SATA Hard Drive
DVD+-RW/CD-RW Burnable Drive
WindowsXP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2

http://www.shopping.hp.com/notebooks

X2 on the HP DV9000. I have two of them. 9034 I think was the exact model, comes with dual sata drives and everything else JMEaT.

I'm actually looking to add a 2nd sata150 to drive bay number 2. Only thing is HP wants freakin 40 bucks for a damn converter (The drives mount in vertically vs slide in horizontally.)

Any big gaming going to be used on the Laptop?

DCrazy wrote:Get him a white MacBook, with a student discount it comes out to just under $1000.

I just bought one of these myself and absolutely love it. The latest refresh really made them price-competitive with PC notebooks. If you're looking at buying one though, either spring for the model with 1GB RAM stock or factor in the cost of upgrading it to 1GB yourself (don't spec it up on Apples site, they'll ream you for it).