My suggestion.
Look for decent Dell 1525 on craigslist. You’ll get an excellent machine for a great deal, no sales tax. If you’re worred just wipe and reimage the machine. They are light, can still get batteries, no major design issues with this particular model line (like some others they have).
For anything other than an older style Tablet Pc, which I love, I recommend you go to www.sagernotebook.com before you buy. Sagers are made by Clevo. Clevo is an ODM, OEM. They make many of the name brand laptops and components by HP, Dell, Asus, etc. Their stuff is quality at reasonable prices. Oh, their customer service is in California, not India.
You probably want an Intel I-5. The I-3 might be a bit slow and the I-7 might be more processing than you need for daily general use.
I recently bought a Samsung laptop with the I-5/Windows 7. It handles video playing very well. I don’t know how it would do with video processing (converting, etc), since I haven’t had it long enough to check out.
Samsung has a great ultra-thin laptop that many execs are dumping the thin iMac for. But Personally I’d wait for windows 8 or at least for some designs that will take advantage of it. Also battery life is rapidly improving.
....................and most of my work uses MS Office apps...................
Strongly consider a machine with a keyboard that includes a numeric pad if you do much number crunching.
FWIW on brands... For business I’ve had extremely good luck with HP and Dell laptops. Each heavily used, survived lots of travel, etc. Hell, my HP got wet from a household flood about 3 years ago (I’m using it right now). A Thinkpad I was temporarily stuck with was heavy, slow, and died an unnatural blue screen death. For personal laptop - I’ve had an Asus the last 2 years and it was way affordable and way reliable.
On the tech side... It’s easy to demand at least 500G hard drive, 3Gig memory, and a fast/reliable chip. At this point, I’ve got no preference between Intel or AMD.
I would consider a Dell Inspiron. They have proven to be very dependable for people where I work. Never buy a HP/Compaq. Their tech support in India is pathetic and dishonest. Some of their polices screw the customers. I told a supervisor that I will NEVER buy their products again, and nor would anyone that I can influence. I also hear reports that HP may get out of the PC business.
BTW, I have yet to find a Dell desktop that would not run Linux. I expect that applies to their laptops as well, with the possible exception of some wireless cards.
If answer is yes, you need laptop with IPS panel,non-reflexive screen, preferably in 4:3 format. Such laptop is not very suitable for watching movies in 16:9 format. But, the extra productivity squeezed from it could easily pay for an Ipad2 or similar toy. In that case, my vote goes to Lenovo Thinkpad. If security is of concern, wipe it clean and install your version of Windows 7 without any Lenovo tools.
If answer is no, you need work and play combo laptop. My wife is using her ASUS netbook for text processing and rarely uses her laptop or desktop any longer. Productivity is improved because netbook can be carried at all times due to small weight and long battery life.
Also, many people who use laptop actually only need portable pc that works in the office and at home. Mac Mini equipped with two sets of monitors and keyboards fro both locations work wonders for them.
Posters here are too clever by half. My previous laptop was a 2006 top-of-the-line HP with a 15” screen. It was fantastic and I travel extensively. Finally, the fan motor began to act up and, rather than continue cleaning it, I recently purchased a new Toshiba at BestBuy, based upon consumer reports and my local guru’s advice. It is light and inexpensive (though you must purchase software). I was warned that it was a great machine...just don’t drop it!
The other that I was impressed with was an Asus.
MacBook Pro
If video AND battery life are important considerations, take a look at AMD’s new A6 or A8 chips. These ‘accelerated processing units’, or APUs, have both the cpu and gpu on the same die, are priced in the mid-range, and offer much improved battery life based on @35-45W total dissipated power. The embedded graphics chip comes with dedicated or shared memory, depending on the machine you choose.
I recently bought a laptop. I found this site very helpful in explaining all the different features available: http://shop.retrevo.com/m/Laptop-Buying-Guide/c11020
Besides explaining it all, the site also makes recommendations.
I have three Toshibas and will probably never buy another brand...
My 2 cents, get a laptop.
If you plan to have it for 3 or more years, get a Core i7 processor or AMD equivalent, 4 Gigs RAM, 1 Gig RAM Video, 17 inch screen, 300 GB Hard Drive
if it’s loaded with Windows 7, they are pretty reasonably priced these days.
I see some Asus laptops around here and they appear to be still working. . .
ping for later