Topic: Anyone seen any great sub-$500 laptop deals?

[Quemaqua]

Girlfriend needs a new one and I don't have a ton of time to look, trying to jump around on the interwebs here and there where I can. Cyber Monday and all... I figure there must be a good deal out there somewhere. She's desperate for a new one. The cheaper the better.

[K-man]

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-bkws&utm_medium=ha

[Quemaqua]

Huh. That's very interesting, I've never even heard of those. I wonder if Windows is a requirement for her... I'll have to ask.

[PyroMenace]

Chrome books suck, I wouldn't even recommend a netbook.

Your "girlfriend" might like this.

[ren]

Dell often has 300 ubuntu systems which are more than powerful enough for everything except gaming.

[ren]

Just go to Dell small business and get the cheapest vostro.

[Quemaqua]

Pyro's link is actually a pretty impressive deal. I haven't seen anything with anywhere near those specs in that pricerange. Dead by now, but nice. Wonder if the newegg deal is still up.

EDIT - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230594 - This seems nice. I used to like ASUS a lot, but haven't bought hardware or anything in a while. Wish I'd read up on Win 8 too. I know absolutely nothing about it.

[scottws]

I would never buy anything but a business-class laptop, an XPS, or an Alienware.  All the consumer-grade laptops except the XPS and Alienwares are crap and will break within three years.

[Cobra951]

3 years for $300 is acceptable, I guess.  Would you really keep an Alienware for a dozen years, if it lasted that long?  So far it seems most of them are fragile, regardless of price point.  My daughter's Alienware lost the hard drive while she was in Spain doing an exchange-student thing.  That was no fun for her.  She had a lot of schoolwork (Europe photos, her art and some written work) on that drive which she needed, and of course, it wasn't backed up anywhere.  She had to deal with the locals for a replacement, but I had her send the old drive back to get the data recovered, which fortunately it was.  Age of the Alienware laptop at the time: about 1 year.

On the other hand, Sandy's 2 Sony VAIOs are going strong after at least 5 years.  One of them gets heavy use too, by me.

No truly good laptop gets too much below a grand.  I get that.  But the reality is that the numbers are too rich for most of us, and we have to make do with what we can get in the few-hundred-dollar range.  If it breaks in a few years, that's the way it goes.

[iPPi]

I've heard alienwares having hinge related problems fairly early on with their life. I'm not sure if they ever fixed it. Regardless the price of an Alienware is ridiculous.

I've been looking at the Asus ultra books like the UX31. They're outside the $500 price range but apparently they're pretty good.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, I'd never buy an XPS or Alienware. Way too much money for something that's IMO just as likely to break as anything else. I once spent a crapload of money on a desktop replacement. It was a lovely rig, but not worth it. Take care of a cheaper laptop, it should still last you. I've had a Toshiba Satellite which has seen heavy use and been dropped several times, it's probably... I don't know. At least 3 years old, maybe 4 by now. No problems with it whatsoever. Want to say girlfriend's laptop is like 5 years at this point, something like that, and the primary issue is with the screen hinge being jacked. But really she just needs an upgrade.

[K-man]

i just pointed out those Chrome books because they are cheap.  I've heard decent things, especially if you don't need a baller ass laptop.

that being said, if I had to shop for a laptop nowadays I wouldn't know where to start.  I bought a used Macbook from a friend of mine a year or two ago for $500, which was probably better than anything else I could have gotten at that price point.

[ren]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4977874&Sku=A180-156414

Just came across that. Seems decent.

[Quemaqua]

That's not bad. I ended up getting her the ASUS, which had slightly higher status for another $80. Appeared to have a nicer, slightly larger keyboard too. Best thing I found after a night of looking. Hopefully Win8 doesn't turn out to be a disaster. I read Pug's review... it sounded doable.

[Raisa]

I was about to tell you to get Asus or Lenovo Thinkpad (customized)...  those thinkpads are very hardy!

[gpw11]

You know what I don't get?   Fucking laptop batteries. Expect two years tops before you start seeing a drastic reduction in charge capacity and may have to buy a new battery.  I've had this with both consumer grade and business grade machines from various manufacturers under a variety of different charge/usage habits and its all the same. I am amazed that this is still the case and it keeps me away from any of those thin laptops with built in batteries.

[Cobra951]

Don't single out laptop batteries.  It's a problem with all rechargeables, regardless of technology used.  The chemistry sets that make them work can't go back and forth between 2 states without generating waste byproducts.  Eventually, waste is all that's left. 

My hatred of batteries is long and absolute.  Yes, it's amazing that we still rely on an energy-storage concept that dates back to the pharaohs.  I avoid them whenever possible.  All my game controllers are wired, for example.  I see batteries on laptops as a backup for when power fails, and as a convenience when moving the system from one place with a wall plug to another place with a wall plug.

[gpw11]

True dat.  It just seems that laptop batteries are the worst from my experience. Although I really can't say about phones, all my Li-ion battery packs for my tools are still going years down the road (although with a reduced charge) and they can go through dozens of cycles on some days.  They're often far more expensive to replace than laptop batteries though, so it could be a case of construction.

Aaaand, like clockwork, my notebook is now reporting a weak/broken battery literally hours after I made that last post.  I mean, I had thought it was weak for weak or so now, but really?  Thankfully I almost always just use it plugged in, as you say, but I'm going to have to get a car adapter for the road, I guess.

[Raisa]

True dat.  It just seems that laptop batteries are the worst from my experience. Although I really can't say about phones, all my Li-ion battery packs for my tools are still going years down the road (although with a reduced charge) and they can go through dozens of cycles on some days.  They're often far more expensive to replace than laptop batteries though, so it could be a case of construction.

Aaaand, like clockwork, my notebook is now reporting a weak/broken battery literally hours after I made that last post.  I mean, I had thought it was weak for weak or so now, but really?  Thankfully I almost always just use it plugged in, as you say, but I'm going to have to get a car adapter for the road, I guess.

ditto.. i think sony vaio batteries last longer than others

[Cobra951]

The VAIOs themselves, though expensive, do seem to hold up better than most laptops in general.  Sandy has 2 of them.  But the batteries don't seem like anything special to me.  We replaced the battery in one of them last year, I think.  Maybe it was the year before.  They don't even last an hour before the charge gets dangerously low.

[scottws]

Even the mighty Apple doesn't hold any exclusive battery technology.  My 3-year-old MacBook Pro lasts maybe 45 minutes on battery now, when it used to last several hours.

[iPPi]

My six year old Dell XPS M1210 battery still manages to get about 2.5-3 hours of battery; when it was new it lasted 4.5-5 hours, so it's still doing well.  I'm quite satisfied with the battery performance of my laptop.

Not to hijack this thread, but I was looking at some of Samsung's ultrabooks, and their Series 9 NP900X3C looks amazing.  Incredibly expensive though; the configuration I was looking at would cost about $1350, but it's very much a premium laptop.  It would definitely be my next laptop if I needed a new laptop (but my six year old laptop is still working fine for now).

[scottws]

$1350 is not bad for a good laptop.

Consider that a MacBook Air starts at $1200 for a 13".  To add a 3-yr warranty, it goes up to $1450.  I don't think it has a warranty otherwise, but I could be wrong on that.

[Cobra951]

"Mighty Apple"?  "MacBook"?  So, you've been finally assimilated.  Resistance was futile.

[scottws]

No, I still hate Apple but I do acknowledge their hardware is pretty good.  I just hate the corporate culture, fan culture, software, anti-competitiveness, and draconian control.

[gpw11]

No, I still hate Apple but I do acknowledge their hardware is pretty good.  I just hate the corporate culture, fan culture, software, anti-competitiveness, and draconian control.

That's the thing.  I couldn't care less about Apple itself, but if you do buy one of their products you can be pretty sure that the hardware is going to hold up. I haven't really had a single problem with any iPod I've owned (save for software problems because they seem to do everything really fucking weird).

[Cobra951]

Lucky you.  2 iPod Nanos I've had have gone on the fritz, and I have not bothered to get another.