Feedback for Laptop NOT For Gaming

I saw the post for laptop for gaming, but I need one for just the opposite. We are moving to Florida for the winter and hubby thought it would be a good idea to box and ship our desktop to Florida. I'm not too crazy about that idea. I'm thinking laptop. Not too expensive. All we need it for is to keep up with our email (all of our bill paying is via PC) and surfing and online card and scrabble playing. Occasional use of spreadsheet or word processor and may have to print stuff sometimes. I know speed processor is important as well as size of hard drive. We've been looking and looking and looking and going crazy looking at all those choices!!! My friend got a refurbished one from Dell for a little over $400. Our main PC is Gateway right now. Is buying online really better than in store? What about service for online buys? Need some input here.

Thanks!

P.S. Just acquired an external hard drive and thinking I can put important programs onto it and move to laptop before going to Florida?

 

I've purchased several Gateway refurbs from Tiger ....... nothing but good stuff in my experiences. Were it me buying, I'd probably opt for #9 or #10

 

Wow! Thanks for the quick feedback! I like the picks, noah. Will show hubby and see what he thinks. Pete. Was thinking mostly about my pictures and music like on ITunes and some of my personal Word Documents. Can those be done? Still not 'seeing' stuff sometimes with this old brain of mine. Buying online....service contracts work..how?

 

Thanks. I've used the free tech support for all my new computers the first couple of months but never had anything that made me have to take it to a shop for repair. That's why I use this BBS. Keeps me on my toes and out of hot water. lol.

 

I too buy most all computer related stuff online. Hehe ... just ordered a battery from China today.

If you didn't notice, the warranty on those laptops is 30 days from tiger, 90 days from Gateway. The extended warranty is too pricey for me to ever purchase. You might check prices on new and compare warranty terms if it's of concern to you. As for tech support ....... umm, that's always available free of charge.

No way of knowing what, if any, media would come with one of those, but I was happily surprised a month or so ago upon opening the boxes of two similar units I purchased ..... both had a Windows Home Vista operating system disc.

 

One of my computers came from the Dell Outlet Store. All outlet computers (even the referbs) come with new computer warranty and support.

You can filter search results (Memory, Processor, HD, etc) and you can sort by price. Click on a computer and you can see software that comes with the computer

Just something more to check out
http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnline...line/en/InventorySearch?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh

 

Ok. Been searching and comparing and starting to understand a little of what I should be looking for in a laptop. It's pretty much like buying a PC, but on a slightly smaller scale. I have a few more questions for you all.

What is a PC card and should I make sure I get one with the laptop?

Is having Bluetooth necessary?

Bus speed. Should this number be rather high? Like, is that what makes my searching on the PC go faster?

HD size. I see a range from 200 to 400. What's best?

Thanks again for all your help out there.

 

What PC card are you talking about? Graphics card or processing units.
From what i can see, a standard laptop with a 2Ghz dual core processor, 256MB graphics card, 200GB 5400rpm HD and say about 2GB of RAM for vista would be sufficient.

Having Blue tooth isn't really necessary unless you've got a cell phone that is bluetooth enabled and you would like to directly transfer data from your laptop to your phone.

200GB HD size should be sufficient.

 

Darn! I closed all the sites I was looking at on the laptops and can't remember which PC card I was looking at. lol. But, what you gave me is perfect! At least it gives me something to look for when comparing online and in store. Hubby wants a 17" screen so the unit will cost a bit more than expected, but it will be worth it with these old eyes of ours. I was also concerned about speed because I don't want to have to wait all day for a folder or program to open. I wonder if I can get away with this question. shhhhh.......I have Word and Excel on my desktop. Will I have problems opening these files on the laptop that has Works? sneak...sneak...sneak.....

Thanks again for all your help out there. Much appreciated.

 

if you have words and excel, i suggest you download open office from here
Its a freeware that works somewhat like Microsoft Office and it doesn't cost you a single cent.

As for laptops, i've looked up quite a few that has a 17" monitor and it came up with a couple of pretty good results.
You could find them here

The prices ranges from 500 dollars to almost 3000 dollars, so the next thing that i need to do is know what your budget looks like.

 

WOW! I didn't realize that I had the disc for MS Office in my box. I guess I can load it on the laptop then, right? Thanks for the tip, though, on 'open office'. Will keep that in mind, also. As for the price of the laptop, wow! Such a range. We really don't want to go more than $1200 if possible. We don't really need a lot of fancy hardware or programs. Just basic stuff to get along with the world.

Thanks again, everyone, for your input. Will try to remember to come back and let you all know what we got.

 

This would be well worth your $1200 budget. It has much higher specs than you initially wanted and its a much more powerful laptop.

This one costs about $800 and its less powerful than the first one but its enough for word processing, photos and videos.

This laptop is the cheapest yet reasonable for most of the things that you said you do on a laptop. Its slower than the other 2, has an integrated graphics card which means its less powerful than the other 2 but i think it'll work fine for a basic laptop.

 

Thank you for searching. I've been checking out Circuit City and comparing laptops there. They have some pretty nice ones listed. Will keep all this in mind when shopping.

thanks!

 

Not a problem!

 

Just wanted to let you all know what I ended up buying. Here is the link for the Toshiba I ended up buying: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8897624&type=product&id=1212192350169&ref=10&loc=01. I really like it! Now, you did say I should be able to install the Office 2007 on here with no problem, right? Now, I also need to know the best way to put my favorites, which are actually called bookmarks with Firefox, onto the laptop. I plan on using IE on it and am not sure how to export the list from Firefox to IE. As for all of my other programs I can just pull them off my flash that I saved it to, right? Geez. Some days I'm just a scatterbrain!

Thanks again for all your help out there.