suggestions for new laptop?

[mopar]

Since I prolly fried my old laptop, I thought I would get some advice from
you computer jocks on which one to buy. My old one (about a year old) was
a Toshiba Sattelite L655. I was pretty happy with it, I think I paid about
500.00 for it at Office Depot. Anything out there thats better for about the
same amount of money?

thanks guys,
Denny

[tonantius]

I assume that your laptop was fried by your efforts and not a manufacturing defect. If so, then I would buy another Toshiba. I have one from the mid-1990s that still works. I have one I bought a few years ago that I upgraded with a faster and bigger hard drive and more memory that runs Windows 7 great.

I am looking to buy a netbook for use in the car with my ham radio to send and receive digital and packet data via the radio.

[mcantar18c]

MacBooks are expensive, but I haven't had a single issue (that I didn't cause out of stupidity) with mine in 4 years of owning it, and even when I killed it (twice now) doing stupid stuff Apple took care of me and fixed things for free.

[TFOGGER]

Given your last laptop's fate, maybe you should look at the Panasonic Toughbooks...
(http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/)

[ROFL1]


Sorry, just HAD to... [Beer]

[ghettodub]

ASUS makes awesome laptops, and are reasonable. Most of my computers are ASUS, and have had very minimal problems.

[Delfuego]

Dell Latitude... 3 year warranty included. Great, durable business class laptops. Toshiba don't have the best track record in my experience. Spend a little more and get a laptop that will last, its more cost effective in the long term. None are fully coffee resistant though...

[DeadElephant]

Hey Denny,

I buy dozens of machines a year from MicroCenter. Typical nerd place but they aren't too bad to work with. Plenty of machines available for that price range. I'm extremely brand agnostic as I have had trouble with all of them.

The new processors are i3, i5 and i7. I've tried them all and found the i5 to be the good value. For standard everyday office use the i7 was overkill and way expensive. The i3 is a very nice processor as well and I would definitely recommend it if you find it in your price range. I'd say 3Gb memory minimum, more is definitely better, 4 is pretty standard I really like 6. They put huge hard drives in these days so i dont usually find an issue with that. I really like an HDMI port so I can plug in to my TV's.

My 2 cents.

[mopar]

Thanks for all your suggestions guys, I'm going to do some shopping around.......maybe find some clear plastic trashbags I can put the new one in. [ROFL1]

[stevelkinevil]

aluminum Macbook, My MBP was expensive but it never fails me, even after its been twice dropped on concrete (thanks to my sons), and viruses are of no concern. Went through up to 3 PC laptops a year before going mac, Now the only time I change laptops is if I just want a new one.

[Mazin]

Macbook Pro 17" fully loaded...Oh would you buy me one too? [Coffee]


But a Acer wouldn't be bad if you don't wannt fork over that kinda dough...I'd take one too![Tooth]

[reb-cpa]

I went to a dell netbook. Half the size but if your not using a lot of programs, its great

[Zundfolge]

I'm typing this on my Dell netbook ... I like it just fine (I'm on my second one) for surfing, emailing and foruming ... but for serious work I'd want something bigger. Also, battery life is a bit short ... I get 2-3 hours with my netbook.

Also I hate the trackpad on my Dell Mini 10 (the track pad on my Mini 9 was better ... had separate buttons. This one has buttons in the track pad area and if you click wrong you cause the pointer to move down a bit and you end up clicking on something you don't want).

Of course the Dell netbooks are real easy to Hackintosh (they tend to run OSX almost as natively as a MacBook), I ran OSX Leopard on the Mini 9 I had (I run Linux Mint on the Mini 10 'cause its just easier).