Basic laptop: which is ok?

[Egeides]

A friend of mine intends to buy a laptop. His use? Word/Excel, listening music, downloading.... quite basic and no gaming. I don't know the market now, so which computer would be reliable but not have the rest he wont use? I expect that he will keep his computer for a looooong time.

To me, it looks like he could buy some old thing and see little difference.

[gryphon]

why buy an old laptop for about 200 Euro and risk a bad battery if you can have a new Dell for 500 I'd say. :)

[Egeides]

And why a Dell exactly? Aren't they the one with bad service when it breaks?

[Cyborg]

You can hav a new whatever for $500.

For office tasks, you'd actually be more interested in the service deal than how fast the laptop is. Just make sure you get a reasonably sized harddisk.

[Egeides]

Ok. But any specific brand, or product line, for something especially reliable and stable, "no-problem" oriented? Dell, HP, ThinkPad...?

Special case: Apple. Their last laptops are Windows compatible. In his specific case, if he intends to keep it an eternity, perhaps he'd be ready for the price tag.

[gryphon]

HP, Acer, Dell (maybe).

personally it's HP for me.

[GhostHunter]

Well give us an exact pricetag, or is 500 it? If you're going to do that, then go look on Ebay instead of attempting to buy a new system.

In that case, look at IBM. There are some older models, with between 512-1024 RAM and P4 2.2's around there for $190-480. The Dell ones tend to be refurbished or even brand new, so a low budget won't work.

And if you're hellbent on getting a new one (which wouldn't particuarly be wise for a lower budget) then go Dell. HP charges more (in the case of a laptop) for a lot less. For instance, their 15.1'' laptop comes out comparitively 120-200 dollars more expensive when customized, lacking the 7200 RPM drive of the  Dell E105, or the ATi 256 MB graphics card (uses the mobile 7400 128 instead; 17.1'' utilizes 256 MB variant).

And about the Apple thing, not such a good idea, lol. That's only on the Intel-based systems (Windos capibility) which start at a minimum of $1,100. And that's for a 13.1'' screen. The same trend continues: Apple over-charges to the enth degree. The Macbook Pro is a 15.1'' screen, and the highest version runs off the Intel Duo 2.16 GHZ, which at 2GB 667 DDR2 and iWorks pre-installed comes out at $3,200 dollars.

I could get a 17.1'' Dell running on XP Professional which in every category would eat that alive for $500 dollars less. All to run on a shittier (sorry I use OS X daily, and it's simply an inferior product) OS.

[Egeides]

I sent all the info I got to him and he was quite quick. All I learned in his email is that it's a new IBM. I think he went for the security of a professional-oriented laptop which you can drink coffey with and play ultimate frisbee.

Thanks to everyone :)