I have a little spare money (about $1000, I could possibly afford a little more) to spend on a new computer. I want a laptop, preferably one with user-friendly photo & video editing apps. I had a desk-set Mac at work, and I’m leaning towards a Mac laptop, but thought I’d ask for some advice from the teeming millions. Anyone care to weigh in with some suggestions/advice? Thanks in advance.
If you’re used to a Mac, I’d say stay with it. A thousand bucks (plus tax) will get you a white MacBook. I got one for my parents for Christmas, and I’ve been very impressed with it.
Get one that’s shaped like a laptop. The ones that are bigger cubes don’t fit in your lap so well.
It sounds like you would be better off with a mac, but right now in PC’s, the laptop market is going crazy since Windows 7. Previous versions of windows made it very hard to add more than 4 gigs of memory to the computer. Windows 7 doesn’t have this limit, so laptops with as much as 8 gigs are becoming very common, and very cheap. My wife just got one (a Sony Vaio, even…not one of the cheap ones) for ~600.
I’m also looking to buy a new laptop, but I have trouble figuring out exactly what I’m getting from a $1000 laptop over a $500 one. My old laptop was working just fine until I got hit by a bus last month. If I had a not-so-fancy laptop from a few years back that was just doing fine with XP, I’m assuming I can’t just get the same specs (which probably aren’t available anyway) when running Windows 7.
The main advantage for me as far as price is concerned is that I don’t want much more than a 13" screen, since I’ll be doing an extended display thing with a monitor when I use it at work.
I bought a Dell Studio 15 notebook for my brother for Christmas from Best Buy for about $550. It came with Windows 7, 4GB of memory, a DVD burner, etc. and it should meet their needs for several years at least.
But if the OP already has a Mac desktop, I’d recommend he buy a Macbook, although I think that $1000 means he can only get the entry-level model.
I found I severely missed having a NUM pad on my work laptop, so I made sure to get one built-in when I bought a laptop for home.
The $999 Macbook doesn’t have one, but you can get a USB peripheral version.
We bought a MacBook before Christmas, and I have no complaints. You might like the thinner one. I have Bootcamp and Windows XP loaded up, and I do head over to the Dark Side sometimes (I like puzzle games, and they make extremely few of those for Mac). With the Bootcamp and Windows, you cover all your bases.
Well, I have one minor quibble - it defies the laws of averages, but having the ports on the left side seems like they are always on the wrong side.
It seems to me right now that a 13" screen is often more expensive than the 15", everything else being equal. 15" seems to be the sweet spot in the market right now.
Huh. Guess that’s what I’ll be going for then.
Me too.
I’m pretty much forced to get something really soon. My current computer is in a wheelchair, uses a hearing aid, and keeps rambling on about when it used to wear an onion on its belt, which was the style at the time…
I just bought my daughter a new laptop, after the disk on her five year old one died (just minutes after I backed up all her data. :D). We got a very light Toshiba was a 14.3" screen for $529. It had no CD/DVD drive, which was an asset because it made it lighter to carry to classes. I got her a USB driver for $70 which works just fine the few times she needs to load something.
Unless you need a super-powerful model, $1,000 is more than you are probably going to need to spend.
What are the chances that I can get a new laptop (or desktop) with a floppy drive? Slim? None? Somewhere in between?
I have not tried this myself, but a colleague of mine has told me that if you go to a Best Buy store and tell them “if I buy my laptop from apple.com I get an educational discount”, they will match the educational discount at Best Buy, without necessarily checking if you are actually entitled to the educator’s discount. (Disclaimer: I do not condone this behaviour etc. etc.)
Note that there are two types of educational discounts: College students, or Teachers, Administrators and Staff of all grade levels.
e.g. someone I know gets the educational discount because she is a grade school teacher in a public elementary school.
You can get a USB external 3.5" floppy drive in price ranges starting around $25.00, last time I checked.
Sounds like mine!
Awesome, I will see if BB has them.
Two very important things people often over look is weight and keyboards.
Even if you buy a laptop online, go into a store and see it physically. Pick it up and carry it around. Is it heavy? Could you really care this? Then look at the keyboards. I detest that my laptop doesn’t have a keypad. My next laptop will definately have a keyboard with a laptop.
(Yeah I know you can buy keypad add-on but since the OP is buying new)
Also if you can get an eSATA port. This is so helpful for things like external hard drives. USB drives and firewire ports are OK but eSATA ports rock. They can speed things up to near internal hardrive speeds
The prices I saw were online, an in-store purchase may be more.
Here’s one for about $17 (plus shipping I assume)