Laptop advice

My laptop died last night . I Took it to a local place I trust and they confirmed its demise. So now I am looking at having to buy another. My old laptop was a Acer and had lots of problems from day one. The guys at the shop told me acer is known for its issues and suggested I have one built. I'm not entirely comfortable with that option. I have several friends who have apples and love them but don't know much about them. I Know the hobbying community has lots of people who know a heck of a lot more about computers than I do. I Would appreciate any advice any of you can give me. Fyi on top of needing it for hobbying and advertisement I also am a gamer and play a lot of online games and cd rom games so I need it to fill that purpose as well. Thanks guys.

hi sweety, my hp died about a month ago, basically when a laptop dies trash it and buy another. i went with a toshiba this time and am very happy with it. 17.3 " screen, 4 gig of ram, amd p560 dual core processor, 500 gig hd and win 7. not bad for 499 at office depot.

i'm not a gamer though, i don't know how it will perform for that, it's great for cad work though.


you could always come down and test it though !

Nic,

I dumped a full glass of ice water into my work computer two months ago and had to get a new one. All Best Buy had at the time that fit my criteria was an ASUS. Up until then, I had only purchased the Sony VIAO line of laptops. ASUS is an company that I've done business with for years and only recently have they started producing high end laptops.

I picked up a machine made by ASUS with a 17" screen, 8GB of RAM, Dual Layer DVD reader/writer, Core i7 intel processor, and a 1GB Nvidia GeForce gaming video card. I doubt I'm ever going back to Sony.

Apples are great for graphics and other things, but since you are a gamer you won't be happy. None of your PC games will work on the Apple platform.

C

If you fly with your laptop, you want to be thinking about weight. I've got a small HP Elitebook 2540p that weighs about 2.5 lbs. Had for approx 9 months and seems good. You probably want larger screen for games, but that ups the weight. Key thing on computers of any size is the motherboard. Pick a Toshiba, Dell, or HP. You'll pay a bit extra compared to an ACER, but probably worth it. With many manufacturers, you can order on line and specify exactly what you want. You may want lots of RAM for gaming. What you find in a big box store may not suit you and is likely to be several months behind the cutting edge technology, which is a generation in computers.

office depot has awesome deals!

Nicole, I've been on both platforms and use both daily. I prefer my Macs...with all of them I've owned, I have had to replace two screens and one hard drive. The others are still in use even with "outdated" software. On the repairs none were due to failure, but two drops by the kids, and slamming a trunk lid on one. 5 of the ones I have and still use are 6 - 20 yrs old. The Mac laptop I'm on is 6 + years old. The Guys at Mac Resource on University has a trade in 17" Macbook Pro for 899. It can be dual boot, running Mac and windows apps. If nothing else, the Guys over there @ Mac Resource are straight about the questions you may have. Believe it or not, if you've issues that a Mac can't handle, they'll tell you...even if it isn't something they're selling.

Nicole, I've been on both platforms and use both daily. I prefer my Macs...with all of them I've owned, I have had to replace two screens and one hard drive. The others are still in use even with "outdated" software. On the repairs none were due to failure, but two drops by the kids, and slamming a trunk lid on one. 5 of the ones I have and still use are 6 - 20 yrs old. The Mac laptop I'm on is 6 + years old. The Guys at Mac Resource on University has a trade in 17" Macbook Pro for 899. It can be dual boot, running Mac and windows apps. If nothing else, the Guys over there @ Mac Resource are straight about the questions you may have. Believe it or not, if you've issues that a Mac can't handle, they'll tell you...even if it isn't something they're selling. Originally Posted by Caracter

Agreed!!! I am a PC convert to Macs. Macs tend to be more expensive, but they are sooooo worth it IMHO. I work daily on both platforms. I've never bought or run Bootstrap, but I think it's pretty seamless from what I've heard.

Since you're a gamer, you'll want to look at your game jewel cases & documentation to see if they'll run on the Mac platform. Just look for this logo:

I got a Mac a couple weeks ago and kicked myself for not doing it years ago.