A laptop for college

Yes, I might get one.
Don't give me the "you suck richboy" comments because I'm buying with my own money that I made tutoring.

Big question is: a Macbook or a Dell?

I'm willing to spend up to $1,500 and I want to know where I could get the best deal. Any help? Thanks in advance.

get a Dell. also, go here...

www.xpbargains.com/dell_coupons

they have a ton of coupons on Dell products

Everyone I've talked to is vehemently opposed to Dells. I'm kind of thinking either a ThinkPad, Macbook, or a Vaio. All three can be pretty costly though

I've had a Dell desktop for the past 4 years and had 0 problems with it. My friend has an Inspiron Core Duo with 512 ram, dvd burner/cd rw, and a 17 inch monitor from Dell. He paid $1200 for it, and says it works great. That was using one of those coupons though, otherwise they're more expensive than that.

If you're gonna play a lot of video games with it a lot then don't get a Mac. Otherwise I think a Mac book is great especially if you're gonna do some graphics/photoshop stuff on it

NO DELL. Trust me. If anything goes wrong or you want to upgrade, Dell makes you deal with them, making it a little inconvenient... plus they rip you off because they try to sell you a bare-bones computer then make all their money when you "upgrade" by adding more stuff onto it. I would go with a Sony (with the Intel Centrino chip; great for battery life), Toshiba, or HP.

NO DELL. Trust me. If anything goes wrong or you want to upgrade, Dell makes you deal with them, making it a little inconvenient... plus they rip you off because they try to sell you a bare-bones computer then make all their money when you "upgrade" by adding more stuff onto it. I would go with a Sony (with the Intel Centrino chip; great for battery life), Toshiba, or HP.

Thats true about the customer service. They also have terrible support when you want to upgrade parts; they force you to buy from them with crappy compliance and compatibility issues. ThinkPads are probably going to do the most for you in terms of school-wise.

ThinkPad is great for school and basic uses, it's one of the oldest laptops and very little complains. But it's also good to use a MacBook because it's cool, and isn't it true that new Intel MacBooks can run XP?

The Vaio by Sony rocks, but it costs a lot. The MacBook is good, but it has been already said: it's not a computer to play videogames.

i have a Dell Inspiron 6000, it was like 1200-1400 or something in the end.
it has 1016MB RAM
14/16 inch monitor HD Widescreen
70 Gigs of memory


but i suggest you either get a apple or something less if you are just going to do papers or something, like a thinkpad.

I actually hate the Mac PC's, it's just a fashion statement.

I'm very happy with my Acer TravelMate 4100.

But if I had the choice & 1500, I'd go the Vaio way.

I'm heavily leaning towards a Macbook because I'm going to use my desktop for all my gaming needs... plus you can get a video iPod for $90 if you buy a Macbook!

yeah I also have a MacBook Pro.

Awesome stuff, and I can see myself being very happy with it.

It's a little awkward at first making the Windows-->Mac OSX transition, but you'll get used to it in a few days.

Dell desktops= teh suck.

Dell laptops= teh awesome.


In my experience. I've had a Dell laptop for 3-4 years that still works perfectly. Never had a problem with it.

I'm very happy with my Acer TravelMate 4100.

I've heard of those Acers... we sell them at my work. They're really cheap (cost-wise), but I haven't heard much about their quality.

I'm heavily leaning towards a Macbook because I'm going to use my desktop for all my gaming needs... plus you can get a video iPod for $90 if you buy a Macbook!

well, they don't make as many games for Mac as opposed to a PC right?

I've heard of those Acers... we sell them at my work. They're really cheap (cost-wise), but I haven't heard much about their quality.

I bought mine for €1000, now that isn't particuliarly cheap, but alright.

I've had no complaints, Acer's quite an established company. Mines got 512 MB, 60 Gigs of space, and WLAN. The WLAN is amazing given you can just go online anywhere at school or anywhere. Add to that a 15'4 and watching movies is awesome.

You can look for some Laptops in www.newegg.com

If you're really set on not getting a Dell, go for a Toshiba Satellite. I've heard nothing but good things about them from a few people I know.

I have used IBM laptops before and had no problems.

i heard newegg.com was a good site...


@ Jackal, Acer isn't really well known here in the U.S. (it's practically a no-name brand out here), so I guess that explains the low prices

I know the Acer Ferraris is fantastic, and hes just over 2 grand so its a good bang for its buck.

Dells do suck for upgrades though, unless you upgrade through dell it violates the warranty, but My warrnanty is already expired so I just manually added 2 gigs of ram and a 7800 GS and they work fine for my PC. I also added a DVD burner but that didnt go quite as smoothly...

For desktops, dont go dell. The best choice is to build it yourself but that can be complicated, but on newegg there're a lot of pre built PC's that are fairly cheap and powerful.

You suck, richboy.

I have just placed the order for a Macbook + the video iPod. They had a rebate deal I couldn't refuse for the iPod.

Jackal, Acer isn't really well known here in the U.S. (it's practically a no-name brand out here), so I guess that explains the low prices

Mmm, I figured that much. Acer's manufactured in Germany if I'm not mistaken, so I understand that bit. Indeed, the Ferrari Acer's are monsters.

KevC, you bitch.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm desperately broke now.