Best value in a laptop?

[santahog]

Looking for a new laptop under/arpund $500.
For the wife, (who can be a little hard on hardware  )..
Suggestions, please, if you've got em?..
Looking for what has held up for a couple of years w/o issues..
Thanks for any input..

[jaybet]

The Toshibas have pretty high ratings consistently...they have a website.

[Pathfinder]

Get the most processor, hard drive and memory you can for the money. I have a Dell that is adequate. But I usually run with lots of Firefox browsers open, with lots of tabs in each browser, and it beats the crap out of the machine. I have dual core Pentiums - I would suggest dual core i5's.

HPs have variable quality these days. But then I bought the Dell cuz it was cheap ($350 special from Wally World for what was a $500 machine in those days - last January!), and I am not a Dell fan.

Note that memory is usually not a determinant unless you're running the 64-bit versions of software. Windows-32 usually cannot access anything over 3gig; Windows-64 can access 8gig.

As for durability, there are some laptops specifically made for harsh environments and/or use, but they cost well north of $500. Most around $500 feel like they're made out of stressed cardboard.

Good luck.

[fightingquaker13]

I bought an HP i5 from Office Max for $500 on sale several months ago. It runs fine, but its still early days. I did have bad luck with two Toshibas. They just ran too hot. However I bought the last one about three years ago and that issue may have cleared up.
FQ13

[Ichiban]

I've had a Dell for about 2 1/2 years and haven't had any complaints.  Don't know if it was the best deal or not but, like I said, it has been problem free for me.  Needless to say you can now get the same performance for $200 less.   

You might find some help here:
http://www.pcmag.com/reviews/laptop-computers

[Sponsor]

[deepwater]

I use both a Toshiba and an Acer. like both and paid less than $300.00 for the Acer. and remember, you can always add memory etc.. when you buy a computer. both computers have been around the world, on ships, planes and in trashy bars. good machines. (and I mean literally around the world). the Acer is smaller so I use it now for my entertainment system on the ship. plug a projector and speakers into it and I have a nice 110" screen in my room. Love it.

Deepwater

[Timothy]

There are several small laptops for 300-500 bucks these days.  If all she does is play in the net, maybe a tablet would work as well.

I'm using a Dell laptop and have had a few now.  They're good for a few years, this ones going on two and a half.  The hard drive crapped out last summer but they replaced it quickly and it's been fine since.

[alfsauve]

If there's a MicroCenter near you they're having some end-of-year deals.

A refurbished Toshiba for $260 and an Acer Inspire,new for $330.  Bothwith 15.6" screens.

[santahog]

I'm running a Toshiba with an i7 now. It's a flamethrower but it ran me a grand, not quite a year ago.. I got it hoping not to have to revisit it for a few years, anyway.. Time will tell if it was money well spent..
I'm mindful about overheating, making sure not to impeed the intake but from what I've read in the last severaldays, Toshiba still has problems with that..
I had a Dell that ran for 6 years, although it required a hard drive to get that last struggling year or so out of it. It still powers up, but it's just too old to keep up with anything now. (Like me).. Dell still seems to be a really sturdily made piece of equipment, but the service dept., that has had such a stellar reputation, seems to have become a little less generous about fixing things like bad monitors. I base that on feedbacks from the different retail sites. Amazon, and the like. The quickest way to get me to hate (a retailer) for ever is to sell me something that doesn't work or hold up in the near term, then tell everybody I smell bad..
I'm (Facebook) friends with the local conservative radio guy and he pointed me toward an Acer because they're cheap. He said to make a back up disk or get one of those external hard drives for when it screws up.. Acer sells a machine for the $250 range. They seem to have a poor reputation with the techno-crowd. I've always been one to, if at all possible, go ahead and get it right the firsst time, because it's generally cheaper in the long run.. Although, these machines are relatively new territory for me. (I've only had at least one, to as many as 4 in the house since 98...)
One of the things I learned early on is that warranty matters.. I was a Best Buy guy till a year or so before Geek Squad took over Tech Support. From there, Gateway had great service. Then, Dell.. Back in those days, though, I had a partner who was willing to contribute to the research and conversation, and we had enough money to make the best "investment" in the first place.. My wife needed to go to Brazil this month, and I don't think she understands much about money.. It took everything I had on hand to pull that one off. Her machine gave out while she was gone.
Dell dropped AMD as a processor, going for i3/i5/i7 in current models, but the AMD Quad Cores are still available, and reasonably priced..

Anybody have a distinctly negative impression of the AMD Quad Core processors, or know of reputation in the recent past, near future?

[santahog]

I found this. Kinda like the IIHS for laptops.. May be a good resource..
http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf