laptop advice

[PreFacE]

hey guys my girl is looking to get a laptop with a budget of under 600 what is the best she can get for the money....were looking at Compaq - Presario Laptop with AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60 and a toshiba what our best bet and wheres the best price?

[azianai]

Whats she want to do with it?
Normal schoolwork/browsing web/email/light gaming/etc.

[dttuner]

Without actually doing any research, let me just say that Best Buy is the last place you want to look for anything on a budget.

Check the following:
Dell, Costco, Newegg (Acer), Gateway, TigerDirect, Microcenter, Buy.com, Headlinedeals.com

Any local super-electronics store is going to rob you blind.
My .02


.

[screwballl]

and geeks.com

[garetjax]

Originally Posted by dttuner

Without actually doing any research, let me just say that Best Buy is the last place you want to look for anything on a budget.

While I would normally agree with that, the laptop the original poster linked is an extremely solid notebook for the money. You really aren't going to get a much better deal (or stay within a $600 budget) by going with Dell, HP, Gateway, et al.

As was voiced earlier, I too would check out what other e-tailers have to offer, such as Newegg, and see what you can come up with. BestBuy, Circuit City, Walmart, and other places like those should be a last resort.

[PreFacE]

thanks guy you were lots of help....she got a toshiba with a 2 ghz amg processor and 2gig of mem and a 200 gig hardrive. It also has the built in 64 meg vid car.....its nothing great but shes not a gamer she just needs it for school so....only thing is it has vista.....(how hard is it to go from vista to xp if you have the xp cd?)

[Capper]

you might also want to check out tigerdirect.com.....I'm not personally a fan of their hardware prices, but they do have some really good deals on budget notebooks.

Acer Aspire 5715-4713- Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2370

Lenovo IdeaPad Y510- Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2370

Lenovo ThinkPad R61i- Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2330

Lenovo IdeaPad Y510- Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2330

HP 530 D097AT- Intel Core Duo T2400

[garetjax]

Originally Posted by PreFacE

only thing is it has vista.....(how hard is it to go from vista to xp if you have the xp cd?)

Pretty damn hard. We're talking drivers, and a lot of them: chipset, video, sound, even the HDD has one, one that needs to be installed (most likely slipstreamed) onto a new Windows XP OS disk in order for the laptop HDD to be recoginized by the OS, and the OS to be subsequently installed onto the HDD.

However, with some research you may find that your particular model laptop is not "compatible" with XP, that is, there are no available drivers for it to be converted from Vista to XP. Your best bet is to visit THIS site and ask around with your particular laptop model and see if someone can't help you out.

[Capper]

I personally don't think its that hard....do a little research before you buy....most everything is going to work around the chipset.

with my ASUS G1, there were no XP Drivers available, and even the graphics drivers were supposedly unique to that notebook....took me about 20 minutes of digging to find everything I needed.

[theburan]

could always give vista a try before trying to ditch xp... especially if she's just using it for school. Vista isn't all bad. Quite good, as long as you aren't stuck with bad drivers, to be honest.