It’s come to that time where I need to buy a new laptop. I’d like to spend less than $1k. This will be a basic machine used to perform web based activities, handle MS Suite, and organize iTunes. The last computer I bought was back in 2008 and it’s still running today, albeit very slow. Therefore I feel it’s time to upgrade.
Back then, I purchased a computer with the most amount of RAM I could find (3Gig). These days you can purchase 32 Gig machines for $4k. I don’t need that much power, but I would like a computer to last a good while simply out of convienience.
Intel just began selling their Haswell line. It’s supposed to be designed with laptops in mind. Better power consumption, etc. So if I were buying a laptop, I’d get an intel with a chip something like 4xxx. 47xx is an i7, which will be pricier. 45xx and 46xx are i5’s, I think, and you might be able to find some less than $1000, especially in a month or two.
I’ve generally had good experiences with refurbished electronics. It’s hard to imagine that they would ship those things with physical damage. The rest is just software, right? It might be worth checking their return policy, just in case.
As for new laptops… I suppose you could just cross shop reviewers lists and see which models have unanimous good reviews. In any case, the $1000 laptop market is probably so saturated that the top models are almost indistinguishable in terms of user experience.
Intel has run the best marketing campaign in the PC industry… To get a faster computer you need to upgrade the processor. This is not necessarily true. The biggest bottleneck in a computer is the harddrive. If you have a 5400 RPM drive in your computer if you replace that with a $100 SSD your computer will be lightening fast. If all you are doing is web surfing, itunes, etc I would just swap out your hardrive. This is what I did on my personal computer and I originally bought it in 2007. I have a SSD drive, 4 GBs of RAM a Centrino Duo processor. It boots in less than 30 seconds.
They have $100 SSDs now? How much storage does $100 buy you? (I know I can look it up, but I"m feeling lazy now).
If that’s true, I agree that upgrading the HD to SSD will make a big difference. I’d just though the prices on those things were still sky high compared to traditional HDs.
I’m a big fan of refurbished computers. I’ve historically bought them directly from Dell. Blake’s suggestion of the SSD does seem the way to go though.