Laptop for students recommendations

[yelopq]

Hi,there,i am a student, i want to buy a laptop by myself,only use for surfing ,movies,music and so on.I have no enough money, my budget is better within $500 bucks.DO u have a good recommendations?
My friend suggested me go for http://www.dealstudio.com/searchdeals.php?type=id&q=d191780&ru=27702787" ,but i am not sure for its quailty,the price looks so good.
What do u think about it ?Is it great?
Any other options?

 

[JaredJames]

That looks like a fairly good spec laptop. I'd certainly go for it.

4GB DDR3 is better than most these days.

Jared

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I'd stick with a quality brand. This 15in from dell is also $400
http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15/pd

 

[JaredJames]

Personally I only buy HP. But I know Sony is good too.

For a cheap laptop with a good spec I think the one in the OP is pretty good. He doesn't seem to want to do much with it.

Never had a dell, although I've always wanted to have a customised one (£2000+), customise it yourself on their site job. Got everything.

 

[implicitnone]

These are the top brands (imho):

1. Sony VAIO
2. DELL
3. HP

I use DELL and they have a great technical assistance team. But Lenovo is not a bad laptop.

 

[JaredJames]

Yeah, HP was fantastic with support. Phoned them, they picked up next day and then had it back to me in a week. Marvellous.

 

[Topher925]

HP, Lenovo, Dell, Sony,... they are all pretty much garbage these days. And to be honest, you're not going to get much for under $500 bucks. I recommend you spend at least a little bit more and get something for a more reputable brand like this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003QHXSK8/?tag=pfamazon01-20.

I know a lot of people will probably respond to this saying my "my HP/Sony/Dell/Lenovo has been running non-stop since the jurassic period and is operating at 30 JiggaHz and blah blah blah". The bottom line; most big name computer manufacturers use cheap one-hung-low components to decrease cost and increase profit margins while the smaller less known brands generally have better designs and use higher quality components, end of story.

http://www.techpop.com.au/features/laptop-reliability-ratings-revealed/

 

[JaredJames]

Dude, you just compare HP, Sony and Dell to Asus? Not even a competition.

Unless every laptop in the survey was under identical use conditions, it doesn't show anything.

My HP laptop runs for over 8 hours a day and has never had a fault in the last year. My cousins two toshiba laptops (both identical, bought at the same time) run for around 6 hours per day each and have both failed catastrophically and required me to put in hours of work to get them back up and running. From this very basic sample I'd say HP is better.

However, the difference is mine sits on a table and is moved very rarely and theirs are both passed around and handled often. Mine may be running but 50% of the time it is idle. Theirs are used continuously whilst on. It is this missing detail that makes a big difference.

When it comes to claiming off a warranty, are you going to say "yeah, uh, it's used excessively and bumped around a bit" or "it's had a fair bit of use but is well kept"? Call it lying, but people will do it, especially to the warranty company (which is what the people who conducted your survey are).

So you can see where my view comes from. I also have experience with various other brands and so far, aside from Sony and Dell, none have come up to the standard of HP (whether it's reliability or design).

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

HP, Lenovo, Dell, Sony,... they are all pretty much garbage these days.

Even a low powered netbook will run "surfing ,movies, music" just fine as the OP needs. In fact I doubt there is a laptop on the market that wouldn't be sufficient for those purposes.

 

[Topher925]

Even a low powered netbook will run "surfing ,movies, music" just fine as the OP needs. In fact I doubt there is a laptop on the market that wouldn't be sufficient for those purposes.

Absolutely. But I was not referring to the performance aspects of the machine but more of the build and design quality. For example, when I've opened up Dell notebooks, I've found low poorly soldered and even tombstoned resistors, cheap caps (even seen some popped), poor thermal design and of course the more obvious things like unbranded generic RAM (probably with gray market chips). The Sony VIAOs I've seen inside of had the worst thermal design I have ever encountered which probably explains why so many models have suffered from overheating. Some of the more reliable branded notebooks I've seen from Sager, Asus, and Samsung have used much higher quality parts and are better designed in just about every aspect. This is the reason why I own a Samsung. I've never known that company to make anything bad (although not always the best) and when I took my notebook apart, guess what named was stamped on almost every component from hard-drive to LCD to RAM chip?

 

[True Cherokee]

Hi,there,i am a student, i want to buy a laptop by myself,only use for surfing ,movies,music and so on.I have no enough money, my budget is better within $500 bucks.DO u have a good recommendations?
My friend suggested me go for http://www.dealstudio.com/searchdeals.php?type=id&q=d191780&ru=27702787" ,but i am not sure for its quailty,the price looks so good.
What do u think about it ?Is it great?
Any other options?

I would have to agree with Topher, get an Asus. I've had experiences with several laptops from Dell and HP, and they've either failed miserably or were made with the lowest possible quality components that do not perform well. They can be a bit more pricey, but it will be worth it in the long run if you don't plan on upgrading within the next couple years. HP and Dell laptops are outdated by the time they come out, generally speaking. Check out newegg.com, they usually have some good deals. If you want a low cost ASUS, check out http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220744"