Buyer Beware: $299 laptops make it to Raleigh
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Some of the local chain stores have new laptops for $299. They are new and shiny and have a widescreen, but that is where the good news ends. To make a long story short, most of these laptops come with a 2Ghz Celeron processor, come with (and are only capable of) running Windows Vista. This basically means the machine is going to be painfully SLOW. Please don't send your student off to college with one of these cheap machines as they'd be better off with a pencil and a calculator. A decent used machine will be much faster. A good used laptop will still run $300-$400 or even more if you're buying a ThinkPad. Right now we're selling quality T60s right around $500 depending on configuration. A good 2yr old T61p can still command $1,000.
If you are in the market for a new laptop plan on spending at least $650. Lenovo and Toshiba both have some good deals and are worth comparing with the HPs, Dells and others. Try to find one with a warranty longer than 1yr. Memory is cheap so the machine should have 4GB RAM, a nice sized hard drive and a few hours of battery life. If you'll be running Vista get a good, fast processor.
Keep in mind, most of the 3rd party warranties are not what they're hyped up to be and some of these warranty companies magically go out of business once in a while.
posted by AbsoluteRaleigh @ 9:17 PM,
