Looking to buy a laptop and need help.

Bamablows

I have a desktop, and a laptop. . but recently my laptop screen got broken (stepped on i think) during one of my little drunken antics. Long story short i need to buy another laptop to get things done with work and school. I wont be using it for anything other than alot of online courses mainly. Dont need anything fancy for computer games and all of that bull mess, but my question is... I need something cheap and asap.

What do i need to purchase ?
Where is the best place to buy from ?
How much money am i going to have to spend?

Gray4lines

I had good luck with bestbuy... They price match and have a pretty good variety and price range. I needed something a little more powerful for stat software and stuff so I went with a little pricier asus. But they had some nice Samsung, and dells which have been pretty good for me at good prices. You can find some good ones in the $200 range.

phobicsquirrel

Samsungs and Sony's are one of the better laptop makers. Not sure your budget but around 1000 will get a you a good laptop from either of the two, however make sure you can expand the ram in the computer. I'd say stick with an i5 or higher end i3 quad core. You could do six but your looking at more money. Thing I have the biggest issue with laptops is the hardware they use, some components are good but they skimp on others to lower the price. Same can be said with desktops but they are much easier to build one's self.

Bamablows

1k is way out of my price range. Just gonna be using it for online classes on the go.

perkinke

I have had a great experience with my MSI that i bought 3 years ago before starting grad school. I got it from Office Depot for about 400. 15-inch, i5, 4MB, 350 hard drive. Only knock on it is the integrated graphics; they're not bad but have started causing heat issues, but if you're just using it for school it's a non-issue. Office Depot and Max have some good stuff for good prices on occasion. Mostly they have expensive crap, but sometimes you can get a great deal provided you know what you want. Newegg.com is my go-to for computer stuff. I agree with Phobic, no reason to go below the most current i3 or last gen i5. If you're in a college town craigslist can be a good resource...provided it's not stolen.

phobicsquirrel

Wow man, glad that laptop is working well for you, and 400 bones is a great deal. IMO and I've had laptops from hp, dell, sony, and samsung ... and yes a mac and I have to tell you from my experience and my wife's and many of my other tech friends buying cheap laptops is a huge risk. Sure maybe some expectations are higher maybe lower but you get what you pay for most of the time.

I work with computers all the time and very few people I run into have well working computers especially laptops. When I get into the meat of the hardware and who makes them I learn why. It was on sale or cheaper than 1000 dollars. Sure I think 1g is a lot for a laptop but it seems that most laptops below 700 dollars work okay at first but they soon either get too hot due to crappy cooling or hardware or they start to get really sluggish. I'm just throwing caution out there to you.

My buddy bought a msi netbook a few years ago and I bought an acer. He paid 50 more than I did but at first it all seemed okay but after a few months it started getting more and more sluggish. And that is after I erased the HD and did a bloat-ware free install of windows. His has worked rather well for a while now and just recently he started to have issue with it. Again depends what your expectations are and demands. Laptops are a pain IMO, cuz they don't last that long. Have you thought about a tablet?

macs-smokes

Use your desktop to eBay a new screen for your laptop... it takes about 30 minutes to replace a broken screen. That is if the rest of the computer is viable.