Laptops?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Los Angeles
21

<p>The MacBook is already a steal. Well by the time August rolls around, 999 might be cut a bit, but for the time being, 999 is a pretty good deal considering a MacBook of those specs costs around 1299 anywhere else. </p>

<p>When you buy one, you have to present your bruin ID and sign a form that basically says you won't resell it and you are going to use it for educational purposes. </p>

<p>Bootcamp is nice, but using it is annoying. Every time I have to use anything Windows related, I have to reboot my computer to get into Windows and reboot back. Sometimes I just want to watch a video on the spot, but it's such a hassle to reboot when I feel like doing stuff on a whim. I probably forgo a lot of the things I normally do on Windows because it's a hassle to reboot. There's also some issues such as the remote control not working, the touchpad feels unresponsive (for me anyways), and the camera does not work (just what I heard), etc. </p>

<p>I thought I could live in the best of both worlds, but I find myself sticking to one. I missed Windows too much so I just purchased a dell.</p>

<p>Just as UCLAri pointed out, a 700 dollar laptop might appear to be good, but theres a lot to consider. Although, whenever I shop for a laptop in that price range (500-800ish), the last thing I am looking for are "extras," reliability, etc. Of course I try to shop for all of what UCLAri says, but it's simply not possible all the time. </p>

<p>If you need a laptop and you have some time to wait around, check out slickdeals.net. Check out their forums and look under "Hot Deals" to see if any good laptop comes out. You can also goto the "Coupon" section and see if you can get dell coupons to further discount a purchase. My friend found a SLICK, and I mean SLICK, deal on that site during Christmas where he was able to get the following:</p>

<p>E1405 Dell
Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 (1.83ghz, 2mb L2 cache, 667mhz)
Express Upgrade to Windows Vista (ADD)
14.1 inch WXGA+ UltraSharp™ TFT Display with TrueLife™
1GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm
120GB Hard Drive
8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945a/g
Free Dell 725 Printer (he actually missed out on it :( )</p>

<p>For $783</p>

<p>Four months later and you still can't make the same computer at that price. </p>

<p>A word of caution for notebooks on slickdeals or any deal site: you basically have to really use what UCLAri brought into question when picking most of the "slick" laptops there. You'll find many laptops at 599-699 that would suit the simple needs of doing school work, email, and web surfing. The problem is that you have to make sure you are buying a quality notebook. Read some reviews on the model you find and you should be fine.</p>

22

<p>i've used the Parallels software that they had on the MBP on display at the UCLA store last quarter. really nice software. it lets you run windows programs from your OSX desktop as if it was a native mac program. and the latest version lets you run the virtual machine off your boot camp partition, so you basically have the option to use your windows install from within OSX if you want, or you can reboot into windows completely with boot camp, and either way you will have the exact same settings/files/everything in windows.</p>

<p>i think its like $70 or $80. definitely worth it IMO, if you constantly switch between windows and OSX. although, if you want to run Vista instead of XP, you might want to wait until they release a new version with better vista support, etc (eg Aero wont work in vista when running on parallels).</p>

23

<p>I've used parallels, and for the things I do, it does not do it well enough. Basically I use Windows a lot for watching highly encoded videos and Mac does not have a lot of support for that, so I thought of parallels. When I try to use parallels to watch video, the video comes out all jagged and unclear. If I was watching the video from like 10 ft away, it might be bearable, but it simply isn't. The video also lags, which simply shocks me since I had a p3 16 mb video card that could play these videos. The latest parallels has 16 mb virtualized gfx too :(</p>

<p>I think I did use parallels to link to my bootcamp partition, but my Windows trial thingy ran out so I never tried it. I just installed Windows on my mac and tried Parallels from a fresh Windows. It was nice, but didn't fulfill my video needs.</p>

<p>I'm probably just nit picky because I really like certain things about Windows, but for MOST people, using Bootcamp mixed with Parallels would be a great idea!</p>

24

<p>I purchased my Toshiba laptop (1.7GHz, 60GB 512MB Celeron) w/ printer for $500 with rebate. It met my minimum requirements (able to word process and surf the web) and was a sweet deal, so I went for it. The only thing though, is the abysmal battery life (used to be 1hr 20, now merely 45min). I had a HP laptop before that weighed a ton and the charger was humongous, so my search for my current one consisted of a light laptop/small charger, which I found. Next one- battery life! How are Macs on battery life?</p>

25

<p>The MacBooks get upwards of 4+ hours, and the MacBook Pros usually top out around 3+ hours. Not Lenovos, but not bad.</p>

26

<p>Example</p>

<p>My Macbook - Recording program using 20-30% processes, no wifi, no bluetooth, screen brightness set to lowest - 3 hrs 20 minutes</p>

<p>I've never surfed on the macbook until it died, but most of the time, my battery icon says I have roughly 3hr 10 minutes after surfing for about 20 minutes constantly. </p>

<p>Expect above 4 if you are mostly doing word documents and surfing here and there. Average for me at least has been 3.</p>

<p>If you want battery life, GET A DELL. Extended battery rocks.</p>

27

<p>well...
i think i didn't condition my dell's battery properly.
surfing the net gives me... oh... 2 hours if i'm lucky?
grr >.<</p>

28

<p>That sounds pretty awful. What model do you have?</p>

29

<p>2 hours would be a blessing for me. I'm looking at the Dell Inspiron E1505- 1.73 GHz Dual Core Processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB, Vista, 15.4" for $699. I've found reviews that range from 2 hours-4 hours battery life. If I do end up getting it, I think I'll definitely upgrade to DVD-rw and the 85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion battery as well- for $788 total. I'm not really sure how much longer the 9-cell will give me instead of the standard of 6-cell, but I'm sick of being plugged into the adapter constantly. Any advice? Of course, I have to wait for this piece of crap to break down and become irrepairable first...but I could have a hand in that. :D</p>

30

<p>If you want to save money, you could check out the dell outlet store and buy refurbished computer. Most people have good things to say about the outlet. Most say its reliable. Also try to find coupons, if any are available. </p>

<p>If you really are fine with those specs, its a fine buy. The extended battery made my friend's battery jump from about 3 hours to maybe 5-6 hours.</p>

31

<p>Hey, bfired, here's another deal:</p>

<p><a href="http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=bndwe1k&s=bsd%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=bndwe1k&s=bsd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Select Intel Core Duo T2250 for $40.</p>

<p>You can also add on the glossy TruLife screen for free. You get 2GB DDR2-533 RAM, Vista Home Basic, 80GB hard drive, DVD-RW Burner, and the 9-cell for $689. You lose out on the 160GB hard drive, but you can always buy a 160GB hard drive from a 3rd party for $100, and you get to keep the 80GB too as an external. </p>

<p>Well, when I had a Inspiron E1405, I got 4 hours from my 6-cell battery on 7/9 brightness, with Wi-Fi off. People say that they've gotten around 7-8 hours with a 9-cell. Remember to get rid of all the useless junk Dell has preinstalled.</p>

32

<p>Wow, that's a really good deal...if only my current laptop suddenly breaks down so I can get it! If I do, I may upgrade to the 120GB hard drive for onlt $55...that's not bad at all. Does anyone know how I can improve battery life on my current Toshiba laptop? I have it on minimal power management and it still eats battery power like nothing. I'm thinking about reformatting it soon to clean it up a bit. Any tips?</p>

33

<p>what the battery life like? what's your processor? if you dont have a processor with intel speedstep or amd powernow, then its going to eat battery like mad...around 2 hour life at the very max. and there will be nothing you can do about it.</p>

34

<p>Remove any unnecessary background processes that might be taking away processing power. Also, try to refresh your battery by letting it run down completely and then charging it full again.</p>

35

<p>Intel Celeron M 1.7GHz 60GB hard drive 512MB RAM...my battery life has drained down to about 40 minutes. I should definitely clear some hard drive space, as there's only about 1-2 GB left.</p>

36

<p>Celeron Ms do not have SpeedStep, so they are some of the more power-hungry processors you can get. Battery refresh looks to be your best bet here.</p>

37

<p>good deal, thanks for the tips.</p>

38

<p>Some universal tips for any laptop include: lowering the brightness, turn off bluetooth or wifi when not using, and don't have too many background programs running (mentioned before). You probably do that though, but just incase anyone else doesn't!</p>

39

<p>what would background programs be?
and how does one go about turning them off...</p>

40

<p>look at all your system tray icons and see which ones you dont need or never use. close them by right clicking and selecting exit or close.</p>

<p>if you want to go a step further, disable them from even starting up in the first place. goto start, all programs, startup and delete the entry for the unwanted program or goto start, run, msconfig and uncheck them in the startup tab. if you dont know what something is, do a google search for the name of the file and determine if its something you need or not. if you're really not sure, then the best thing is to just leave it.</p>

<p>some tips for clearing up hard drive space:
-clear old system restore files. if your computer has been running fine and you havent installed any new programs, etc, then theres no reason to keep system restore files from weeks/months ago. right click on my computer, select properties. goto the system restore tab. check "turn off system restore on all drives". click apply. give it some time to delete all the old files. after its done, uncheck the box and click apply. this turns system restore back on and sets a new restore point. while you're at it, click settings, and reduce the disk space usage to around 1000mb. that's more than enough space for system restore to work without having it eat up gigs and gigs of your hd space.
-clear temporary files. i recommend [url=<a href="http://www.ccleaner.com%5DCCleaner%5B/url"&gt;www.ccleaner.com]CCleaner[/url&lt;/a&gt;]. its free and works great. it can also scan for and fix (delete) old and obsolete registry entries to help un-clutter your registry. you might want to set a system restore point before fixing the registry issues incase something goes wrong.</p>

<p>after deleting all that, it would be a good idea to run disk defragmenter. a heavily fragmented hd can reduce battery life too because the drive head has to jump around to a million different places before it can piece together a fragmented file that you wanted to open.</p>