<p>Hi, I need to buy a laptop for college soon. The last notebook I had was a Dell Inspiron that barely lasted two years before becoming laggard to the point of obsolescence.</p>
<p>What laptop do you recommend that will get me through the four years? Looking to pay up to $1100 or so. I'm looking at Dell Latitude and Sony Vaio, think those are any better?</p>
<p>tbh after buying a few high end laptops ~1100$ (lenovo thinkpad, apple macbook pro), I think its a much better to buy a lower end ~500 dollar laptop and upgrade more often/quickly. technology changes too quickly. my ‘elite’ laptops were obsolete and the insurance deductibles/battery replacements made them so much more expensive in the long run.</p>
<p>What kind of tasks are you looking to do with your laptop? Do you have any preferences? Lightweight and easy to transport? These are some factors you should tell us about before making any considerations.</p>
<p>I’m using it solely to write papers and use the Web, maybe Webcam with my family once in a while, so all I really need is a quick notebook with a long battery life.</p>
<p>Macs last a long time. My uncle has had his Macbook Pro since 2000 and has no intention of buying a new one any time soon.</p>
<p>Do you prefer laptops, or are netbooks okay too? Macbooks tend to have the best battery life, but they’re also overpriced. If you’re looking for a Windows-based laptop, Sony Viao X, Acer Inspire, and Asus UL30 are good ones to look into.</p>
<p>I was trying to talk my daughter into getting a windows laptop with 6 GB RAM because I think these will work well longer. (Several of the reasonalby priced cnet top pick laptops have 6 GB RAM. I think it is worth more money for extra RAM.)</p>
<p>You don’t need 6 GB yet, and when you do RAM is incredibly easy to replace. It’s also much cheaper to upgrade yourself than to buy an upgrade built-in.</p>
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<p>Wow, he bought a MBP 6 years before they were first on sale? And it’s still working?</p>
<p>Impressive.</p>
<p>I don’t think RAM upgrades are even necessary for the tasks that he needs the laptop for.</p>
<p>It looks like one I’m not a computer fanatic. Its got an apple on the back and isn’t white so I assumed it was a pro.</p>
<p>I have an HP Pavillion dv6000 that I bought in the summer of '08 right before 9th grade. I’m going into my senior year of high school right now, and the only problem I’ve had with it was the fan, which I got fixed for free.</p>
<p>I’ve upgraded RAM myself in one laptop and one desktop. In my opinion, it is always hard to upgrade RAM in a desktop (I hate taking the back off a computer) and sometimes hard to upgrade RAM in a laptop; manufacturers don’t always make it easy for you. </p>
<p>You definitely don’t need 6 GB RAM now but if your kid likes to run a lot of stuff at once, and stuff keeps getting fancier, I think you might wish you had 6 GB RAM in 2 or 3 years. Just my opinion. I’m not an expert. If I were getting a new laptop for myself now, I’d go for the extra RAM. Couldn’t talk my daughter into it for her new laptop, and she’ll probably be fine with 4. It is my son who is always running ten million programs at once (while “doing his homework”), five million of them goofy videos or internet talk shows.</p>
<p>With my D’s college laptop, I should have been more pro active. Daughter needed a new laptop pretty much all of spring semester and Maymester but she was always “too swamped” to shop or go to her campus computer shop techs. She didn’t start finding her (summer 07) laptop really hard to use til Feb or March but we should have gotten her a new one over winter break. By the end of her Maymester, her old laptop was in rough shape. She finally chose a new one in late June. She had an unusual “wish list” on what she was looking for. Took a while to find one that met her odd specs.</p>