<p>Hey guys,
I'm trying to save up for a laptop for college.
The only thing i realy want is for it to have a lot of space for pics and music.
Also I'd like for it to have one of those built in web cams, or is it better to have it off laptop via USB? Which has better quality?
How is the brand ACER?
I just don't want to spend more that $1000</p>
<p>what size are you looking for?
do you intend to do any gaming on it?</p>
<p>Nahh I'm not a gamer.
And size wise, well nothing to big. Ya know the usual practical size?</p>
<p>Sounds like you want a generic consumer line 14-15.4 inch laptop in the $700-$1000 range with a maybe $160GB harddrive.</p>
<p>Try any of the widely available brands like acer, dell, toshiba, hp, gateway, etc. You can probably find a modest selection at your local best buy or buy direct from the company.</p>
<p>look at that. $600 and you get 320 GB of HD space.</p>
<p>You don't want pentium dual core though...that's pretty bad</p>
<p>Oh, and ignore what I said earlier about $160GB hdd, I mean 160GB at least</p>
<p>I don't think s/he needs to worry about hard drive size that much... music and pics don't really take that much spaces, even huge quantities of it. 100 GB and up should be fine.</p>
<p>As for Acer, I read that it was cheap brand, but pretty bad quality. See MIT</a> Admissions | Blog Entry: "Laptops!" towards the bottom of the entry.</p>
<p>What operating system would you like? Mac OS, Windows XP, Windows Vista, linux? Do you not care?</p>
<p>You don't need more than 2 GB of RAM for a computer using Vista, or more than 1 GB of RAM for XP, if you are not going to do anything intensive with it. Limiting yourself this way is a great way to save money. No point spending more for power you are not going to use.</p>
<p>EDIT: How about this? Toshiba</a> - Satellite Laptop with AMD Turion™ X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60 - L305D-S5895</p>
<p>Toshiba, $500, dual core X2 AMD Turion, 15.4", 3 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, Windows Vista Home Premium, battery life of 2.63 hours (about).</p>
<p>I seem to like XP, so there is so reason to use Vista.
Btw: what is better a built in web camera or external one via USB?</p>
<p>These days the only laptops to come with XP are the small underpowered netbooks.</p>
<p>Luckily for you, they are cheap and XP doesn't consume a lot of resources.</p>
<p>Okay, how about this? Amazon.com:</a> ASUS Eee PC 900HA 8.9-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel ATOM N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 4 Cell Battery) Shiny Black: Computers & PC Hardware</p>
<p>$327, XP Home, 8.9 Inches, 160 GB Hard Drive, 1 GB RAM, ATOM N270 Processor, Built-In Webcam included.</p>
<p>As for the webcam question... low end USB webcams are pretty much the same as built-in webcams. Unless you are willing to pay $100 for a USB Webcam, you won't notice a difference.</p>
<p>But you have to be mindful of a lot of things with a USB Webcam, such as not losing the CD if you want to use it in a latter computer of after a re-installation. And you have to lug it around with your laptop... you know what? It's just a bad idea. Go with the built-in webcam.</p>
<p>I would not recommend a netbook as a primary computer personally. </p>
<p>and you can get XP on regular sized notebooks. Look at the business section. If you get a dell business laptop you can get XP and you can get XP on lenovo laptops too.</p>
<p>So would you guys say Vista is the way to go?</p>
<p>Vista is pretty much the only windows option offered with new consumer-oriented laptop, netbooks not included. I think you might still be able to call up the company and ask for a downgrade XP CD once you have the machine, but other than that, you can't get it preinstalled AFAIK.</p>
<p>When I tried Vista, it was very annoying the way it stopped every few moments to ask for permission whenever I tried to do something.</p>
<p>nikon50bigma, if you like XP, just keep on using it.</p>
<p>You can turn off the user account control (the thing that asks for permission)...it's listed in the control panel.</p>
<p>I have used Vista since pretty much the day it came out and I have used every single version, from Home basic all the way up to ultimate. IMHO, Vista has minimal feature improvements over XP and is a bit more hardware intensive. The only feature I like about Vista is the built in harddisk imaging backup system in the business/ultimate versions. But that feature can be had in XP by using a third party software that often has more user control.</p>
<p>Overall, getting Vista with a new computer isn't like getting the kiss of death, you just have to make sure you have 2GB of RAM and you might need to make a few tweaks based on your preferences (it's like getting used to a new car). However, if you currently have XP and want to upgrade, I'd say it's not really worth it and you might as well wait until you either get a new computer or the next (from all accounts better) version of Windows (7) comes out in 2009/2010.</p>
<p>Check out the Lenovo ThinkPads, they're a lot better quality than most laptops. Also, please don't buy from Best Buy. They have horrible prices and horrible customer service. I would recommend always buying directly from the OEM, through their website (for example, this</a> is the site for Lenovo).</p>
<p>what brand of laptops do most students have?</p>
<p>Here are the most popular brands in the U.S. among everybody; I don't know where to find that data narrowed down to students.</p>
<p>Most</a> popular laptop brands in US retail: Dell, HP, Toshiba | IT Facts | ZDNet.com</p>
<p>But really, I don't think brand matters that much. You should worry about specs and price first, unless the brand has a particularly strong reputation attached to it (like Acer).</p>
<p>Acer is absolute crap. I had one for high school and when it gave out the screen physically separated from the laptop itself. Lots of lemons. And I agree on the not buying from Best Buy. Try getting it from the manufacturer. I heard good things about Lenovo. However, I hear Vista's crap.</p>
<p>Actually, Vista isn't crap. At worst, some parts of it is a little half baked. But Vista itself and the underlying kernel is solid, as evidenced by the fact that MS decided to use the same kernel for the next iteration of windows (Windows 7) whose pre-release alpha is getting very good reviews atm. </p>
<p>Having used all versions of Vista available to consumers from Home Basic up to Ultimate, I'd say that Vista has the potential to be much better than XP, but my personal experience is that it's at best about on par with XP right now in terms of functionality and speed. The only downside is that you need 2GB of RAM minimum, but most laptops come with that nowadays anyway and RAM is dirt cheap from sites like newegg. </p>
<p>The one feature I like about Vista is the image-based harddisk backup in the business and ultimate versions. It's easy to use and convenient. Although the same features could be had with a variety of third party software in XP. </p>
<p>Overall, I'd say there's nothing to worry about if you are getting a new computer and Vista is your only choice. You might need to tweak it a bit (turn off user account control) but you do that with many new things you buy. But if you want to upgrade from XP, then I'd say it would be pointless and you should wait a year until Windows 7 comes out at the end of 2009/beginning of 2010.</p>
<p>Note: I'm by no means a MS fanboy (I actually don't really care what I use), but I'm pretty tired of people spouting the "Vista is crap" line when they've never even used it or when their only experience with it is a 5 minute surfing session at best buy or on their buddy's computer. That may not apply to you specifically, but I've met many people like that.</p>
<p>I'm just repeating what I've heard from others; pure hearsay :)</p>