Best Cheap PC Laptop?

[bookem_dan-o]

By the way, iMovie (especially the new iMovie '08) sucks for pretty much everything except the simplest, shortest, no-frills, YouTube quality clips.

What's that you say? You want to be able to duck down the volume of your music track under your voice track? Sorry bub, but you're outta luck with iMovie '08.

Tom, whatever you do, just make sure you don't waste money buying a non-Intel based Macintosh. You can find really cheap Mac G5's and G4's of all flavors now, but since they are no longer being manufactured, and all software developers are/have-been optimizing their applications for the Intel Macs, you definitely don't want to end up in loserville by buying another G4 Powerbook or G5 PowerMac desktop.

A quad-core Mac Pro with 4-8 GB of RAM (and make sure to get the ATI Radeon x1900 videocard!) will last you for at least 2-3 years (and possibly longer), assuming you don't expect to be doing any hardcore video editing, graphics or animation on it at the end of that lifecycle.  But for now, it's a pretty badass machine...we use one in one of our other edit suites, so it's definitely a pro-level machine for a relatively inexpensive price.

[erika]

I highly recommend Dell. I've had great experiences with their computers AND their technical support plans (I tend to drop my laptop a lot. I'm a clutz.)

I would say go to the Dell Outlet online and buy either a used or "scratch n dent" Inspiron laptop. The "scratch and dents" are just machines that have a slight cosmetic flaw like a small scratch on the exterior, etc.

I'm very happy with my Inspiron 6000. I made sure to get at least a gig of RAM, a wireless card, and I didn't install Windows Vista. I specifically had them give me XP just cuz it's better and easier to use.

I think I paid 1100 for mine and it has a 3 year warranty. I also paid a little more (included in the 1100) to get some software I needed for work and a huge monitor (not recommended if you're trying to travel with it) so you could probably find one even cheaper.

Just always make sure to keep the warranty current...

[erika]

if you want a cheapo workhorse for internet, email & word processing, just buy a refurbished notebook from tigerdirect, newegg or ebay. from my experience, no one brand is better than another. you could buy a $2800 Sony Vaio and it could crap out after a year or you could have an Emachines that gives you a decade of performance.

I can confirm that Vaios SUCK. We used them for 7 years at my old company (both desktop and laptops) and I can say that not one of them worked properly for 6 months.

Go Dell or go home.

[KickTheBobo]

[Matthew_S]

I came to this thread as my son recently dropped our laptop and our screen is now useless.

I wish I had something more to contribute than--

Doesn't that guy look like comedian Wayne Cotter?

http://www.waynecotter.com/video.html

[Martin]

I don't have anything against Macs, but I thought Tom was looking for a cheap laptop? Doesn't that rule Macs right out?