Looking to purchase 2 new computers

[Pastor Ryan]

I am looking to buy 2 new laptops for my wife and I.

I = Media Director (Boss at work)

She = Assistant Media Director (Boss at home which equates Boss at work )

We are looking for PC based systems, not Mac people. I am not opposed to Windows 7, but would prefer windows Vista since that is what our other systems will be running on as well, except one which will be XP....

For her computer ($500 or under):
At least 2 Gig processor, could be faster
Would like 4 gig of ram
64 bit system
We have had HP in the past have been happy, don't want to go with an Emachine or a Compaq.

Advice?


For My computer ($1000 or under):
2.4 gig processor or faster
4 gig of ram
64 bit system
Need to be able to edit video, burn dvds, etc.

Advice?

I know I am being vague, but I want to see what you guys suggest.

[[Admin] osborn4]

I would just keep my eyes open at NewEgg, TigerDirect and such.

I don't think you will be able to get Vista, unless you get an older refurb. Windows 7 should work and play well with Vista. Internally Vista is version 6 and Windows 7 is version 6.1. Uses all the same drivers and such.

[prochlea]

I have liked the construction of the Dell Precision workstation laptops... the new adamo line seems to be of the same quality.

[Gracetech]

There are alot of Lappies just north of $1k that are loaded but you can find a few just below.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834157045

This would be my choice for portability if you can spare the extra change.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220639

This would be my choice for raw power if you have some extra change.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834157042

As for your sub $500 just make sure you get something with a discrete video chip which should greatly reduce your choices for you.

I always like small Lappies with high resolution screens. That is why i suggested the Asus which has a 15" screen @ 1920X1080 resolution. Second on the list is a discrete gpu with as much vram as possible. The of course CPU and at least 4 gigs of ram. You can always upgrade the hard drive so that's not a deal killer.

Me i prefer doing any heavy lifting with a desktop and keep a laptop around for simple task like photo editing, remote control, email and such. It's just not ergonomic to sit at a laptop for extended periods of time.

crt

[Pastor Ryan]

I currently have an HP Pavillion DV 9700 with a 2 gig turion processor with 3 gig of ram.

My video Card is an NVIDIA GeForce 7150M/nForce 630//m

how does my current lappy stack up against the ones you have suggested?

[Gracetech]

Your current laptop would be a good had me down for your wife unless she plans on running Worship Projection Software which may bog down from the GPU a bit. Other than that the laptop would be a suitable one for her needs.

As for stacking against the laptops that i suggested, you could expect about twice the performance under stressful applications and you should see your render time cut by a third to two thirds time. Not to mention having head room galore to run all the Worship Projection Software out there.

crt

[bpalermini]

This machine, a HP 13.3" DM3 with a Athlon processor isn't quite up to the specs you gave but my wife just got it and it is sweet. It is more than powerful enough to run any office application. Plus it is just so nicely made, solid and compact I was quite surprised at the price. There are a number of configurations available. Ours cost about $550 but has 4 GB of ram (not 3 as shown in the review).

Oh, and just go with Windows 7. If you are Vista users you won't have any problem with it.

The only problem I found with the machine is when you have multi-touch actions turned on for the track pad the mouse is usually dead after coming out of sleep. Turn them off and everything is fine. HP is aware and hopefully will fix the problem in a driver update.

[Pastor Ryan]

I don't say this loosely, but she does a ton with powerpoint, any machine she gets needs to be able to run it fast.

[voyager529]

Sorry for the slight hijack, but in my experience Pastor, about 80% of Powerpoint sluggishness can be thwarted by simply scaling down the graphics. No need for a 12 megapixel JPEG in a powerpoint that is going to be displayed at 1024x768. The same goes for video clips (scale them down and convert them into WMV using Windows Media Encoder beforehand) and audio (make it a 128k WMA file instead of a WAV). In the overwhelming majority of cases, when I see a sluggish, choppy powerpoint on a 2GHz machine and 2GB of RAM, that does the trick.

Joey

[Pastor Ryan]

appreciate the input.

We usually aren't using big files of any kind in powerpoint.

I really think her laptop is in need of replacement.

[acicomp]

If it was me, I would look at a Dell Inspiron for her since she handles the lighter load. for you, I would suggest a Dell Latitude E6500 with an Nvidia video card upgrade. We use the E6500 for all of our editing, presentation, etc at the church. Excellent job. I use one personally and have totally removed my desktop. The Inspiron has a base 1 year warranty and the Latitude has 3 year.

You can also get come great deals at the Dell outlet.

Hope it helps some as well,
Chris

[shayward]

Brand Matters.

I think the priority with ANY computer is reliability. I'm writing this from my brand new Fujitsu laptop. It's important to keep tabs on who has made the most reliable laptop lately because that changes.

Three years ago, I wouldn't have bought ANYTHING but an HP business-grade notebook. Three years before that, it would have been only Dell.

HP is currently at the bottom of the 2009 reliability surveys, which is sad for me. I loved HP products for years. They're XW-series workstations are still amazing - I just got a dual-processor quad xeon with 8gigs. I can run all 8 cores full out for hours on end and it just hums along. But they're laptops now make fancy doorstops

Dell's quality fell apart back about 4 years ago. They're now mediocre at best. That's also sad for me... I used to always recommend Dell but haven't for years.

Surprisingly, Asus and Acer are both doing well for quality and reliability. Asus I guess I can see but Acer was a real shock for me. One of my consultant buddies has installed about 50 Acer laptops in the past few years and every one has been solid. Fujitsu (my current choice) also has an excellent rep (but much smaller model selection than the others).

http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/200...-do-you-think/

That's one of many. Google "2009 Laptop Reliability".