Have $800 to spend on a laptop which one?

Kdogg14

Kdogg14

Member
My current labtop is getting old and I need to get another one. I have $800 to spend what should I get? I didn't even get my unit yet but I am preparing as I believe my name is coming up very soon on the list. Already I have an EVLX112P coming to run it FRFR. Can I get by with an $800 laptop?:|
 
Hell yes you can for 800 bucks!! I've had great experience buying stuff from Dell's outlet - 3 laptops and a quad tower & monitors over the years. I picked up a 17" 1920x1200 Vostro with 8GB ram 500GB drive 2.6GHz dual core, 1GHz FSB, blah-blah-blah for $1100 two years ago. Today I'm certain you could pick one up with similar specs like this for $800 ... and their warranties kick ass. All IMHO of course. Scan this forum for some issue with Macs that might influence your choice of PC/Mac. Good luck.

ps. I think you're gonna dig your EV's...excellent bang for the buck which sound great anyway.
 
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I've run Dell, HP, Acer and Fujitsu over the years and they're all good. IMO value-wise Toshiba and IBM don't seem to quite match up (but check them out anyway).

Minute to minute one of them will have a better deal than the other, so shop around. My current Win7 laptop is a HP i7 and it's been perfect. For music you can never have too much RAM or HD space.

Mac vs PC: As someone who has spent tens of thousands on Macs over the years, IMO there is simply no justifiable reason (other than personal preference) to get a Mac over a Windows PC anymore. There certainly was 10 years ago, and some Mac fanatics cling to this bit of ancient history to assert superiority over the Windows platforms for music. But I've recently migrated our commercial facility entirely to Windows and it was simply the best decision ever.
 
I just got a lenovo g570 on amazon for $434. had to shop around too find the best deal. nice 15.6" screen, windows 7, 2.5 ghz i5 processor, 4gb ram 640gb drive. ordered on a sunday and it showed up on tuesday. no problems, but i don't do pc based audio tracking. I just use this machine for internet stuff, axeedit, band in a box, and the occasional copying of hd shows for replay later. also, i'd use your current machine until it craps out, unless it's too slow.

At work we have about 200 computers, I'd guess. For laptops we've used toshiba, dell, sony vaio, now HP. They've all been good quality, but I think I'd prefer the sony least (I like the lenovo better than most).

$800 is way more than you need!
 
I suggest a Mac Book Pro. I bought a refurbished one from Apple for $860 and refurbished are just like new and include a full warranty. Mine only had a 160GB hard drive but I purchased a 500GB 7200rpm drive on line for $71 and installed myself (very easy, watched a YouTube video). It came with 2GB of RAM and I purchased 8GB RAM on line for 200. I've had this laptop for 3 years now and it's been flawless. Mac refurbished is the way to go.
 
jetspeed747 said:
I suggest a Mac Book Pro. I bought a refurbished one from Apple for $860 and refurbished are just like new and include a full warranty. Mine only had a 160GB hard drive but I purchased a 500GB 7200rpm drive on line for $71 and installed myself (very easy, watched a YouTube video). It came with 2GB of RAM and I purchased 8GB RAM on line for 200. I've had this laptop for 3 years now and it's been flawless. Mac refurbished is the way to go.
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Apart from what I'm guessing is your personal preference for Mac, can you provide any reason why someone should spend $1130 on a refurbished Mac (presumably with a Core Duo processor) when they could buy a brand new Windows machine with a faster processor and equivalent (or better) RAM and HDD for several hundred less?
 
Manning said:
I've run Dell, HP, Acer and Fujitsu over the years and they're all good. IMO value-wise Toshiba and IBM don't seem to quite match up (but check them out anyway).

Minute to minute one of them will have a better deal than the other, so shop around. My current Win7 laptop is a HP i7 and it's been perfect. For music you can never have too much RAM or HD space.

Mac vs PC: As someone who has spent tens of thousands on Macs over the years, IMO there is simply no justifiable reason (other than personal preference) to get a Mac over a Windows PC anymore. There certainly was 10 years ago, and some Mac fanatics cling to this bit of ancient history to assert superiority over the Windows platforms for music. But I've recently migrated our commercial facility entirely to Windows and it was simply the best decision ever.
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This here is as honest as one can get with regards to their views on mac/pc once they have honestly tried both, and looked at all the pro's vs con's.
 
well I regularly use both pc and mac, all with several versions of the respective OS's - from win xp to 7, and various versions of osx (thanks to work)

Manning is right in the sense that 10 years ago there was a clear cut level of superiority with macs and PC's. Now, it's not as clear, windows has clearly come a LONG way.

I still see OSX as being quite a bit ahead of any windoze machine I've ever used tho. I'm no fanboi either - I use both platforms regularly, and OSX to me is still a pretty clear winner, but windoze is actually a contender these days instead of just getting TKO'd every rounds.

Take that advice as you will, doesn't really matter to me - I'm no fanboi - just a realist, and that's my take. You can get a refurbished or used macbook pro for about that price, or you can get a pretty good windows machine with that too...I'd go with the sony as well, even the dells, I have nothing but horror stories with HP laptops, tho I've heard their quality level has improved.

You can also get one of these machines and load up mac OSX, but it might lack the stability of a known mac build. If you can get the identical build, I'd go with that. best of luck!
 
randolfo said:
I just got a lenovo g570 on amazon for $434. had to shop around too find the best deal. nice 15.6" screen, windows 7, 2.5 ghz i5 processor, 4gb ram 640gb drive. ordered on a sunday and it showed up on tuesday. no problems, but i don't do pc based audio tracking. I just use this machine for internet stuff, axeedit, band in a box, and the occasional copying of hd shows for replay later. also, i'd use your current machine until it craps out, unless it's too slow.

At work we have about 200 computers, I'd guess. For laptops we've used toshiba, dell, sony vaio, now HP. They've all been good quality, but I think I'd prefer the sony least (I like the lenovo better than most).

$800 is way more than you need!
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That is an excellent deal, if you tried to get those specifications to something available just a few years ago it would have cost a whole lot more. Actually those specs are probably better than a Linux box I used to run a web server on going back a few years now though. If Kdogg14 only needs to use the machine for backups of the AXE FXII and to use Axe Edit as part of a rig, rather than as a music production suite just about anything would do a good job. Lenovo are making some good machines these days.

I have a Sony Vaio, and in the past have had Macs and all sorts of things.I think it is mainly user preference in a lot of cases nowadays.
 
There are a ton of pretty nice Windows laptops for about $500 or less. The HP Probook 45xx series I have seen several times and it looks like a much nicer laptop than the price would suggest.

If you can get comfortable with a used laptop, there is a lot for $300 or so- just make sure to avoid any Nvidia chipset that isn't from the last couple of years because the previous generation basically all have a defect where they all eventually fail.

When most people have some beef about HP, it is about some cheap walmart garbage that they bought... not usually about the business series. I've supported and sold a *ton* of HP laptops over the years and most of the business models have been great. They have hard disk failures like anything with a hard disk but the overall guts have been great. There is a difference between what used to be Compaq Business and became HP Business and what is/was the Compaq Presario and HP Pavilion consumer laptops. The consumer stuff has a history of not being so great.

The Dell Latitude stuff has tended to be really solid too. Inspiron stuff is hit or miss.
 
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Well that's more powerful than my 1 year old HP which I'm using to do far more work than what you've outlined above.

Hence I think you'll be fine.
 
I wouldn't buy a laptop right now. Word is, retina display Macs are coming. Anything with lower dpi will look pretty pathetic next to those and your laptop will be completely outdated within a couple of years. My wife's and son's laptops are over 4 years old (both Macs), and I ain't upgrading them until Apple unleashes Retina displays on their entire product line. Of course, my budget constraints are a lot looser, hence the preferences.

Frankly, if I had to buy a PC, I'd go for an ultrabook of some kind. Laptops are meant to be portable.
 
Kdogg14 said:
Thanks for everyone's input. I am going to look at this tonight. Toshiba - 15.6" Satellite Laptop - 8GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive - Platinum - P755-S5120
Will this work? I want to use the computer to save patches and record and mix a few songs that my band comes up with. I don't mind spending the money on a Mac, but I don't want to get something that is overkill for what I am going to be using it for. Thanks again everyone.
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CPU doesn't matter on a laptop anymore. They're all fast enough. What matters is screen resolution and battery life, and both suck pretty bad on the one you linked.
 
"your laptop will be completely outdated within a couple of years".

Um, what laptop isn't? My Macbook Pro is already getting long in the tooth and it's barely a year old. Plus it's heavier than my HP laptop, so I'm not sure what you're getting at there.

Also I think you are greatly over-stating the significance of the "Retinal display" screen. It just means a screen with a physical pixel array of 326 per inch, which is based on some (far-from-universally-accepted) research that this is the "ideal" number of pixels for the human eye to perceive. The difference to screens nowadays will hardly make holding off worthwhile, particularly as he has work he wants to do now.

"CPU doesn't matter on a laptop anymore."

Um, load up a few reverbs and get back to me.
 
Your beef with Apple is well known around here, Manning. Take a look at a new iPad alongside iPad 2 and then get back to me on whether Retina matters or not. You can't really appreciate it from the spec sheet alone. I have one right next to me, not being able to see pixelation is a beautiful thing.

Meanwhile you just recommended him to buy a laptop with 786 pixels of vertical resolution and a 2 hour real-world battery life. That's one third the resolution. It's laughable.

Getting back to the problem at hand, I would NOT buy a 15" with less than 1680x1050 resolution. Not even a Mac. In a typical brain dead PC fashion, that severely limits one's choices. You can either get a laptop with a shitty screen, like the one linked above, or you can get a 1920x1080 full HD screen, on which Windows looks positively tiny, due to its unfortunate choice of default font size. I have a Lenovo W520 from work with a 1920x1680 display, but it runs Linux (I chose it over a Mac, BTW), and in Linux I can just make the default font size larger.

Now how about an exercise in futility. Excluding Apple, try to find a company that offers 1680x1050 15" screens. :)

Here's even a Google link for you: https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&...,cf.osb&fp=e2ea4b53f91d9d2d&biw=1734&bih=1079
 
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