Gimme a sub-$400 laptop

[radhak]

My neighbor's 8 year old laptop died, and she wants a new one.

She only does four things on her laptop : check her yahoo mail; sell stuff on ebay; play at pogo.com, and store and display pictures of her huge dog (not many pics either, according to my standards). Kid you not, that's all she needs a computer for. So she wants to spend not more than $400 for a new one.

Thing is, the many 'on sale' laptops out there are XP installed, and I'm sure XP is gonna go away pretty soon; I advised her to look for Windows 7 ones, but they seem to priced higher. She wants to take a look at Best Buy, I don't expect her to be happy there.

So what do you think she should get?

If it were me, I'd go CL; for her, not so sure.

[LCHIEN]

if she was OK with an 8-y.o. laptop, then surely she would be happy with a sub $400 netbook with a Gig of memory and 160G HDD.

Office Depot and OfficeMax seem to have a a sale every week on those type of machines.

[Cubsfan]

Be careful with the netbooks. Some are great, some aren't so great. I assume that pogo has some flash games? Some netbooks have a hard time even handling those.

I'd say just watch the sales, and keep tabs at slickdeals. For that price you can find a decent laptop.

[Uncle Cracker]

Or you could find somebody else selling an 8-yo laptop and save a buncha bux...

[Hoover]

I recently purchased a laptop from Office Depot. It is an Acer with AMD athlon processor, 250 gig hd, 3 gigs of ram, and 16.9 screen. It has Windows 7 on it. Wireless LAN, and a dual layer DVD recorder. It cost $369.00. It seems to be a nice laptop, it doesn't have a webcam, but otherwise runs great.

[Knottscott]

She'll likely get more for the $ if you buys refurbished, and originates her search thru Bing.com and chooses a supplier who participates in the Cashback. Some online places offer free s/h, some don't charge sales tax.

Circuit City, Overstock.com, Tiger Direct, Buy.com are just a few that come to mind.

It's not a laptop, but as an example we recently bought a refurbished HP5000 with Windows XP, Pentium 4, 2.8Ghz, 512MB, 80GB hard drive with key board (no monitor) as a second PC....$137 to my door after $10 Cashback. I believe it's 4 or 5 YO technology, but it's just about the same as main PC that cost @ $800 (w/monitor).

[woodturner]

So what do you think she should get?

Walmart had a $300 lap top advertised last week, might still find them in the stores, depending on where you are.

3G, dual core processor, 250G hd, etc. Very nice machine for under $600.

eMachines eME725-4520 Laptop $298 at Walmart

[radhak]

Lotsa very good points, guys!

How are Acer or Asus for reliability?

And is buying Windows XP a good idea today? Shouldn't she go for Windows 7? Or do they offer an automatic upgrade to 7?

[Woodshark]

Samsclub has a nice Toshiba Satellite Notebook 2.1GHz, 250G, 15.6".

It is $398. Not top of the line but it gets good reviews based on the price.

[herb fellows]

At that price point, I haven't seen upgrades to 7 for free. W7 is a bit of a learning curve from what I've heard, so depending on her willingness/ability to deal with that.....

The only real reason to get a netbook, IMHO, is if you want the portability, which I'm guessing is not a big factor for her.
There are definitely laptops out there in this range that would be more than adequate for her needs, with much more power and capacity than any netbook.
Micro Center has several, and they also carry refurbs that can be really good for the money, although probably overkill for her stated needs.

[x00018]

Lotsa very good points, guys!


And is buying Windows XP a good idea today? Shouldn't she go for Windows 7? Or do they offer an automatic upgrade to 7?

Microsoft is maintaining support for XP until 2014 so I would not be afraid to buy one today.

[Shep]

I would try to go with win 7. We just upgraded to a new computer from best buy $499 total and it's loaded. I feel win 7 is very user friendly and they system is laid out so files are easy to locate. If she does want a basic model, they're out there. She should have no problem finding one for under $400. I would buy one new, that way you can almost garantee there will be no bugs.

[dbhost]

Dumb question, but if that is all she is doing, why does she need Windows at all?

[LCHIEN]

don't use buy.com. they sold me a bill of goods.

The trouble with a used 8 yo laptop is that is will have limited memory and run 8 YO software. A couple of more years go by and web pages won't run correctly and you can't update your browser caus you don't have enuf memory and it justs cascades. At least with a current laptop she should be good for another 8 years with minimal requirements.

There's so many under $400 machines now out there that would have totally blown you away just 4 years ago for specs....

[radhak]

Dumb question, but if that is all she is doing, why does she need Windows at all?

Not at all - actually a pertinent question. She doesn't - except that an Apple would be too pricey for her, and I am unable to recommend Linux to her; it has to be as much of 'fill it/forget it' as possible.

I spoke to her this morning, explaining all the various options y'all have listed. She tells me that since her earlier screen was 15.6, she'd prefer if she could get that size again. She's open to CL, as she bought her vehicle on ebay! I shall take a look at whatever is on CL now, then she could visit Compusa / Staples / OfficeDepot etc.