Hi SEN

So, looking to buy a laptop for my girl for Christmas. She currently has an old piece of junk that takes about 3 years to boot up and 12 minutes to refresh the screen every time you move the mouse.

I'm looking at the low end of the spectrum since I don't have a huge budget, maybe ~500 or less. I'm really not worried about performance, it looks like I can get an i5 in the sub-500 range without having to buy refurbished:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006740%204019%20600004344%204020%20600003988%20600004343&IsNodeId=1&name=14%22%20-%2014.5%22

However, I'm happy if you guys have better ideas, and what I'm really looking for is to avoid pitfalls. I just want a nice clean snappy machine for her, it doesn't have to run any super high framerate games or anything, but I just want everything to -JUST WORK-, if you know what I mean. I don't want the wireless card to crap out or the screen to look like absolute shit out of the box, or the whole system to die in 5 days or something.

Ideas?


P.S. Someday I'll actually buy a nice machine for myself... someday...

Are you okay with a 1366x768 screen resolution, a dual-core processor, and 4GB of RAM? If so, that price will be easy to hit (as your link demonstrates).

Black Friday/Cyber Monday is coming up in a week, and that's a good time to buy a cheap laptop. Let me know your minimum specs and I'll post deals here as they come up.

That would actually not be the worst idea. If it's a business model it'll be better built and thus longer lasting, have better components (strong WiFi signal, etc.) and be configured as a business machine (no pointless gaming gimmicks or overpowered GPU draining the battery) while still being affordable.

Can't help you with deals in the US, but this German dealer has some sweet Notebooks for under 300 Euros:
http://www.deallx.de/online/deal/robustes-notebook-dell-e6410-latitude,-intel-560m-core-i5-2x2667-mhz,-14.1-wide,-4-gb-ram,-250-gb,-dvdrw,-lan,-wlan,-win7pro64,-1.-oder-2.-wahl,-aufbereitete-technik,-12-monate-gew%C3%A4hr,-statt-1490.00-%E2%82%AC-fr%C3%BCherer-uvp-f%C3%BCr-ab-259.99-%E2%82%AC-inkl.-versand
A few days back they had a Sandy Bridge based i5 Notebook from Fujitsu (LIFEBOOK E781) for like 360 Euros, which was my favorite deal there yet since I have a E780 and I'm quite pleased.

So if you have similar sites in the US it might be worth a look.

Hey OP, consider just formatting the machine and putting a light-weight distro of Linux on it. I'm using Lubuntu and it's p killer. I heard Crunchbag is p sick too (but Lubuntu is more newbie-friendly if you want something closer to Windows, also its software centre is more likely to put software shortcuts in sensible places automatically).

I still have trouble on 10+ tabs sometimes, but considering that I'm running on an Intel Atom inside a netbook that's like 4+ years old, it's p great.

For anyone who might care I ended up getting this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834317598&cm_re=lenovo_G50-_-34-317-598-_-Product

Was on sale for $500 when I nabbed it Cyber Monday. Just got it today, looks like its going to accomplish everything I wanted. Windows 8 is fucking annoying though, might have to wipe it and put 7 on instead. But I'll see what my lady friend wants done with it first.

Why not throw 8.1 on there? It allows for more customization to make it feel like Windows 7.

Or put the Windows 10 Technical Preview on it. It's like a modern version of Windows 7.

Dem0n: It actually is Windows 8.1.

If having that start screen instead of the start menu is an issue, you could try StartIsBack or ClassicShell.

I heard Windows 10 will be free for personal use.

I'm more interested in what you did with the old machine. Gutted its monitor perhaps?

It's not Christmas yet, so nothing yet.