What's a good laptop for a college freshmen?

[mretzloff]

Anyone? My parents are willing to get me a good laptop, so don't worry too much about the price.

Thanks.

 

[ryan29121]

Get a Dell XPS 1530. Its a very stylish laptop with great performance potential. If you plan to do any gaming, you have the ability to add an 8600m graphics card to it.

 

[Tedster]

You don't need anything fancy for school work. In fact, ANY low end laptop that has wifi, and decent word processing capability (www.openoffice.org) will work just fine.

At a minimum you want at least 2gb RAM, 120gb 7200rpm hard drive and a processor of at least 1.8 ghz. dual core is nice, and most new laptops are, but it is not necessary. a DVD rom is required for many college classes, this is usually standard on most laptops.

You do not need fancy graphics. Bear in mind integrated graphics normally borrow ram from system ram so you effective ram may be less.

 

[papercut_2008]

just got a dell inspiron 1520 for school. 8600M graphics, 2ghz core2, dvd burner, for about $1000. handles light gaming well, excellent battery life (around 4.5-5 hours), does get kinda hot after use, but I highly recommend it.

 

[mretzloff]

just got a dell inspiron 1520 for school. 8600M graphics, 2ghz core2, dvd burner, for about $1000. handles light gaming well, excellent battery life (around 4.5-5 hours), does get kinda hot after use, but I highly recommend it.

Is the laptop reliable?

Also, does the screen have a lot of glare if I'm working outside? I'm asking this because at Dell.com you can only add an anti-glare screen to the 1720.

Computer gaming is not important to me; I've always been a console gamer.

 

[papercut_2008]

so far, i haven't had any reliability issues with it. I also have the anti glare screen, which is much better for outdoor stuff than the gloss one, and doesn't show finger prints as much. i also recommend getting the bigger battery- it weighs a little more, and sticks out the back a bit, but the extra time you get from it is well worth the cost and size. also, if you don't game on it, you may want to consider going to the 1500 series (1520 or 1525), as the smaller screen will save you money and battery life.

 

[mretzloff]

so far, i haven't had any reliability issues with it. I also have the anti glare screen, which is much better for outdoor stuff than the gloss one, and doesn't show finger prints as much. i also recommend getting the bigger battery- it weighs a little more, and sticks out the back a bit, but the extra time you get from it is well worth the cost and size. also, if you don't game on it, you may want to consider going to the 1500 series (1520 or 1525), as the smaller screen will save you money and battery life.

Is there any way to get the anti-gloss screen on the 1500 series?

 

[joytime360]

Well I thnk if you have enough budget you can have a look at the apple laptops. Macbook pro is more powerful than the macbook, generally I think a macbook is just good for you, you can have a look at other's opinions here:
http://digg.com/apple/Apple_Macbook_is_Best_Computer_for_School_says_Seattle_Times
One of my frends is on the market for a macbook and he has found a coupon for macbook and macbook pro from amazon, maybe you can go and have a look there.

 

[papercut_2008]

Is there any way to get the anti-gloss screen on the 1500 series?

you mean the anti-glare screen? if so, then yes, last i checked it was an option.

As for the Mac option, if you don't have a lot of cash to burn, i'd recommend sticking with a PC.

 

[tay4life]

spending a ton of money on a laptop for web browsing and paper typing cannot be justifed.. if it is for school and personal use.. $500-$800 range