Student wishes to purchase laptop

[BillAllen55]

I'm a college student (58 years old). I'm in the market to purchase a moderately priced lap top. It needs to have windows 7, MS Word, Outlook, and excel. The system will not need a large hard drive. Will not need to have a high end video card. Initially I will be using the system only for my studies (no gaming) after graduation I would like it to be capable to make transition into a Master Automotive Technicians lifestyle complete with it being able to plug into vehicle OBD II scan tools. Can anyone steer me in the right direction as to a good laptop?

 

[mailpup]

All ODB II scan tools are not the same. I don't have extensive knowledge of all of them but some will connect to PCs via USB while some use a serial port. I have a couple of Equus hand held OBD II scanners and they both connect to the PC with a serial connector. Many of the desktops I've built for myself have a serial port or have a serial (COM) port header on the mobo or can be fitted with one so that's not a problem for me but a laptop might be a different story. I would imagine not many have a serial port anymore but some might still. Of course, there are USB to serial port adapters available so that might be an option as well.

While I don't know enough about laptops to recommend one, just be aware of the different scan tool interfaces and buy your equipment accordingly.

 

[BillAllen55]

Laptop purchase

The scan tools I am/will be using will have the USB connection. Serial port scan tools are quickly fading. Thanks for your reply.

 

[Route44]

What is your budget? I have found the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge to be a good system (bought two in the last four months) and they have just released their new E420 and E520 models.

In addition they are having a nice sale going on whereby you can have free upgrades to 4 gigs of memory and a 500 gig 7200 rpm haddrive without any additional cost. The offer ends 5/4.