laptop

[SoBeiT]

My daughter needs a laptop for work and school. Christmas is coming and we need some better suggestions of what brands or items are needed.


It must be able to function smoothly while running excel & spreedsheets.


Any help is appreciated :)

[Hort]

IBM's are pretty heavy-duty workhorses. That's what we use at work but not too sexy looking... not trendy like a Dell.

Kids want IBooks but then you have Mac issues... heck get her an IBook and IPod and she'll love you. ;)

[Creeper]

Dude, I've got a Dell. Works fine for me. Just be careful of the hardware, no matter who makes it. Centrino/Pentium-M's are good, Celerons and P4-Mobiles are bad.

[The_Stranger]

I've had Dell laptops and they were OK--their tech support was pretty good too, although it seems to depend on what you buy. Less expensive stuff=lower quality support.

From what I understand only Apple, Sony and the IBM pc division's new Chinese incarnation are actually doing anything original with laptops. The rest are mosytly just assembling components in a more or less formulaic way.

[Salyavin]

Any new notebook PC, even a Celeron, is plenty powerful for Excel and spreadsheets. You only need to go higher for gaming and multimedia.

Dell runs coupon deals every month or so. There's one going on right now.
The cheapest I saw on techbargains.com is an Inspiron 1200 with a 1.4Ghz Celeron for $549: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?CS=19&kc=6V658&oc=i1200s0
There's a $50 rebate and a $100 coupon code (FKP?5K580L7$4T) to bring it down to $399. Not a blazing fast system but fine for Excel.

There are more coupon codes and deals posted at TechBargains.com (http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/50769) and FatWallet.com (http://www.fatwallet.com/store.php?store=208).

We use IBM Thinkpads at work too but the good ones are too expensive for home users.

Cheers,
Salyavin

[SoBeiT]

Thanks to you who answered. It all helps :)

[Zinia]

I just got a new Dell and I love it. Went with Centrino and 17" monitor.