http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...mpareItemList=N82E16834280004,N82E16834115368 Those are the 2 laptops I'm debating over. The Acer has .4 GHz more CPU speed and 20 extra GB of HDD space, but the battery life is shorter, the graphics card has shared memory!, and there looks like there may be some driver issues. I will be putting Ubuntu Linux on it right away. What do you guys think? If you know of a better deal for a sub $850 laptop, a link would be appreciated.
All I can say is that Ubuntu will spare you alot of heartache. I'll be making this an all Linux system as soon as I can get the Wine codecs to work so I'll be able to run CS2 on it.
Have you considered a core 2 duo processor? In my opinion they offer the most bang for your buck at the moment. I'd search around eBay, you can always find awesome deals on there. I did a quick search and found this: http://cgi.ebay.com/HP-DV8000-INTEL-DUO-2GHZ-1GB-100GB-DVDRW-17-DV8000T_W0QQitemZ140135920360QQihZ004QQcategoryZ140082QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Although I only looked briefly, this seems like a good deal; although more indepth searching would surely yield better results. Hope this helps somewhat.
dells are garbage. do not what-so-ever buy a dell. they'll die on you then the company fucks you over.
I prefer AMD over Intel, even at the expense of a little performance. I'm an AMD guy through and through and vote with my pocketbook, so it has to be an AMD processor haha.
I almost entirely agree. I always reformat Dells for anyone I know that buys them and they still manage to crash after six months or less.
I was the same way man, but the core 2 duo offers excellent performance and is very affordable, I would definately consider making a switch. But, if you're dead set on an AMD, I'd still take my advice regarding eBay, plenty of good deals to be found.
Stay away from Acer, seriously, and Everex laptops look even scarier. I recommend that you build your own Dell laptop, it'll save you trouble in the future and will be better suited for your needs. Dell has fairly good customer service too. I normally wouldn't recommend a Dell, but anything is better than an Acer (especially a Dell) IMHO. This one here seems to suit your price range and you can upgrade system components. http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DNCWJA1&s=dhs&sm=2 On this model, if you want the DVD/CD burner it is only an extra 40$. There are other models on the site you may want to look into as well.
Acer is not a bad company at all. I have a 22" LCD that I just bought from Acer and it's great. My good nerd friend has an acer laptop, and he loves it. You can't beat the price. And fuck Dell support, I can figure my shit out on my own. Their customer service is decent, but they can't beat the price of this acer. I think I'm going with the Acer. I'm gonna try to get my money back from the Vista CD that I won't ever open or use. Thanks for all the input. Nah, I gotta keep voting for AMD with pocketbook. I was extremely pissed at Apple when they contracted with Intel over AMD when they made their processor switch to x86. They could have easily chosen AMD which woulda helped the competition. Competition is always good for the customer. AMD FTW!
Another thing to look at, just incase no one else had noticed... The Acer looks like it has a year warranty, unlike the Everex. That could come in handy, depending on how good you are at working on laptops.
I saw this thread title and thought: Great, another college freshmen that needs a laptop... Hes probably going to mention a dell or gateway, then I'm going to come into this thread and tell them how much they suck, and how the only brands to buy for laptops are ACER or ASUS... Then I saw the words Acer, actual specs, and your a lunux user... If you can sudo apt-get your way around an OS you can handle buying a laptop. Just look out for driver issues if your going to run linux... And be careful dual-booting. 5400RPM discs can be slow (check out the latency times) Heres the laptop I'm buying for college. If it can play BF2 on all high settings, it can do anything. Newegg.com - ASUS G Series G1-AK024C NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T7200(2.00GHz) 15.4" Wide SXGA+ 2GB DDR2 667 160GB 5400rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce Go 7700 - Retail
Hehe, yeah I don't really fit that user base . I'm buying this laptop b/c I just turned 18 and my parents agreed to pay half of the laptop as my birthday present. But yeah Linux ftw! I've been using different distros for 4 or 5 years now (Slackware, Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, DSL, Knoppix, Slax) and last year I decided Ubuntu was the route to go for now. I did check the reviews for the Acer and someone said Ubuntu recognized almost all of the hardware right away. And fuck dual booting, I plan on never using vista once and sending it back in hope of getting the money for the OS back.