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Advice for parents laptop ~ $350.00 range.

i think the deal sites saying BB had some sandy bridge based pentium 14" HP laptop for the same money also
 
The e350 is actually a very nice chip but it does better in a netbook. The Lenovo x120e is popular but temporarily unavaliable due to the set-backs from the earthquake in India, i.e. the screen shortage (though their outlet has a few). HP offers some decent systems/prices using the brand new Fusion A4, A6, and A8 cpus. They also offere their own e350 netbook as well. You can configure as you want.

Best Buy has an AMD dual-core A4 laptop in 14" for $380.00 including 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM and a 320 gig harddrive.
 
Thanks all. They want the numberpad for excel! anything less than 15.6 wont have that, AND they didnt like the idea of a numberpad accessory... they want it all... and they want me to find it, since im the tech-guy in the fam!
 
Advice for people who want a $350 laptop:

"Please, please don't do it. You will not be happy with the piece of crap you will be stuck with".
 
Phynaz said:
Advice for people who want a $350 laptop:

"Please, please don't do it. You will not be happy with the piece of crap you will be stuck with".
Click to expand...

Well I have to disagree with that; it really depends on the target user.

My parents will not open 10 tabs let alone 20 or 30, will not have multiple office apps running, will not convert music or videos, etc... they will have large pp/excel files while listening to music, and occasionally surf the web all at the same time (that lvl of use might happen twice a month or so).

The model i linked may also entice them to video chat while doing all those things as well, who knows...

So an e350 with 8 gigs should do the trick for a long time.

An i3/b940 with HD3000 would work just as well but are not in that price range. i would not go for hd2000 or anything less than that since the future is looking more and more graphics rich.

other than that, ease-of-use (number pad), and battery are most important. Again that model also has some extra features that make it stand out.

anyone know where this is sold? So parents need a new laptop, and i am looking for the best e350 deal. i could be convinced to go for an intel machine, but at this price range i dont think intel offers anything so compelling and future proof.

this is the best deal so far:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Lenovo+-...=1218347171491

Side question: would the e350 with 8 gigs 1600 ram (to reduce timings), no page filing, and a 120gig SSD perform better than an i3 2310?

just saying; SSD's make a hell of a difference, and the cheap e350 makes the combo price close enough.
 
I got a $350 laptop from BF 2009, it had 15.6" 1366x768, dual athlon, HD3200, 4GB/320GB, 48 WHR/6 cell battery/4hr run time, win7 64 and it worked great for casual use for almost 2 years.
 
Toshiba Satellite L750-BT4N22 15.6-in 2nd Gen Core i3 2.1GHz Laptop

Link above is to the deal website I found it in. Blazing hot deal for a current-gen laptop. Here's the direct link.

It's a little more than your target budget, but it's definitely a lot more future-proof than the E-350. With internet apps/website content becoming more and more feature-rich CPU power will be a factor to consider. For the price it's a ridiculously hot deal.
 
Last edited:
Schadenfreude said:
Toshiba Satellite L750-BT4N22 15.6-in 2nd Gen Core i3 2.1GHz Laptop

Link above is to the deal website I found it in. Blazing hot deal for a current-gen laptop. Here's the direct link.

It's a little more than your target budget, but it's definitely a lot more future-proof than the E-350. With internet apps/website content becoming more and more feature-rich CPU power will be a factor to consider. For the price it's a ridiculously hot deal.
Click to expand...

That is a great deal!

But like i questioned in the OP would an e-350 laptop with 8 gigs 1333/1600 (no page-filing) and a SSD come close and even exceed a stock i3-2310 (exceed in graphics that is)?

Also, if the next 5 years are like the last 5, then most laptop work will stress gpu's far more than cpu's. To me this is clear, and is backed up by INTEL moving to release more/most cpus w/HD3000 and finally giving the masses some HD/3D love.

My experience: I run "MOST" content just fine with a 1st gen CORE cpu (1-core @ 1.73 GHz), BUT ONLY because my laptop has a x700 gpu. It's just starting to limit me now.

Finally - I fell like the e350 gpu (w/ddr 1333/1600) is better than HD3000+w/i3. Usually, the price difference allows for the extra mem and SSD. This is a real big deal for me since i know how much of a real-life-experience improvement a SSD can make. So i want/must include it in the setup (put the original HDD in a storage case as a bonus). All for my parents and some friends who may walk into W*mart and ask why cant we just buy this 299 one?

that's my dilemma, build a noticeably quick rig for average users. so startup time, battery life (very important), features, weight, heat, current-simple 3D games, and future-simple 3D/HD content.

I would really like your opinions. Thank you.
 
Last edited:
oceanrock said:
That is a great deal!

But like i questioned in the OP would an e-350 laptop with 8 gigs 1333/1600 (no page-filing) and a SSD come close and even exceed a stock i3-2310 (exceed in graphics that is)?

Also, if the next 5 years are like the last 5, then most laptop work will stress gpu's far more than cpu's. To me this is clear, and is backed up by INTEL moving to release more/most cpus w/HD3000 and finally giving the masses some HD/3D love.

. . ..
Click to expand...

Well if you consider that the E-350's CPU speed is on par with Pentium 4-level speeds and that the HD3000 is a vast improvement on the older IGPs (I believe - off the top of my head - that it is similar to the Nvidia Geforce 210/310M in performance) I'd still think that the SB+HD3K laptop (coincidentally, the one I recommended 😛) is the way to go over the E-350 APU especially for non-gaming users (outside of a facebook game, say).

- Another way to think about it: if you get an E-350 system w/ the upgrades, you're going to end up spending about the same amount of $$$ and you're pretty much maxing out on performance right out of the box, which is limiting the hardware's functional lifespan. With an SB/HD3000 system, it's plenty fast out-of-the box without any upgrades and you can upgrade to an SSD say, a year or two down the road when prices drop, effectively extending its lifespan that much more.

I'd suggest against going the 8-gig RAM route. There's currently no general end-user program or programs that warrant that much RAM and won't be for the foreseeable future, even if you've got ~10 tabs open in your web browser, music blaring and have several word docs open.
 
Thanks Schadenfreude - you are right about page-filing, however with mem so cheap it seems silly not to go for 8gigs...
 
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Okay, i went a little nuts... so i just ordered lappy#1 and will pick up lappy#2 tomorrow morning.

1) http://www.staples.com/Acer-Aspire-T...product_332980 - i3-2310, 4gb, 640 hdd, internal 6-cell high capacity batt. $426

2) http://www.staples.com/Acer-Aspire-A...product_333649 - E350, 4gb, 500 hdd, average 6-cell batt. $330

I plan to test the systems stock, then bloatware free, then the e350 with ddr1333 and 1600, then with a ssd and clean windows 7 pro.

Any complete benchmarks you all want me to run?

if the i3-2310 just screams then, i may keep it for myself (more power than parents need) otherwise, i think i will go for a6-3400 for ~$480

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Gateway+...&skuId=3005237
 
Instead of starting a new thread, this one was very relevant.

Just upgraded my MOM , to this new laptop, featuring the Sandy B940
Its got 4gb ddr3, web cam, num keyboard.
Imho, its one of the better 350.00 laptop I've seen at Best Buy (brand new), we will gift her celeron 900 to my niece.
Just put yahoo messenger for video chat on it,(Summer,Florida home) playing with it, it's quick, responsive and quite lighter than the 2 year old CompaQ cel900 replacing.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+...ef=10&slloc=01


 
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notty22 said:
Instead of starting a new thread, this one was very relevant.

Just upgraded my MOM , to this new laptop, featuring the Sandy B940
Its got 4gb ddr3, web cam, num keyboard.
Imho, its one of the better 350.00 laptop I've seen at Best Buy (brand new), we will gift her celeron 900 to my niece.
Just put yahoo messenger for video chat on it,(Summer,Florida home) playing with it, it's quick, responsive and quite lighter than the 2 year old CompaQ cel900 replacing.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Toshiba+...ef=10&slloc=01
Click to expand...

you should really reconsider and think about the ACER E350 system with an additional 4gb mem stick. my E350 w/ 4gb vs i3-2310 w/ 4gb experiment was a real surprise to me with the E350 providing a smoother and more pleasurable basic user experience.
 
I can tell you that the i3-2310 w/o dGPU (ACER timelineX 5830T), was faster, but not as smooth (responsive and enjoyable) as an ACER Aspire AS5253-BZ849 equipped with an E350!

The i3 was constantly shifting its speed and spent most of the time at ~800 mhz and 20%utilization, the E350 spent most of the time at 1.2/1.6 ghz with 50-80%utilization. it still lasted 4-8 hours and kept real cool the whole time. the i3 was a bit louder, jerky, not as cool, but lasted 8-12 hours. Also, it cost $100 more...

Go figure???
 
oceanrock said:
The i3 was constantly shifting its speed and spent most of the time at ~800 mhz and 20%utilization, the E350 spent most of the time at 1.2/1.6 ghz with 50-80%utilization. it still lasted 4-8 hours and kept real cool the whole time. the i3 was a bit louder, jerky, not as cool, but lasted 8-12 hours. Also, it cost $100 more...
Click to expand...

Doesn't that clearly indicate how much faster the i3 is when it is idling at it's minimum clock speed while the E-350 is nearly maxed out at full speed? If you decide to use the laptops for something more demanding the E-350 is allready at it's limit while the i3 has plenty of power to scale.

As the owner of a sandy bridge laptop (Core i5 2410m) I have a very hard time seeing how the E-350 could possibly deliver a superior experience vs the i3 and Anandtech's review of the Asus K53E supports that conclusion.
 
The SB Pentium is a good choice. Thats baloney ,that power gating features are causing some kind of jerkiness. I have power saving features active in bios and windows on my desktop. If anything needs more cpu cycles, if your computer is not suffering from some other problem. You would never notice a 'lag'.
 
i have both a dell vostro with i3 2310M, 8GB ram, 128GB SSD and an acer aspire one with AMD C60, 4GB ram, 128GB SSD.

Both win7 64 bit, with plenty of ram and ssd, in certain uses you can tell the C60 is a much, much slower cpu than the i3.
Especially when installing windows updates, even for the same exact update, the C60 is many times slower than the i3.

I guess i am just reiterating the obvious, there is no way the AMD bobcat type cpus are anywhere near the same level as intel sandybridge cpus.

This is not to say the E/C series are bad, not at all. For light and casual use the acer netbook with lots of ram and ssd is snappy and responsive.
For the price and size they are great products, but for 13+ inch computers and disregarding cost the sandy bridge is a much much higher performing part.

Quite frankly i think it's a little bit stupid that the OEMs build 14+ inch laptops with bobcat cpus.
 
quick and dirty;

dell vostro with i3 2310M, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, windows experience;
cpu 6.4
ram 7.3
2D 6.3
3D 6.3
disk 6.9

acer aspire with AMD C60, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, windows experience;
cpu 3.3
ram 4.9
2D 4.1
3D 5.5
disk 6.7
 
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