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Best $300 notebook?

Gunslinger08

Gunslinger08

Lifer
My mom is looking to get her first notebook for general web surfing and playing typical flash games (think Bejeweled and Yahoo games). She wants to spend around $300. I'm thinking a 14" or 15" notebook will be best for her, with a balance of weight and screen/keyboard size. What do you recommend?
 
Good luck finding a new laptop for $300... unless you happen across a black friday deal or some other similar. However, for less than $400 you can definitely get something. There are some Celeron based Toshibas for $329 if you look in the hot deals section here.

Personally I picked up an Acer 15.6" screen laptop with a single core cpu for $329 at Newegg (a back to school special) and it has been great.

I could be wrong, you may find a non-netbook laptop for $300 but I'm thinking its going to be hard.

Sorry I don't have any specific recommendations because all of the laptops are over $300 that come to mind. You might want to check out this article http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3612

also here is that hot deals link: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2019213


I'd jump on that Acer laptop... that is a steal... generally lightweight, lots of ram, great os, excellent battery life. can't go wrong with that. I didn't think my Acer would be any good but I actually love it.
 
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I just saw the Toshiba in Hot Deals. That looks like a pretty good deal and should handle everything she wants to do with it. She was looking at some used laptops on Overstock that were pretty overpriced. That Toshiba for only $30 more than old laptops with 1.6ghz Pentium M's, 512 megs of RAM, and Windows XP seems great. Thanks!
 
My brother has the Toshiba you are looking at and its been good... they haven't reported any problems with it in about a month. Sufficiently fast, good wi-fi and enough ram. Upgraded to Vista sp2 and thats about it.

edit- just noticed it now has 7 home premium. Thats awesome that Microsoft got rid of Home Basic (at least in the U.S.)
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Staples always has a recurring Compaq dual core 15.6" laptop for sale around $349.99, don't settle for anything less.
 
joshsquall said:
My mom is looking to get her first notebook for general web surfing and playing typical flash games (think Bejeweled and Yahoo games). She wants to spend around $300. I'm thinking a 14" or 15" notebook will be best for her, with a balance of weight and screen/keyboard size. What do you recommend?
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I would recommend that you wait a few weeks. Not only will there be some Black Friday deals that may fit your pocketbook, but the Dell Outlet should have a resonable inventory of returns from early Windows 7 buyers. That's not saying that Windows 7 will be the reason for returns, just that all vendors will saw an uptick in sales last week and that as usual, a certain number will decide they don't really need a new machine. The result will be an increase in inventory in the Outlet in late November.
 
In general you get what you pay for if your expecting to pay that little. Fortunately, words like "Good" and "Best" are relative terms, so if your looking for the best piece of crap out of a larger pile of crap, then you'll find one eventually. But its still crap. The price/performance ratio is just too aweful at those prices, and it will become a paperweight much too fast. If you start at a $400-600 price point, you'll find that you have many more options and the quality is better.
 
MStele said:
In general you get what you pay for if your expecting to pay that little. Fortunately, words like "Good" and "Best" are relative terms, so if your looking for the best piece of crap out of a larger pile of crap, then you'll find one eventually. But its still crap. The price/performance ratio is just too aweful at those prices, and it will become a paperweight much too fast. If you start at a $400-600 price point, you'll find that you have many more options and the quality is better.
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I don't see the system requirements for checking email and playing flash games going up too much any time soon. Care to back up your statement with some facts?
 
Ksyder said:
I don't see the system requirements for checking email and playing flash games going up too much any time soon. Care to back up your statement with some facts?
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Its about product quality and general usability. I'm not arguing that the hardware included wouldn't be adequate to check email and play flash games, but that in that price range corners tend to be cut, but in places that aren't always apparent: Small/slower hard drives, low ram, low resolution displays, budget cpus, battery life....any of number of things. Build quality is also a issue.

There is nothing wrong with buying cheap computers, but there is a line where a computer is simply not worth the money given the sum of its parts, and that line tends to be at around $400 in the current market. Does it mean you won't find good deals at $300? Of course not, because sales happen and prices drop...or in some cases, there is a genuinely good product, but in general, what I am saying holds true.
 
MStele said:
Its about product quality and general usability. I'm not arguing that the hardware included wouldn't be adequate to check email and play flash games, but that in that price range corners tend to be cut, but in places that aren't always apparent: Small/slower hard drives, low ram, low resolution displays, budget cpus, battery life....any of number of things. Build quality is also a issue.
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None of these are issues on the laptops discussed here...I know this because I own a cheaper Acer than the one above, and my brother has the Toshiba. They are both fine laptops, price non-withstanding. Battery life is about 3 hours on both, which is sufficient. Sure the hard drives are 160 gb but we knew that when we bought it. Compared to any of my older laptops they are better because they use modern hardware.

I wouldn't disagree that a $500+ machine is going to be nicer in every way but the point is that these machines are good enough to use if you are on a budget.
 
MStele said:
In general you get what you pay for if your expecting to pay that little. Fortunately, words like "Good" and "Best" are relative terms, so if your looking for the best piece of crap out of a larger pile of crap, then you'll find one eventually. But its still crap. The price/performance ratio is just too aweful at those prices, and it will become a paperweight much too fast. If you start at a $400-600 price point, you'll find that you have many more options and the quality is better.
Click to expand...

Meh, I bought a $350 HP laptop from Walmart 4 years ago on Black Friday. It has a Sempron running at 1.6ghz, 768megs of ram (upgraded from 256), and a 40 gig hard drive. I've never had a problem with it and it runs Windows 7 (with fancy theme) just fine. It's been the perfect laptop for web surfing, watching videos, etc. I can even play older games like Warcraft 3 and Heroes of Might and Magic on it. My mom's requirements were even lower than my own, so I don't think she'll be disappointed with the Toshiba. I had her order with a credit card, so her warranty is doubled to 2 years.
 
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