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cheap laptop for email/web occasional dev work

M

merk

Senior member
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834256863
$364 HP Pavillion AMD A6-4400M 2.7GHz amd 7520g gpu

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834312428
$379 Lenovo I3 3120M 2.5ghz Intel HD 4000 gpu

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834230960
$399 Asus A8-4500M 1.90ghz amd 7640g GPU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834230975
$414 Asus I5 3210M 2.5ghz Intel HD 4000 gpu

They are all 15.6 inches and come with 4gb of ram. I don't care about the HD since I have a spare 120gb ssd I'm going to stick in it. And if it comes with just a single 4gb stick I'll probably pick up another 4gb stick to put in there as well.

Any suggestions on which of the above to get? I'm leaning towards the HP or the Asus with the I5 cpu.

This is just going to be mainly for email/browsing and the occasional bit of dev work (visual studio/sql) when I'm traveling, which probably wont be very often. Would have been nice if i could do a bit of gaming but i'm pretty sure none of these will let me play anything even on the lowest settings unless it's a 10 year old game.
 
The A8 will actually do some gaming on low/med settings, but it'll be quite hot if you do.

Personally, if its the traveling unit and needs to be fairly reliable on the road: I'd buy a cheap thinkpad or vostro on the outlet with a decent service plan. Probably going to be closer to $600 that way, but you'll have good coverage if you need it. Keep an eye on the coupons with both companies and make sure you call them if you want to save every last dime.

Barring that, I would pick the i5 Asus from your list. Best of luck.
 
I'm not super worried about reliability. I mean i don't want it to fall apart 2 months after i buy it 🙂 But I only travel occasionally. And it's more for an occasional urgent task/emergency that might pop up while I'm traveling. That's why i want to keep it pretty cheap since it'll probably be spending most of it's time in a closet.
 
I would go with the i5 since it is only slightly more expensive than the i3. If I were going to go AMD, I would try to find an A10, but those are in the 500.00 range.

The i5 has turbo to 3.1ghz, while the i3 does not. An A10 would give you better graphics than intel, but the A8 has only 256 shaders vs 384 in the A10 so may not be much faster than HD4000.
 
Yeah I think I'm leaning towards the I5 as well. Plus i found someone on craigslist selling a t410 thinkpad (which is an I5 2.5ghz) for $400, so I think I'm going to pick that up.
 
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