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Deals on laptops for a freshman college student ?

sze5003

sze5003

Lifer
Looks like I missed out on the black November newegg deals. Looking to buy my sister a laptop for school. She currently has a Dell inspiron 15 inch notebook that is kicking the bucket.

The i3 isn't so good on hers. So I'm thinking an i5 will be decent. She won't need all the most powerful technology. I think she's going to be doing nursing so a regular laptop should be fine. Just prefer it to be better than what she has now.

Are there any certain deals or things I should be looking for? I have not had a laptop in over 6 years and I still do not.
 
Honestly, if she's in nursing, she isn't going to need anything super-capable. Just office apps and web capabilities.

My inclination, after knowing so many people who lost laptops and computers to theft in dorms, etc. (and I went to college back when CRT iMacs were popular - you had to really WANT to steal one of those monsters) would be to get the minimum amount of machine you can get away with, and set aside the other money you would have spent for a replacement. Or two. Or spend it upfront on anti-theft insurance.

The upshot is, after their first one gets stolen, most people get a lot more paranoid about physical security - sometimes even paranoid enough.

There isn't much to distinguish a mobile i5 from a mobile i3 - they're both going to be dual core parts <error redacted> with hyperthreading. But even a mobile pentium dual core will work fine for the kinds of light multitasking that a non-nerd will be doing.

Without knowing what model Inspiron you have, but knowing that it's new enough to have an i3-something, it's probably fine. Just gummed up with dust and overheating, or loaded with spyware, or a low -end model with a slow-as-heck hard drive that would benefit a lot from some SSD-loving.
 
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There isn't much to distinguish a mobile i5 from a mobile i3 - they're both going to be dual core parts, the i5 will just have hyper threading. Mobile i3s and Mobile Pentiums will be in the same ballpark, and will work equally well.
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Sort of a side clarification, but since this has been a point of confusion for me for a while...I thought mobile i3/i5/i7 all had HT, but that mobile i5 also had turbo-boost?

Is that correct?
 
Essence_of_War said:
Sort of a side clarification, but since this has been a point of confusion for me for a while...I thought mobile i3/i5/i7 all had HT, but that mobile i5 also had turbo-boost?

Is that correct?
Click to expand...

Whoops, no you're right. Editing last post to avoid anybody reading that and getting the wrong idea.

Turbo boost wouldn't be worth much anyway, imo - it'll just throttle back when it gets toasty.
 
Right, nothing too intensive to require turbo boost. I've reinstalled windows 7 on her Dell and it's still kind of slow. Of course she has a lot of programs on there.

I guess my budget would be no more than $500. This one lasted her several years. Also, I'm not sure she would like windows 8 but oh well. I think she wanted a $400 cell phone but I think a laptop makes more sense.
 
Matt1970 said:
Black Friday is 3 weeks away.
Click to expand...

I don't want to take off black Friday and I usually hate getting up early unless I need to go to the office. There may be some good deals but I'm trying to get something online or without having to deal with hoardes of people trying to save $50 bucks.
 
sze5003 said:
Right, nothing too intensive to require turbo boost. I've reinstalled windows 7 on her Dell and it's still kind of slow. Of course she has a lot of programs on there.
Click to expand...

SSD + RAM then.

I guess my budget would be no more than $500. This one lasted her several years. Also, I'm not sure she would like windows 8 but oh well. I think she wanted a $400 cell phone but I think a laptop makes more sense.
Click to expand...

SSD + RAM + $200 iPhone. Done.
 
The proprietary Dell components suck, and the screen is about to go too lol. When you move the screen up or down the monitor gets all sorts of distortions or lines on it, eventually it goes black until you smack it a bit. Not sure if she ever dropped it but I'm guessing yes.
 
sze5003 said:
I don't want to take off black Friday and I usually hate getting up early unless I need to go to the office. There may be some good deals but I'm trying to get something online or without having to deal with hoardes of people trying to save $50 bucks.
Click to expand...

I know how you feel and I don't blame you not wanting to wait in frigid cold lines for 12 hours to save $50.

I would still wait until BF and CyberMonday, there should be some great laptop deals and some you can even buy online.

If you simply can't wait or want to see what's available, checkout a hot deals web site such as http://www.gotapex.com/
 
I know newegg has deals near black Friday or cyber Monday. I should be able to snag her something not too expensive but nice.
 
dave_the_nerd said:
SSD + RAM + $200 iPhone. Done.
Click to expand...
There's no such thing as a $200 iPhone. Well, maybe a used 4.

Is this for class? She really only needs a Chromebook. For Windows devices, note that most of the stuff you'll see on sale is last year's (3rd gen) Intels, which are fine on speed but not nearly as good on battery life as this year's (4th gen).
 
s44 said:
There's no such thing as a $200 iPhone. Well, maybe a used 4.

Is this for class? She really only needs a Chromebook. For Windows devices, note that most of the stuff you'll see on sale is last year's (3rd gen) Intels, which are fine on speed but not nearly as good on battery life as this year's (4th gen).
Click to expand...

Yea she's on metro pcs so a good phone like the galaxy s3 is $399. No way am I paying that much for another phone. My mother has to support her and my younger brother and she doesn't make much so I help out as much as I can afford. But I think it's stupid to spend that on just a phone.

I mean my parents got me a card and 50-100 bucks for Xmas when I was her age. Don't know why I get crap if I give my siblings the same thing.
 
sze5003 said:
Looks like I missed out on the black November newegg deals. Looking to buy my sister a laptop for school. She currently has a Dell inspiron 15 inch notebook that is kicking the bucket.

The i3 isn't so good on hers. So I'm thinking an i5 will be decent. She won't need all the most powerful technology. I think she's going to be doing nursing so a regular laptop should be fine. Just prefer it to be better than what she has now.

Are there any certain deals or things I should be looking for? I have not had a laptop in over 6 years and I still do not.
Click to expand...

What generation Core i3 did she have? Was it an ULV or standard voltage?
 
I have not really looked into it but the laptop was bought 2010. I lived with my parents until 2010 and she didn't have a laptop then. So it was pretty much the very first i3 that I remember. I know the newer generations are a bit quicker.

Besides that, the screen is on it's last bit of life, if you slightly move it at times it freezes or goes off.

Not sure about a chromebook, most classes use MS word which should be fine with Google docs but she has a lot of pics and music so an internal hd is a must I think. If it was for me a chromebook would be cool, as I like to dabble with open source code and such.
 
sze5003 said:
I have not really looked into it but the laptop was bought 2010. I lived with my parents until 2010 and she didn't have a laptop then. So it was pretty much the very first i3 that I remember. I know the newer generations are a bit quicker.

Besides that, the screen is on it's last bit of life, if you slightly move it at times it freezes or goes off.
Click to expand...

Okay, so its an arrandale.

I did some more checking and it looks like those Dell Inspiron 15s came with Standard voltage processors. (Makes sense considering I believe it was billed as Desktop replacement laptop.)

So your sister's current laptop has some good power.

If it was an ULV Arrandale, the answer would have been very easy----> Any modern 17 watt ULV celeron would be so much faster and those come very cheap.
 
s44 said:
Btw, since Metro got bought by T-Mo, I believe she can just go in and get a SIM that will work on any T-Mo compatible device. This broadens the field a lot.
Click to expand...

Nice thanks for that. I think her galaxy admire has a SIM from metro. I may just look and see if a tmobile SIM works in her phone. I've bought my phone from swappa there are lots of decent used devices on there.
 
Probably won't work in her actual phone, since Metro was using different protocols. But she can switch from the legacy Metro network to the new (T-Mo one) by swapping SIMs at the local store.
 
I'll do some research and see if I get a tmobile phone on swappa, if I take it in and have them put a SIM in and activate it. Hopefully it rolled out to my area too because I haven't heard anything. But I knew for a while they would be merging.
 
sze5003 said:
Looks like I missed out on the black November newegg deals. Looking to buy my sister a laptop for school. She currently has a Dell inspiron 15 inch notebook that is kicking the bucket.

The i3 isn't so good on hers. So I'm thinking an i5 will be decent. She won't need all the most powerful technology. I think she's going to be doing nursing so a regular laptop should be fine. Just prefer it to be better than what she has now.

Are there any certain deals or things I should be looking for? I have not had a laptop in over 6 years and I still do not.
Click to expand...

The i3 isn't enough? What does she need to do exactly? I suspect it's the usual mix of windows slow down over time+crapware+lack of ram+lack of SSD

I'd look into a refurbished thinkpad, they are fugly (a matter of taste, I like them) but very well built.
http://www.ktgee.net/post/49423737148/thinkpad-guide
 
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SammichPG said:
The i3 isn't enough? What does she need to do exactly? I suspect it's the usual mix of windows slow down over time+crapware+lack of ram+lack of SSD

I'd look into a refurbished thinkpad, they are fugly (a matter of taste, I like them) but very well built.
http://www.ktgee.net/post/49423737148/thinkpad-guide
Click to expand...

Yeah it's the general slowness of windows and stuff with laptops like that over time. But I'm sure she's dropped it before since the screen is wonky and wireless goes on and off. I like the thinkpads even though they are ugly. I'll need to check those out too.
 
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/null/sel...at315200050006

Free Skullcandy (lol, I know, but free is free) with one of these Toshiba laptops. TBH I have a feeling even the $230 one will be enough for your sister, since it's an IVB Celeron, but if you want to put another $100 for the higher clocked IVB Pentium Dual Core and 2GB more memory you could do that too, it's just not as good of a value. The more expensive Toshibas aren't worth looking at here. BB/OfficeDepot/Staples/etc have varying sorts of budget IVB i3 models for less than $400 and I would assume IVB i5 for sub-$500 if you care to look and spend that much.

If the current Inspiron was indeed dropped, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some HDD damage to it as well. I guess it might not matter though if the screen is still messed up.
 
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