How good are ASUS laptops (bang for the buck & reliability)?

[Turkish]

My mother's birthday is coming in a few weeks and after all she has done for me in the past 25 years, I want to buy her a laptop. She has a 5 year old desktop computer with heat problems, and the usb ports on the motherboard have malfunctioned (aka broke). Anyways, she was telling me that she'll probably buy herself a laptop once she has the money towards summer and I want to surprise her on the b-day.

I researched a little and see that ASUS has some pretty decent laptops for the $$$. I would like to spend $1,200-$1,300 tops, and was wondering if you all recommend ASUS? I always thought of them as a mobo company but we all know that has changed in the last few years. Probably because my own laptop is an IBM Thinkpad at 5 years and I have an HP at work (which I absolutely hate.)

Here are the specs of what I am looking at:

- Intel Core 2 Duo processor at a decent speed... not very up-to-date on these, recommendations?

- 2 or 3GBs of memory, expandable to 4GB in the future... She has a full XP Pro license, so the OS on the unit doesn't matter. Will XP Pro be able to recognize 4GB of ram? RAM is cheap these days, so I may load more on it from Crucial if I can get XP Pro recognize it all...

- More than 200 GBs of harddisk space.. is 7200rpm still rare in laptops? I am guessing since the scaling of SSD, companies don't care much about 7200rpm anymore?

- DVD/CD burner..

- 14 or 15" screen... I think it is impractical for laptops to have more than that... defeats the purpose? Anything smaller would be hard for old people to read.

- A builtin webcam


So, any help? Thanks 🙂

 

[F1shF4t]

I've been using Asus laptops for about 3 years now and never had any problems.
Have picked asus ones cause they offered the best performance per cost I could find.

My current one is in sig and costed only 1700 AU dollar which is probably around 1300 US dollars (I'm assuming thats where you are). In the past have had F3SV (1+ years old now) and F3JP (2+ years old now) models and both are still working great for my parents and brother.

Just going through your specs:

- Any Core 2 Duo will be fine, but I would recomend the 45nm ones cause they do run cooler. So something like a T8400/T8600 or in the T9000 model numbers should be fine.

- You can use two ram sticks. My one actually came with a single 2gig stick. I think only my F3JP which I had 2 years ago couldn't detect all 4 gig in bios, no remap option. Win XP will only detect around 3 gig, but then Vista will be a better choice anyways (There are probably no XP drivers), just reinstall the 64bit version.

- Its not as simple as 7200 vs 5400 rpm. The 320 5400rpm drive which came with mine was actually faster than the 200gig 7200rpm I had before. Since then I got a 500gig 5400rpm drive and it outperforms both of those drives easily.

- DVD/CD burner is standard now. Some models offer blue ray readers as well.

- 15" is probably the best screen for long use while still being portable. 14" is better for travel.

- Webcams now come standard.

Another thing which might be worth looking at is a fingerprint reader inbuilt into the laptop. I've introduced my parents to one. At first they didn't know why they needed it, but now they only use it and forgot their password. It works well when you have to do some maintenance for them too, i've registered one of my fingers so I don't have to remember their passwords. (Ofcourse now no one remembers the password to that comp 😛)

I would recomend the x56 models (Same one as mine). Has a full size keyboard with numeric keys which is a first i've seen in 15" laptops.

Hope this helps

 

[Billb2]

They make a lot of them.

Pretty much anything you could possibly want.

 

[octopus41092]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16834220488

There you go, $1050. It meets all your requirements.
14.1" screen
320GB 7200RPM
4GB RAM
9650GT should be more than enough for anything your mom does.

14.1" is probably the best if she'll be moving it around the house often or traveling. Otherwise a 15" might be a better choice.
Vista though, it's required for the 4GB of RAM to show up. You could always try to get 64-bit XP though. Another thing though is that Vista if you turn off UAC and all that crap you can get it pretty close to the same interface as XP or have her learn, shouldn't be that hard. It really isn't all that different.

 

[hans030390]

For that price, Asus has some pretty nice gaming laptops available at Best Buy. Ever since Gateway released their FX line for $1200-1300, other manufacturers have been following with similarly priced laptops with very similar internal hardware.

Of course, you can get non-gaming laptops as well. I'd recommend Best Buy, to be honest. They actually have some great deals usually.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Newegg has a nice Asus core 2 duo, 4 GB, 320 GB HD, 15.4" screen for $800 - Asus

Don't worry about 5400 vs. 7200rpm, speed has gone way up as platters have gotten denser.

You could use the extra cash to give her a year of Netflix.

 

[Brainonska511]

I've been using the an Asus W3J (specs in the link of my sig) for just over 2.5 years now. Has served me well and had no problems that I didn't cause myself - had to replace the hard drive because a book fell off my shelf while my laptop was on and open, but that's it. The chassis has held up well (though, it is just beginning to show its age), no dead pixels when I got it, runs pretty cool, despite having a MR X1600 in it. I don't know if I'd go with an Asus again (probably look at Lenovo next time), but I would definitely recommend them based on my own experience.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

I love my Asus in sig. Have been using it for 1.5 years now as my main comp and have yet to have any problems with it...touch wood.