looking for a good laptop in the $500 range

[herm0016]

i am looking for a Laptop for a friend in the 14 to 15 inch range, used for pictures, mp3s, internet for traveling around with. budget is from 400 to 500ish. I looked at the acer:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115346
and the thinkpad:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834146186

I plan on adding what ever i have to to make 1 gig of ram as a gift when i see her in may.

I'm not sure whether vista is a good idea or not, but it looks like for new stuff we are pretty much stuck with it. If a good deal used came along i could probably convince her to get it.

the only thing i am kinda concerned about it HD space. she has a nice DSLR and takes a lot of pictures. I would like to stick with a P-m, Cely M or core but will consider an AMD if the price is really really good.
Anything will be better than the p3 128mb 10 gig HD toughbook that she has now (which will my new in-car gps and topographical map machine!)

what do you think about those 2 machines ( i like the acer better). any other options or good places to look?

thanks

 

[herm0016]

come on, you all reply to the other guys threads. I have searched on my own. what do you think of the 2 choices and what other suggestions do you have?

 

[geecee]

^ This forum doesn't get as much traffic as you think.

As for your two choices, it really doesn't matter that much (performance-wise) for what it's going to used for. I've heard some people talk negatively about the build quality on lowend Acers, but I haven't had any problem with mine (though it's a P3 from 5+ years ago). The Acer has more memory, a bigger HD, isn't a refurb (if that bothers you) and comes with Vista (which supposedly has some decent photo organization features). On the downside, the Cel-M might be a little slower than the P-M (maybe not much as the Celly is running on the 533 bus vs. the P-M's 400) and definitely more power hungry (i.e. shorter battery life). Really aside from the fact it's a Thinkpad and the battery life might be better, I think the Acer is the better buy.

Staples was running a deal a week or two ago on a "Pentium Dual-Core" T2060 Acer that was around the same weight, 5 lbs. It had Vista Home Premium, 1GB memory and a DVD burner on top of that for $599 I believe. Might want to see if that's going to come back as that's probably a much better deal at just $100 more, though it will stretch your budget a bit.
EDIT: This Acer.

EDIT2: This was in hot deals and is not bad for $500. But it is a bigger, heavier machine and uses a Turion instead.

 

[Plester]

got the acer for a friend from newegg a while back - surprisingly nice lappy for the money - definitely recommended.