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Need recs for casual use laptop

M

Malachai

Junior Member
Been pouring over this site and others and still feel stuck on what to get for my mother. In short, here is what she's looking for:

- ~$600 budget
- Size around 14"-15"
- Will be used for web surfing, checking email, watching videos/Netflix. She uses it a lot but for casual tasks like reading gmail and installing spyware.
- She does no gaming whatsoever
- She's impatient so speed is important. I may even put an SSD drive in it down the road.
- Quality screen is a plus
- Will be her main/only computer
- Doesn't transport it much, mostly used on her recliner or bed, so weight, portability, and battery life are nice but not big factors.
- I want to get a good brand, but not sure who that would be on the low end of the laptop spectrum.
- She'd really like backlit keys but I've already told her it would may be hard to get that in this price range.
- Doesn't require a lot of HD space

Her current laptop is dead and every day I'm having to stop her from buying some random, questionable "deal" off of QVC so waiting for better bargains probably isn't going to happen. Any help would be appreciated in stopping her from making a decision I'll end up regretting.
 
Question: What does she consider a quality screen? Display size? In this price range you are looking at the limitation to 1366x768 but for what she wants to do with it it should be fine.
 
Honestly I've not been keeping up with laptops so I'm not sure what kind of materials/finishes are used for the nicer looking displays. Basically I'd like it to be able to display sharp images and colors as opposed to how some laptops have that "dull" look. This isn't a necessity and I understand she's going to be limited considering her price range; speed is more important. However, she can sacrifice in the GPU department since she doesn't do any gaming.

She'd like a display size around 15".

I'd imagine for her that resolution should be no problem.
 
For your budget and her needs you can't go wrong with the Lenovo ThinkPad T Series Edge E520. Many T Series users don't consider it a "true" ThinkPad as it it is mid-ranged. But the Edge series is very popular and I have bought two of the first generation laptops, one for my wife and one for my daughter. They do everything on their systems that your wife does.

I have found them to be solidly built and I would choose them over any other manufacture's offering in this price range and it will certainly better than anything QVC offers. In addition Lenovo has released the second generation of Edge in conjunction with the 2nd Generation of the Intel Mobile i3, i5, and i7.

And a really nice thing is Lenovo at this time is having an eCoupon sale. Go over to their website, find the ThinkPad Series, click on the Edge, and configure the E520. If you upgraded from the i3-2300 to the i5-2410 processor you should be somewhat faster. The good thing is it comes standard with a 500 GB 7200 RPM harddrive and upgrading to the Intel Centrino Wireless N 1000 is at no cost. For color you could choose the Vibrant View over the Anti-Glare View. This configuration comes out to be $617 and if I remember correctly Lenovo ships free.

Let me know what you think.
 
Toshiba makes some good models too. I have an older A505 model and it has the 13 cell battery and I can get well over 8 hours of just searching the Internet alone. Supposedly you can get 10 hours of use off the 13 cell battery but I haven't tested it from full charge to dead so I cant verify that. I'm guessing if you just turned it on and let it sit idle it would certainly do 10 hours.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm thinking of having her go with the Thinkpad E520. I'm going to have her go by a reseller in her area and see if they have any available to take a look at one first to make sure she likes them (probably today) and get one ordered from the site tonight before the sale is off. Of course, she may be even be able to get it cheaper from the re-seller with what she wants, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'll update if I have more questions. Thanks again!
 
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