I am a die-hard Apple fan, i'm pretty sure I swore that I would never buy a PC and I just bought an iPad 2, witch I love and use daily. But we were told that a laptop was highly recommended for school next year. Ideally I would just bring my iPad, but it's not worth the risk of my $800 purchase being stolen or broken (plus my parents won't let me). So I need a laptop, nothing fancy but it needs to be dirt cheap (under $350) so I don't need to worry about anything happening to it. I guess I will settle for a PC . Reccomendations? Even a place to buy an older, refurb Mac on the cheap? I just need it for taking notes, creating presentations and documents. Thanks for the help guys.
asus=good quality. acer=worst quality. hp= good quality too, but not like asus. Better find something with 3-year warranty. Oh and also, for 350$ or less you're probably looking into netbooks, so you should consider an asus eeepc.
been doing some research on this. best buy (for whatever reason), has the best deals for laptops at that price point only. their $350 laptops with the same build type and specs (hp with a-350 APU, dell inspirons with amd x2, etc.) are equivalent to $400 ones elsewhere. anything beyond that though, they have you paying $500 for amd dual cores and such. you can pick up a sandy bridge i3 off of newegg for around $450 if you are willing to up your budget. a lot of these have a one year warranty. oh, and if you want to go well under $350, there's this silly compaq guy on best buy that a lot of people seem to buy. it looks like a pos though. pretty ugly specs considering what you can get if you go up about $70. you won't find a $350 laptop with good specs for the price with a better warranty really (mainly referring to the A-350 APU $350 models). i hope someone takes that as a challenge, as i am looking for a laptop at this exact price point as well.
I am actually looking towards netbooks, I just need it for taking notes and maybe powerpoint, because I would still do almost all media, web browsing and email on my iPad. It just needs to be small and light enough to take back and forth to school everyday. (and as cheap as possible)
Don't forget that at BestBuy if you try to buy in-store they will force you to buy their "optimized" systems. http://consumerist.com/2011/06/if-y...ter-best-buy-wont-sell-you-any-computers.html
read that just now, pretty ridiculous. if that's true for in-store, you can still just buy the list-priced item online, yeah?
Just remember, for $300 you're definitely getting what you paid for. Personally, I'd look at the Dell Vostro 3450. It's $500, and in Dell's business section, but it's a really nice machine, and well worth the money.