I’m looking at the Toshiba Satellite P500-BT2G23 Laptop as configured and priced here
Criticize or praise this purchase for me.
Does that seriously say 18.4"?
yeah – i like laptops that are basically portable desktops. Even the smallest laptops bother me on my lap, and I very rarely find myself in situations I would need to rely on battery power.
So is that a good price/performance or can I do better with another vendor?
A coworker bought that (or another 18 inch) Toshiba recently. Had a hard time finding a backpack that fit it.
I wound up choosing (and ordering) the HP that stusser linked here
Amazon next day shipping? YES PLEASE
The resolution is a bit low. For such a big laptop, I would not settle for anything lower than 1920x1080. But they don’t give you a choice, do they?
No modem. REALLY?!?
Also, it would be good to go visit some brick-and-mortars and actually touch the unit. There’re differences such as build quality and keyboard feel that can’t be conveyed by the picture. Also, the current Toshiba laptops have a turbine for a CPU fan, so you don’t need to run Task Manager to know that your background anti-virus has just started running. It’s in all their Tecra M-series, and even in the R700.
I must have gotten screwed. My 17" Dell is 1440x900. Then again, it was also manufactured a bit less than 6 years ago.
Presumably you can get an external modem to sit next to your floppy drive. Just don’t keep them on the dot-matrix printer, because the vibrations can wear them out.
Those external modems are tough to use…the cups don’t form a perfect seal around the iphone speaker/mic.
Great suggestions! I’m looking for something more portable than the monster 17" or 18"… 15 is about as big as I will go and I’m still thinking about the 13" MBP.
I was thinking about getting an SSD card but really, is it worth adding 500 to the price?? Do I really need that much speed?? The toshiba r705 looks nice… not a big fan of noise though…
The Dell laptops that our company uses, Latitude E4310 (13") and E5610 (14"), seems to be very nicely built, and steadily quiet through CPU spikes. Since they are the workhorses of the business line, you can customize them to the high heavens. Pay as much or as little as you want…
Dell is also advertising their new Vostro V130 in Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada constantly, and it looks sweet, is only 3.5 lbs…but it’s using the ultra low voltage versions of i3 and i5, so it’s not as powerful. I’d consider it if I wasn’t doing anything heavy duty like video editing or something.
There’s a few people with Lenovos at work, too. They all have very positive opinions on their laptops, so that’s another choice for you. I don’t know the models, though.
And don’t forget the famous Alienware M11x, if ultimately you want to game on the laptop.
Yeah, I’ll look at the dells and the lenovos. My wife and mother-in-law have dells and I haven’t been terribly impressed with them, (the wife has a vostro 1400) But I’ll look at the other models. Also the Lenovos.
As far as a gaming laptop… if I get one, I probably won’t have the self-restraint to do anything BUT game on it. At one point I had to uninstall the windows card games… its’ pretty sick…
I recommend the largest screen size, at least 4GB of ram and at least 6 hours battery life. Anything less than that and you’re getting ripped off.
which laptop has 6 hours of battery life?? I’ve not seen that anywhere!
I’m settling on getting the MBP. The combination of the discount + inheritance + wanting to try something new + everyone I talk to who has one LOVES it is almost sealing the deal for me.
The question is now more: 13 or 15 and which speed? Would you spring for a SSD? 4mb or 8mb of ram?
6 hours of battery life? Beats me, but it’s probably using a 9-cell battery instead of the normal 6-cell battery. The bigger battery usually adds about 1 pound or less of weight. You will have to decide if this is an acceptable tradeoff. Do google search for reviews of your interested laptop model number, to see what the real-world battery life is like. (For example, even though Toshiba R700 claims 6 hours using 6-cell battery, most people report 4 hours.)
I’m in the market for a sub-$500 laptop. I would like more than 8GB RAM and an i5 at least, and am willing to forgo a touchscreen and gaming video card. Any recommendations for Xmas '19?
There are a few out I’ve seen at the moment:
Acer Spin 3 SP314-53N-53SH 14" Notebook, Intel i5, 8GB Memory, 256GB SSD, Windows 10, Silver
Lenovo® Flex Laptop, 14" Touch Screen, AMD Ryzen 5, 8GB Memory, 256GB Solid State Drive, Windows® 10, 81SS0000US
There should be more coming, but you need or Christmas delivery right, not after?
https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/2907886/Lenovo-Flex-Laptop-14-Touch-Screen/
This guy is getting some buzz.
Coupon Code: BF19ACER makes it 539.99
recertified:
And this one goes under 500 with same coupon
I have no real experience with Acer Recertified products, but my dell was recertified so I am not against the idea entirely. (dell CSR still sucks though)
Wow, I did not get notified of your posts! Thanks for looking into the topic. No I don’t need them before Christmas.
No problem.
I am pretty sure I didn’t post this since it’s BH: 399
Biggest downside here is it’s not a SSD. You may or may not be able to swap it out that easily depending on how the access is to that space though.