Cheapish, newish Laptop..........

[Vossy 10+ year member]

If you're lucky you might be able to pick up this 2nd gen i5 for $299-$349..

MSI i5 Core 2nd Gen 2410M 500GB HDD laptop $399.92 or $349.92 w/ MSI rebate only at B&M Office Depot Clearance - Slickdeals.net

 

[Sleeklsc 5,000+ posts]

.............

 

[jdawg90 10+ year member]

Used Lenovo Thinkpad T series off of Ebay.

look into a refurbished asus g50vt-x5, they were over a grand a few years ago but can be had for cheap, if you can find one. Has a GTS 9800m i believe

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

look into a refurbished asus g50vt-x5, they were over a grand a few years ago but can be had for cheap, if you can find one. Has a GTS 9800m i believe

Haha, OP, if you want your battery to last more than an hour and fifteen minutes, don't look into getting a laptop with a dedicated video card, especially an older one. I have a Gateway P6860FX from '08, and it had an 8800M GTS. With my brightness turned completely down, with power saver battery settings, etc., I still only get a little over an hour battery life. The battery's three years old so it obviously could be better, but it never lasted more than two hours at the most.

 

[Sleeklsc 5,000+ posts]

Haha, thanks for the heads up on that.

How do these stats look? Windows 7, x64, 4gb ram, 2.0ghz, intel core duo, and the avail hd's are either 160gb, 250gb, 320 or 400gb's.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home PremiumVersion 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name FAMILYJOURNEYS

System Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard

System Model HP Pavilion dv5 Notebook PC Don't know if it's the dv5t, dv5tse or the dv5z. Waiting to hear back

System Type x64-based PC

Processor Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU P7350 @ 2.00GHz, 2000 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date Hewlett-Packard F.21, 8/20/2009

SMBIOS Version 2.4

Windows Directory C:\Windows

System Directory C:\Windows\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1

Locale United States

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"

User Name FamilyJourneys\Family Journeys

Time Zone Central Standard Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB

Total Physical Memory 3.91 GB

Available Physical Memory 1.50 GB

Total Virtual Memory 7.81 GB

Available Virtual Memory 4.91 GB

Page File Space 3.91 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

 

[NoPh33rRaCiNg 10+ year member]

Watch ebay, i got a decent dell on there for 110 shipped. Mint condition, it was put back to stock. Just got it to surf the web and run my termlab. It has less ram than you were asking but this is just an example...

Dell Inspiron e1505 Review (pics, specs)

 

[Sleeklsc 5,000+ posts]

Watch ebay, i got a decent dell on there for 110 shipped. Mint condition, it was put back to stock. Just got it to surf the web and run my termlab. It has less ram than you were asking but this is just an example...
Dell Inspiron e1505 Review (pics, specs)

Not bad but I def need more ram. I don't really need much of a hd, but the way I look at it is like buying a 2000rms @ 1ohm amp and only using it @ 4 ohm. It'll be there if I need it in the future.

 

[globalminds_ent 10+ year member]

if all u do is web serf you really don't need more than 3gb ram with an Intel core i3 sandy bridge processor so u can port mac os x snow leopard on it because mac is very reliable and works better than windows does on pc parts mac uses more ram so u can do more with less but yeah and when u just HAVE to use stupid windows u can switch over to the windows side and yeah u should have picked up one of those black Friday deals gonna be hard to find somethin for 250 I paid 314 for just the processor alone

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

Don't get that HP unless it's

I wouldn't be able to get more than $350 out of the laptop I have now, and that's if I'm lucky.

Don't buy OS X unless you're an artist. This guy's kind of a... retard.

While he's right that you don't necessarily need more than 3GB RAM, it never hurts to have more. Maybe you like to have multiple tabs open in Firefox/Chrome while you're listening to music. With a smaller amount of RAM, especially in a used computer, you could have problems with having too many tabs open. If you have an antivirus program that has real-time protection, that process needs to also be running. Add onto that the 20+ processes that Windows 7 x64 uses alone, and you've probably got ~1GB in background usage at any given moment. Especially if you use the laptop quite a bit.

 

[NoPh33rRaCiNg 10+ year member]

Not bad but I def need more ram. I don't really need much of a hd, but the way I look at it is like buying a 2000rms @ 1ohm amp and only using it @ 4 ohm. It'll be there if I need it in the future.

Yea definitely, and with your budget you should easily be able to find one with more ram.

 

[globalminds_ent 10+ year member]

I use logic to make beats I have

Intel core i7 2600k over clocked to 4.3gz the i7 is a quad-core with hyper threading which means it has 4 virtual cores so it can be used as an 8 core if it needs too

I also have 16gb of 4gb DDR3 ram

2 x750gb hd

1x 2tb bd

ATI Radeon 5770

a gigabyte 1155 motherboard

and I would run ubuntu before I ran windows as my main os I only use windows when I HAVE to or when I want to do some flash stuff that mac can't do and oh yeah u don't need an antivirus program for os x I have to state all of the parts of my desktop because for some reason people on this site think I just pull stuff out my *** when I talk I do months of research before I buy products I have no bias to any company at all I used windows for years went to mac and never looked back I don't get on here to send people down the wrong path I'm saving u research time that I spent learning why all these things are important and how they act in the real world since I have one of the best PCs u can get as a consumer that uses mac AND Windows (and ubuntu through virtualbox) I'm not just sayin mac is better is because I like it I'm saying it because it runs smoother and boots faster loads faster and I don't have a SSD in it yet but can open 30 programs at one time and use them all flawlessly but mac books are high getting a cheaper pc laptop and porting mac on it is a easier way to get an expensive and better computer cheaper and the reason why it has to be Intel processor is because mac is designed to use Intel processors not AMD although AMD can be used some things don't work that u might need and why I said i3 sandy bridge is because its better than the core 2 duo runs cooler and faster had a core 2 duo in my MacBook ran internet fine couldn't run logic to save its life and stuff took forever to come up

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

I use logic to make beats I haveIntel core i7 2600k over clocked to 4.3gz the i7 is a quad-core with hyper threading which means it has 4 virtual cores so it can be used as an 8 core if it needs too

I also have 16gb of 4gb DDR3 ram

2 x750gb hd

1x 2tb bd

ATI Radeon 5770

a gigabyte 1155 motherboard

and I would run ubuntu before I ran windows as my main os I only use windows when I HAVE to or when I want to do some flash stuff that mac can't do and oh yeah u don't need an antivirus program for os x I have to state all of the parts of my desktop because for some reason people on this site think I just pull stuff out my *** when I talk I do months of research before I buy products I have no bias to any company at all I used windows for years went to mac and never looked back I don't get on here to send people down the wrong path I'm saving u research time that I spent learning why all these things are important and how they act in the real world since I have one of the best PCs u can get as a consumer that uses mac AND Windows (and ubuntu through virtualbox) I'm not just sayin mac is better is because I like it I'm saying it because it runs smoother and boots faster loads faster and I don't have a SSD in it yet but can open 30 programs at one time and use them all flawlessly but mac books are high getting a cheaper pc laptop and porting mac on it is a easier way to get an expensive and better computer cheaper and the reason why it has to be Intel processor is because mac is designed to use Intel processors not AMD although AMD can be used some things don't work that u might need and why I said i3 sandy bridge is because its better than the core 2 duo runs cooler and faster had a core 2 duo in my MacBook ran internet fine couldn't run logic to save its life and stuff took forever to come up

His budget is $250 and he's looking for a cheap laptop. Did you not read the thread at all?

Not bashing your computer, by the way. For someone not familiar with computers enough to pick one out, do you really think he'll be able to troubleshoot and diagnose Linux? With Windows 7, it's all automatic. I'm a little biased(okay, a lot) about Windows vs Mac, just because I've never used OS X outside of a high school setting and I'm not going to spend $1300 for a MacBook Pro with the specs of a $400 Windows based PC.

 

[globalminds_ent 10+ year member]

I did read that's why I said core i3 its much cheaper than what I bought but better than a core 2 duo u must didn't understand my post I'm saying what I bought to and how it relates to how well mac/windows works if I still have problems with windows with 16gb of ram how do u think it will act with only 3 I and I have windows 7 64bit doesn't compare to snow leopard 64bit when it comes to reliability and doing stuff like video editing its going to be hard to find quality for 250 pc or mac but like u car audio guys say u get what u pay for just expect to get a boss quality laptop for that budget new or hope to find a good deal on somethin used but 2 cores on 2ghz a piece is not going to impressive at all on those older model processors

I agree with the 400vs 1300 that's the whole point of what I'm sayin take the 400 pc and port mac on it now u have a 400 dollar pc that u could have paid 1300 for and u can always go back to your windows side whenever u want

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

I did read that's why I said core i3 its much cheaper than what I bought but better than a core 2 duo u must didn't understand my post I'm saying what I bought to and how it relates to how well mac/windows works if I still have problems with windows with 16gb of ram how do u think it will act with only 3 I and I have windows 7 64bit doesn't compare to snow leopard 64bit when it comes to reliability and doing stuff like video editing its going to be hard to find quality for 250 pc or mac but like u car audio guys say u get what u pay for just expect to get a boss quality laptop for that budget new or hope to find a good deal on somethin used but 2 cores on 2ghz a piece is not going to impressive at all on those older model processors

Like I said, if he's an artist he should get OS X. Photoshop, Logic, FL Studio, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas, etc., etc., are all very resource hungry. OS X does run those programs much better than Windows. However, 3GB RAM is more than enough to run Windows 7 Home Premium with a handful of programs. 95%+ of Windows PC owners have 8GB or less RAM, and when Windows 7 came out in '09, 3-4 was the norm. If he encounters problems with his RAM, it's more likely a hardware failure than Windows being unruly.

Like he said in the topic title, he's looking for a "newish" laptop. That lenovo would not be impressive, but it would do what he wants and probably last him for two or three years. If I were him, I'd get that lenovo. There's nothing wrong with getting C2D just because Core i is out, especially if you don't have a lot to spend.

 

[globalminds_ent 10+ year member]

I'll agree with u because money is a ***** and btw fl studio only works on windows hahahaha its why I get on my windows side most of the time it sounds so cheap but can manipulate audio better than logic or pro tools.......ebay I see a Dell latitude 4gb ram 2.4ghz core 2 duo $275 shipped