New Computer: Laptop, Desktop or Barebones/Self Build?

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I'm on my first laptop and I'm happy I ditched the desktop for it. Nice plus is taking it into the garage for fuel tuning and for looking up repair stuff.
I bought a relative cheap Acer unit from BB and it's been great for over a year now (I use it for basically easy stuff and no gaming).
 
Whichever direction you go, you'll find the best prices at:
ncix.com
canadacomputers.com
tigerdirect.ca

All have local locations and cheaper prices than the big box stores. Canada Computers and NCIX are my goto stores. I dont like Tiger that much for all the refurb stuff and junk they sell, but they are around the same price as the others.
 
ASUS has a few nice laptops in and around that price range... the U series, for one (it has been a while since I've looked though). A few of my friends have them. Personally, they are one of the only laptop manufactures I trust (apart from Lenovo). I think you would get more hardware that way than with building a PC.. $500 won't get you very far going that route
 
revrandy said:
I had an HP laptop where the motherboard went after 10 months; they replaced it. Replacement computer had the motherboard go after 8 months, they replaced it. The replacement computer had the motherboard go after 10 months - their VP told me that although the computer is under warranty, restarted with each one, they were not going to replace it anymore. These computers were part of the massive problem HP had with AMD motherboards with built-in video chips.

Dumped the HP then and there, threw out an HP printer, sold another and vowed that I will never use an HP product, regardless of quality/deal, till the day I die. You don't stand behind your product or your warranty, I don't stand in front of your product.
Click to expand...

Aye, but most of the big name manufacturers engineer their products to last the length of the warranty and that's pretty much it.... Similar to most cars. Plus the whole AMD gobbling up ATI and integration of the chips caused major issues across the board at first, by no means am I advocating HP, they're just decent for price/performance lately.

Asus is more reliable on average than most though.
 
tricky said:
ASUS has a few nice laptops in and around that price range... the U series, for one (it has been a while since I've looked though). A few of my friends have them. Personally, they are one of the only laptop manufactures I trust (apart from Lenovo). I think you would get more hardware that way than with building a PC.. $500 won't get you very far going that route
Click to expand...

I used to think the same and definitely love the convenience of a laptop, but when the 4GB became too little for my needs and the ethernet adapter started crapping out on me, I realized how much I missed the servicability/upgradeability of a desktop system. With that being said, I can still use the lappy and I do when I travel.
 
I picked up a Windows 7 clearance.... Samsung with quad-core AMD A-10

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/prod...spx?path=bcd50fbb8392c92e7a14428964f6b5f1en02

It's 5-6 months old with Windows 7, but I can upgrade that and add a little ram later. The main attraction was the shared video + 1gb dedicated video card. It's the cheapest laptop I could find with any form of decent dedicated video memory. I realize it slightly slower than the new gen i-5's but this will suit my needs. There was a Toshiba that BestBuy had on sale for $449 but it was the older A8 generation, so I figured the extra $50 was worth the better processors and video card + upgrade options later on.

Thanks for the insight on buying new/building... this will suit my needs: Not the best thing in the world but much better than the worst.


Processor Type AMD A10-4600M
Processor Cores 4
Processor Speed 2.30 GHz
Processor Cache 4 MB L2
Hard Drive Capacity 750 GB
Hard Drive Speed (Revolutions Per Minute) 5400 rpm
RAM Size 6 GB
RAM Type DDR3 SDRAM
RAM Speed 1600 MHz
RAM Slots 2 (0 Available)
Optical Drive Super-Multi Dual Layer DVD +/-RW
Built-in Memory Card Reader
Memory Card Reader - Compatible Memory Type SD; SDHC; SDXC

Graphics
Graphics Chipset AMD Radeon HD 7660G + 7670M Dual Graphics
Video Memory Configuration Dedicated
Dedicated Video Memory Size 1 GB
 
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Nice... what's the intel equivalent of that AMD chip ?

I had an athlon 2500xp oced to 2.5 back in the day and it was gdlk!
 
Near the bottom 1/4 of the list :P where the off the shelf processors are lol... the top of the list has some insane stuff, $2,000 for a single processor! wow.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+A10-4600M+APU

Really glad I didn't get that A6 (absolute bottom of the list lol). This laptop meets the specs to run recommended/minimal settings for games like the new Diablo or Starcraft, but not like I play those anyway.
 
Props to the futureshop online store....... I ordered this laptop Monday at around 3:30pm...... it showed up yesterday at 10:50am.

Great laptop, came with everything it said it would and brand friggin new. Now I'm just contemplating on my O/S

1. Keep the legit Windows 7 Premium it came with (up to 16GB ram, which is the max on my laptop anyway)
2. Put in my "special" Windows 7 Ultimate edition (1-2 more features that are nice to haves, but nothing I'll really miss)
3. Go with Windows 8 (also special)

I might test out Windows 8 on my older laptop after I transfer everything over... just to make sure it works and isn't a total screw up. So far I was kind of disappointed because the "app screen" start menu isn't really.... apps. For example: click on Netflix, it opens Explorere to the netflix website, not a standalone app like you would get on a tablet or console.
 
most laptops have a hidden drive partition that keeps the windows installer on it. (instead of having a dvd or cd)
I'd check to make sure yours does and if it does, "special away" (option 2)

Windows 7 is fine. Might be the best os microsoft has made since the 3.X days.
I have no need or desire to get windows 8.

there is a way to dedicate one of your cpu cores, for a specific process. Might help video converting speeds. Ii have no idea how to do it and it might automatically do it for you. I think it's called hyper threading or something.
 
dasiffy said:
most laptops have a hidden drive partition that keeps the windows installer on it. (instead of having a dvd or cd)
I'd check to make sure yours does and if it does, "special away" (option 2)

Windows 7 is fine. Might be the best os microsoft has made since the 3.X days.
I have no need or desire to get windows 8.

there is a way to dedicate one of your cpu cores, for a specific process. Might help video converting speeds. Ii have no idea how to do it and it might automatically do it for you. I think it's called hyper threading or something.
Click to expand...

There are very few good reasons for interfering with the process scheduler in Windows, and most of those reasons only apply to either single processor systems or poorly written software. Hyper threading is Intel's name for SMT in their product line and is not really related - it is however frequently misunderstood by people who like to think they are "tweaking" their system. Windows has been aware of SMT since XP, so again, just trust the scheduler.
 
Double post
 
dasiffy said:
most laptops have a hidden drive partition that keeps the windows installer on it. (instead of having a dvd or cd)
I'd check to make sure yours does and if it does, "special away" (option 2)

Windows 7 is fine. Might be the best os microsoft has made since the 3.X days.
I have no need or desire to get windows 8.

there is a way to dedicate one of your cpu cores, for a specific process. Might help video converting speeds. Ii have no idea how to do it and it might automatically do it for you. I think it's called hyper threading or something.
Click to expand...

It does have a separate partition, the installer dissected my drive when I booted it up when I considered it. I cancelled when I saw it was the 32bit and not 64bit, so I'll have to dig through my library to find the right one. *regrets not labeling most of these CD's*

Too bad SSDs are pricy or I would get one and swap.... $450 for 500GBs is kinda crazy.

AMD has a pretty easy to use program to change the processor scheduling, but I'm not experienced enough to feel confident in using it. I just changed graphics settings to max out when plugged in and conserve power when on battery.
 
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