Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Laptop Shopping

I'm running into a wall with my laptop shopping. I have a relatively low budget of $800, which has to include the 3-4 year warranty. I don't need a huge hard drive, but I want a fast one (7200 RPM minimum.) I want a large screen, but I'm more concerned with having a good resolution than having a 17" behemoth to lug around. I want at least 4 gigabytes of RAM and ideally Windows 7 64 bit. (There's no point havinga 64 bit processor, which they are almost entirely these days, but running a 32 bit OS.) I'd like a discrete graphics chip, but I don't have the cash to shell out for a true gaming laptop.

I'm also a brand snob. I won't touch an Acer (since my poor little Aspire One died after only a year and a half), a Lenovo, a Dell (*shudder*), Fujitsu, or a Gateway. (Some of this is irrational opinion as an IT professional - I've had too many Dells die before their product life cycle ended.) That leaves me with a choice of Asus, HP, and Toshiba.

I also refuse to get a recertified laptop. I'm all over that with desktops where I can muck around with the innards when things burn out, but I've done laptop repairs before and I'd rather not deal with it if I can get it covered under a warranty 4 years out.

I don't think my demands are unreasonable. The programs I use aren't exactly cutting edge - yWriter could run on a thin client, and I play a nine year old MMORPG.

But so far, I haven't had any luck.

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