Looking to buy a laptop and need some advice

[davisphive]

Ok, I'm looking to buy a new laptop...or used. This is your basic college laptop, need it for writing papers, internet/email/chat, play dvd movies and wireless capabilities. To the tune of, between $500-600 or lower. Good condition. Any quick responses would be greatly appreciated :D

 

[beretta9m2f]

You should look into a decent HP. They're fairly cheap and i'm sure you could find one that suits your needs in your price range. as long as you're not looking to do extensive gaming beyond 2d or older 3d games like counterstrike 1.6 an HP would do you just fine. I recently sold mine for about 700. It was reliable as hell.
I personally think Dell computers are ugly (laptops anyway) but you can always check them out as well.

www.dell.com
www.shopping.hp.com
if not, you can always check out ebay.

 

[sabashuali]

Speaking from my experience:

1. HP Armada M700 and M300 - PIII based (450-1.2GHz, I think) - Not really suitable for XP but with enough RAM and high-end processor will do the job. Can get very noisy. Not so much from the fan but more from the HDD.

2. HP Evo N610c - P4 based (1.7 - 2.0Ghz). Much better. Run XP mush more effeciantly and reliably. Again after some use will become noisy.

3. Dell Latitude D600 - Pentium M based (1.6-1.8Ghz) The best of the three.
Ugly, cheap design but a true work horse. Coupled with 512MB it runs XP beautifuly and even after a year of hard work cannot be heard. Built in Wireless solution

4. HP N6220 - Pentium M or Centrino based (not sure about speeds) - Very powerfull, very quick but not relaible at all, not the ones I have dealt with. Also has built in wireless.

I have no idea about prices as these are all corporate stock. But if I was to choose one of the three it would be the Dell.

Hope this helps.