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College laptop for under $1000?

post #1 of 10
8/22/04 at 7:42pm
Thread Starter 
A friend of mine is about to leave to spend a year studying abroad and wants to take a cheap laptop with her. (For writing papers and playing MP3s mainly.) Battery life is kind of a priority, and price under $800 would be nice. I haven't shopped in this price range myself, so I'm not familiar with what's available. ANy suggestions?
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post #2 of 10
8/22/04 at 7:56pm
Dell Inspiron 1150

Approximately 4 hours of battery life.
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post #3 of 10
8/22/04 at 8:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hyc
A friend of mine is about to leave to spend a year studying abroad and wants to take a cheap laptop with her. (For writing papers and playing MP3s mainly.) Battery life is kind of a priority, and price under $800 would be nice. I haven't shopped in this price range myself, so I'm not familiar with what's available. ANy suggestions?
$999 http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp.net/sto...r.aspx?mid=121

Pro here: its a P-M, most of the others in this price range are AMD XP-M or Intel Celeron.

$998 http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...%3A4070%3A4070

$928 http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...A4070%3A106249
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post #4 of 10
8/22/04 at 9:06pm
Thread Starter 
Cool, the Battalion looks good. I had no idea you could find a Pentium-M system for under $1K at all. Thanks everyone for the suggestions.
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post #5 of 10
8/22/04 at 9:07pm
take a look at Averatec 3220H from MicroCenter.Com or Office Depot (or Max, dont remeber). Goes for $799 and the benefit here is the 2000+ AMD XP-M, 512mb ram, and it is just over 4lbs, very mobile.
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post #6 of 10
8/22/04 at 10:13pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks again. I've seen a few reviews saying the keyboard is too small on that thing, but otherwise it has nice specs. I'll pass it along as well. (Found it on OfficeMax.com)
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post #7 of 10
8/23/04 at 10:45pm
Thread Starter 
The Averatec 3220H looks good except I've seen reports saying the display cover is too soft, and the LCD screen will crack from flexing the case.

The battalion at $999 is close, but after you add an OS it's more in the $1100-$1200 range.

The Averatec 5428 at Walmart seems ok. The HP seems OK. Dunno. Still looking at the Averatec 3220 since it's lightweight...
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post #8 of 10
8/23/04 at 10:47pm
i thought the build quality on the 3220 was pretty good. check my sig for a review

i even liked the kb (pretty nice on an ultaportable)
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post #9 of 10
8/23/04 at 11:26pm
You can get the Super Talent Centrino MB02 laptop for $888 at http://www.iocombo.com/product/showp...productid=02LE
  • Pentium M 1.3 Ghz
  • 256MB DDR
  • 20GB Hard Drive
  • DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
  • 8 Cell Li-Ion (5 hours battery life)

Unfortunately, it doesn't come with a operating system, but you can buy Windows XP Home from NewEgg and it will still be under $1000 US.

P.S. This website also seems to be very reputable as it has a 9.12 lifetime rating/9.23 six-month rating from resellerratings.com. Here is the link if you wish to see for yourself: http://www.resellerratings.com/seller4583.html
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post #10 of 10
8/24/04 at 8:18pm
Thread Starter 
Well, the $800 limit seems to be sticking. At this point it's down to the Averatec 3220H and the ECS A535 from Walmart. I wouldn't try to use the ECS A535 without adding 256MB to it, and probably also get the 8 cell battery. That brings it up from $600 to around $750, but at that point it's a pretty usable machine, despite the abysmal battery runtime.

But the Averatec 3220 looks like the no-hassle winner, ready to use from the get-go. The other question is whether it'll be easy to find service/support in Italy if anything goes wrong, and it appears that both Averatec and ECS have plenty of European offices so that should be OK.
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