Advice on buying a prebuilt?

[bommit]

My family's laptop just bit the dust, and I've been out of the loop on tech news for quite a while. We really don't want to spend over $1,000, and even that's straining our budget. Can someone give advice on brands to check out, and which to avoid, and maybe even some specific PC's? Thanks in advance.

 

[Deemo13]

Are you looking to buy another laptop or a tower?

And if you are coming from a laptop, do you have like a monitor and speakers and a mouse and what not, or would we have to factor that into the budget?

 

[bommit]

See below.

 

[bommit]

Are you looking to buy another laptop or a tower?

And if you are coming from a laptop, do you have like a monitor and speakers and a mouse and what not, or would we have to factor that into the budget?

Looking to buy a laptop, a notebook would probably fit our needs best, sorry for not including that. We already have everything we'd need to make ourselves comfortable using it (i.e. external keyboard, monitor, etc.)

 

[tsnor]

The Laptop you need for gaming is a lot different than a laptop for web browsing or doing taxes.

If you are not gaming, you can get something like this (AMD E450 fusion based) for $300 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Lenovo+-+15.6%26%2334%3B+Laptop+-+4GB+Memory+-+320GB+Hard+Drive/5272499.p?id=1218629044921&skuId=5272499

IF you want gaming then post the games you want and the video quality you want. ( good framerates at Ultra video costs much more than medium)

 

[bommit]

The Laptop you need for gaming is a lot different than a laptop for web browsing or doing taxes.

If you are not gaming, you can get something like this (AMD E450 fusion based) for $300 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Lenovo+-+15.6%26%2334%3B+Laptop+-+4GB+Memory+-+320GB+Hard+Drive/5272499.p?id=1218629044921&skuId=5272499

IF you want gaming then post the games you want and the video quality you want. ( good framerates at Ultra video costs much more than medium)

I think a computer for doing taxes and web browsing would be fine. The only games I'd probably play on it would be semi-old Valve games (e.g. Half life 1, 2, Garry's Mod), and they have extremely flexible video options.