Laptop under 500 for college

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fengstar

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Dec 27, 2009
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Hey I want to buy my cousin a laptop cause she's going off to college next year.

1. What is your budget?
under 500 for sure. under 450 would be best.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15.6 or 17, but if good specs 14 will do also

3. What screen resolution do you want?
don't have too much of a preference

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
portable most likely, light

5. How much battery life do you need?
good enough for a day at college i suppose

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
probably little to no games, but a decent gpu would be useful

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
i'm guessing mostly taking notes, watching videos/movies, chatting etc.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
500gb should be enough

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
no preference

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
no preference

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
dvd rom/writer if possible

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
a decent brand with good reliable reputation

13. What country do you live in?
laptop will be used in China

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Mainly I'm looking for a good solid laptop that isn't too heavy for a girl to take to college. I doubt she will be doing any extensive editing or gaming, mostly using for taking notes, writing papers, watching youtube, that kind of stuff.

Budget is 500, but the less the better obviously.
 

fengstar

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Dec 27, 2009
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the first link had mostly netbooks, and the better laptops were all expensive. The second link is almost a year old..

I don't want to buy her a 10 inch single core 1.6g netbook with 1gb ram, that's not really what i'm looking for.

are there any current deals on a 14-17 inch laptop with a decent processor/ram/etc? saw plenty pop up during black friday sales but i wasn't shopping for them at the time
 

Labrynthian

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Oct 9, 2012
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HD shouldn't be a problem, only because there are plenty of good external hard drives around now days, so space is never an issue. The smaller computers normally do have less RAM. But based on the use of the laptop you're looking for, you won't need more than 4GB RAM.

Actually I'm surprised at the Asus in the link you've provided. It seems to have everything you need. AND it's 15.6 inches with 4GB RAM at a really low price. Nice. Go for it :)
 

dbrian500

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Dec 9, 2012
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i3 under $500 tag is too old. You can easily get a core i5 laptop in your budget. The best deal I could find was this http://bestlaptopsunder500hub.com/best-laptop-under-500-deal-of-the-week.html
This laptop got
A8-4500M running at 1.9 GHz with 4 MB Cache
AMD Radeon HD 7640G Graphics packing 512MB of graphics system memory
4 GB DDR3 RAM.
500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive

All this for $429. I think this is the best deal you could get or go for a core i5 laptop

Compare here
http://bestlaptopsunder500hub.com/top-laptops-under-500-dollars-comparison.html
 
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