My wife needs a laptop to use when we are out of town (two weeks three or four times a year). Her full time volunteer job kicked it up a notch and apparently I do not share my laptop very well.She found this laptop at Walmart, you can read about it here. It is only $348, has wireless access and comes with XP.
Joellyn only needs to do three things. Email forwarding, data entry into excel and, ahem, browsing craigslist.
If you have any input it would be much appreciated. We would like to go cheap but would rather spend $450 than throw away $350.
Thank you.
24 comments:
fwiw my son has used an Acer for the past 2 and half years with no serious complaints.
Roger,
That screen is seriously small. Everything else seems to be all right though. I can say we just purchased and received this Dell for $399. The diff between this one and what you posted is $50, a much bigger screen and 40GB more of HD space (probably inconsequential if it's essentially a dumb terminal).
Oh, I might also add, it took about 3 weeks from order to shipment ... so if time is a factor, I thought that might be important to know.
Roger,
I'd suggest to go for a cheap MacBook instead. It might cost a bit more, but it'll save your wife hours of frustration. No more spyware, no more virus-threat, no risk when opening email attachments, no daily updates, not being forced to reinstall Windows every year - and finally a user interface that's way ahead of Vista.
And if for some reason she needs Windows fromtime to time, she can always boot up Vista using BootCamp or Parallels, or use CrossOver to launch Windows programs from inside OSX.
I bought an Acer 3000 laptop with a 12x9 screen just over three years ago for about $350 with a deal at Microcenter that included a rebate. I use it many, many hours every day for school assignments on my network and distance work using a VPN with my office. I'm a heavy user of the internet, Word, and Excel. I've never had any problem with it. It is probably the best bargain purchase I've ever made. - Lora
i bought my third HP 17" screen laptop from buy.com the other day. I upgrade my laptop every few months and pass the "old" one to the wife/kids/sister/etc...
i buy them via the weekly deals, the most i paid for one was $599. They are refurbished but are better than new. 17" screen, 3GB (or more depending on the weekly deal) memory, 160GB (or more) disk space. DVD Writer, Memory reader. Built-in wireless. built-in webcam.
The works. and as you know, i work 16+ hours 6 days a week on my laptop and never had a complaint.
just go to buy.com and search the 17" HP laptops.
Screen size will be horrid for excel unless the table is very simple. If your wife uses magnifying reading glasses it might be doable.
It does have an external monitor capability, but for on the road use not an option.
A bigger screen shouldn't be much more money in a sunday BestBuy giveaway, but that's a pretty small, easy to carry machine.
These "netbook" PCs are limited, esp. when it comes to CPU speed, screen size adn battery life.
That's a small screen. Look at the resolution your wife runs now and compare it to this.
Ask her if she'd be happy running Excel on a PC circa, say, mid 90s.
If you're booting it up for an hour a day to check email, cool. Otherwise, I'd recommend browsing for a used notebook on Craigslist.
With laptops, design and build quality counts more than with desktops and I would look at Lenovo or Apple only... they are the only makers who spend anything on design and hardware integration... the other makers just take components and slap them together (that includes HP/Compaq and many other big names)
Lenovo has a netbook that is close in price to this Acer... give that a look...
Ajw
I purchased one of these recently for photo downloading and keywording while travelling. It has worked like a champ. Everyone who tried it along the way liked it. Is it as powerful as some options out there? No. But it's enough to edit large RAW files Lightroom 2.0 and stitch panoramas in Photoshop CS3, if a few seconds slower than a dual core machine. It's more than capable of handling email and data entry. Craig's List may be a different matter. :)
Key features: 1) Very light weight, but sturdy and small. Easy to forget you have it with you. 2) Nice, responsive keyboard. Best of the netbooks I looked at. 3) Decent battery life. 4) Very sharp (if small screen). 5) Reliable wifi. 6) Lots of USB ports, ethernet, and video out.
If you need more screen real estate, by all means get a larger notebook. But I bet the Aspire One will more than meet your wife's needs.
It's looks like a good deal to me, but the key question is what you meant by "found". If that meant she saw the machine and was able to try some word processing on it with a positive experience then you should go for it. If not, I'd try to arrange an audition.
Same topic has come up on an aviation forum I frequent. By a 3-1 margin, the users had been very pleased by the laptop...knowing at the purchase the product had its limitations.
I got tired of toting around a 5+ lb notebook. I just bought an MSI WIND netbook for on the road. Same screen resolution (10" diagonal, 1024x600). I am a dual 21" monitor guy, but I am quite pleased with what I can do on this sreen. Also, it is a matte screen which is great (most laptops now have glossy screens which act like mirrors (terrible).
I am very pleased by the build quality of this netbook. It weighs 2.5 lbs and I regularly get 5+ hours of battery life. Highly recc. Many people will tell you you can get a 15-17 screen for same price, but that is not the point. Jim
$479 at amazon:
vhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001H0GEVG/ref=s9k2a_c3_at3-rfc_p-3237_g1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=1TT7QGTG424DHW4SHBWX&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=292858901&pf_rd_i=507846
Unless your wife needs to run Windows programs, get a Mac.
Yes, they're more expensive but, used Macs can be purchased for an attractive price on Ebay. You just wouldn't get the Intel chip to run both OS.
OTOH, Apple has a refurbished Intel MacBook for $849 and you get their 1 year warranty along with the best service in the industry.
here's a review I came across recently:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001179.html
Roger,
This Acer at BestBuy is a better bang for the buck at $399.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9052945&type=product&id=1218012528210
I suggest you go look at it and play around youself before buy. I feel is slow... maybe good for just email, but even that feel a bit slow... the only good thing is that is small.
Costco (in SoCal) has the Acer for $348, with a better return policy in case you don't like it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152074 -$349
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0288858
Single Core, no DVD Burner, but Lenovo
Faster & lighter, but 14"
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0299881
More common 15"
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0291482
Both $379 - Regular laptops and not netbooks.
You could always wait for a better designed Toshiba for under $400 (usually at Bestbuy quite frequently).
And another (closeout) netbook -
http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=8403883 $249, Linux & 7".
I recently got a Dell Vostro 1310 and I absolutely love it. It's light enough, the 13 inch (wide) screen format is an excellent compromise between screen space and luggability and the dual core CPU easily handles anything I throw at it. Main "complaint" would be that the keyboard flexes a bit too much for my liking, but it's no big deal, and at home, I connect it to a larger USB keyboard anyway.
It's small, there are 10" netbooks, the highest rated is the MSI Wind, make sure you get XP and not super slow booting Vista. I use Linux but if your wife is like mine, stick with MSFT.
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