Looking for a laptop

[Electro]

My brother is currently looking for a laptop. All he does is browse the internet, download a few torrents, and works on spreadsheets/word docs.
Occasionally will watch a movie (divx movies). He asked me to post here asking for any recommendations. He stated he was interested in a netbook but saw how some of them ran very slow and was not too interested.
His budget is under $750.

Thanks

[SephYuyX]

With those specs you could go down to the local repair shop and get one for 50$, of go to dell and get the cheapest thing available for ~300$

[Electro]

Lol he said he refuses dell XD. Also stating he would like it to be "fast" and "reliable". He said he would like to be able to possibly play a game or too on it. Games he listed were, FFXI and Left For Dead 1/2 (obviously not max settings though).

[_chuchu]

not going to get much better than a dell in terms of warranty for a cheap laptop.

[SephYuyX]

He doesnt like Dell because theyre inexpensive, reliable, have good warranties and customer service? Tell him he's an idiot, and if he wants crap go buy an HP or Apple.

[Electro]

2 dell laptops have crapped out on him after about a year... 1 went into the repair center about 4 times before they fixed it. He uses his laptop at least 7-10 hours a day. Since he's on the go for work a lot.

[The Stig]

Netbook, any of the 1000 clones out there will do. 2gb of RAM and whatever 1.6ghz or whatever they're at now, they're more or less the same. May be limited by the hard drive size.

[_chuchu]

I got mine for free and had a three year warranty. I've only had to call in once for a software/boot issue, which was almost two months ago, but it was already outta warranty for over a year. They still helped me out and walked me through the issue. I took pretty good care of mine though

edit: issue was resolved, hardware still great and laptop still functioning.

[Electro]

Netbook, any of the 1000 clones out there will do. 2gb of RAM and whatever 1.6ghz or whatever they're at now, they're more or less the same. May be limited by the hard drive size.

Are they running pretty fast with Windows 7 on them?

[SephYuyX]

He treats his PCs like crap then. Ive owned 2 laptops, 3 PCs, and have ordered over 500 Dell computers at various places of business for multipule years and never had more than 3 problems with them out of the box, in which Dell fixed it immediatly. Theyre all still running perfectly fine to this day.

If he's so adamant about not using a Dell, the only 'decent' alternative is HP.

[The Stig]

Er, they ship with XP usually but I believe there's a stripped down version of 7 for them. Shouldn't matter if all you're doing is movies, downloading, web. XP will actually be fine (and more space too).

I haven't looked at the Netbook area after 7 came out so I cannot confirm.

[_chuchu]

no complaints here about XP for my regular and gaming needs

[fishstix]

There's a special netbook stripped version of 7 that most have, but you can install the full version and it should run just fine. I dont think it'll be playing many games though. Also, I hear bad bad things about HP. Bad customer service, getting things repaired, bad design alltogether. Things overheat from natural use, causing parts to malfunction and then HP refuses to acknowledge this as their fault.

I hear good things about Sager laptops, might want to check them out custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks With blackfriday coming fast, I'd keep an eye out for good deals though. Sold out online already, but bestbuy has this acer laptop for $249. Insides looks more like a netbook though, single core, small hd -_-

[_chuchu]

xoticpc has sager-tier technology in many of their laptops

[Neogearzx]

$719.99

Intel® Pentium® Processor T4300 (2.10GHz)
Genuine Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit
250GB Hard Disk Drive (5400rpm)
2GB (2GBx1) DDR3-SDRAM-1066
NVIDIA® GeForce® G210M GPU (256MB VRAM)
CD/DVD playback/burning

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...52921644659496

Can customize it the way you want it , if you wand to add any more power to it.

[Isiolia]

He treats his PCs like crap then. Ive owned 2 laptops, 3 PCs, and have ordered over 500 Dell computers at various places of business for multipule years and never had more than 3 problems with them out of the box, in which Dell fixed it immediatly. Theyre all still running perfectly fine to this day.

If he's so adamant about not using a Dell, the only 'decent' alternative is HP.

I'd agree Dell is generallly decent. However, they can have issues, even if not abused (though moreso if they are). May depend on the particular series or model. We had a number of DoA-ish issues with D531s, where D600-series rarely had out-of-the-box issues. D6000-series have been passable, but not stellar either.

HPs have been worse, so far. The biggest issue we've had recently has been AC adapters, but we're up to probably a 50% fail rate on them (and not just the glow-tip shattering like on the new Dells). But they're a much bigger pain to get service on. IMO, Dell is a good way to go regardless, 'cause everything breaks, Dell will actually probably get fixed.

[Zeshra]

Dell is a good way to go regardless, 'cause everything breaks, Dell will actually probably get fixed.

Agreed 100%, Dell CS is actually very good compared to most I've found.