Decent, Affordable Laptop for Mom

[Kingsley]

My mother wants me to help her buy and set up a new laptop before I head back to school in August. Anybody have suggestions?

Her price range is $400 to $500. She'll mainly be using the laptop to check e-mail, create Word documents, pay bills online, and watch the occasional VCD/DVD. She also demands that the laptop "is fast" and doesn't overheat.

Thanks!

[linuxguymarshall]

I am a huge advocate of netbooks and am not turning back now. Get her a netbook and a USB DVD burner. I am on a Lenovo S10 with a $100 DVd burner with LightScribe and I love this setup. Show her how to function a DVD ripper or write her a script to do it and she will be be off.

But because Lenovo is a wee bit on the higher end that budget and a DVD drive may be a bit much but an EEE will go nicely with that budget.

[Kingsley]

The netbooks look cool, but aren't those a bit slow?

[stwschool]

My experience with netbooks is that they're horrendously slow on XP, but fly when you put Ubuntu netbook remix on them. I installed it for one of our teachers and he was absolutely staggered, it went from having time to make a cup of tea while booting to about 30-35 seconds on my stopwatch, and about 2 seconds to open chromium, 7 seconds for Firefox. It's fast.

[gnomeuser]

The netbooks look cool, but aren't those a bit slow?

My primary machine is the EeePC 1002HA. The ATOM chip is surprisingly good for average desktop tasks, I have no big concerns about the performance with regards to the listed tasks. You will need a separate USB DVD drive but those are available on the cheap. I have to say I like it performance wise better than my Core 2 Duo power laptop, it's cooler, runs for longer on a smaller battery, it fits into a small bag and as such I end up using it more like a laptop than a desktop replacement. It feels just as fast for most tasks as the Core 2 Duo. That is not to say that it is faster, it's slower and you will notice during heavy multitasking or computation heavy tasks.

One question, does your mother have any kind of vision problem, the screen is rather small and I could imagine people with poor eye sight e.g. would prefer bigger fonts and such which would make using this problematic.

There are also very attractive ARM based netbooks coming out, if she is just going to run a standard Ubuntu for those tasks then that would be a good buy as well and should perform in the same realm as the Intel ATOM powered netbooks but at a much longer power consumption and no cooling fan.

[koleoptero]

My mother wants me to help her buy and set up a new laptop before I head back to school in August. Anybody have suggestions?

Her price range is $400 to $500. She'll mainly be using the laptop to check e-mail, create Word documents, pay bills online, and watch the occasional VCD/DVD. She also demands that the laptop "is fast" and doesn't overheat.

Thanks!

There are good laptop offers but they change every week or so. I found the other day a core 2 duo Toshiba laptop with 4GB of ram and an nvidia gfx card for about 500 euros. The offer lasted for 4-5 days.

Keep searching.

[Swagman]

It helps if we knew where ga is !!
Lots of countries use $

[mamamia88]

if she wants too write word documents don't buy her a netbook. i feel that the keyboards are terribly cramped and i can't string together a complete sentence without making tons of typos.

[SLEEPER_V]

www.dell.com/outlet

refurbs and scratch and dents. Its where I got the wife's new laptop from

[LowSky]

GA could be Georgia, it is the postal abbreviation for the state...


Dell is selling laptops for as low as $349 with a 15 inch screen. (http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/laptop-inspiron-1545/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-inspiron-1545&s=dhs&cs=19&ref=lthp)


Personally I like Lenovo's (http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=393651299AA2442B937039C5DECF1DBF)

[Kingsley]

The Dell computers look nice. I think I'll look into those.


It helps if we knew where ga is !!
Lots of countries use $
When in doubt, just assume it's the United States. :D

[Swagman]

The Dell computers look nice. I think I'll look into those.


When in doubt, just assume it's the United States. :D

Assumption is the Mother of all *uckups !!

[bodhi.zazen]

What does she use it for ?

You may get more bang for your $$ with a used laptop.

[Kingsley]

Check my original post for what she'll be using this laptop for. A used laptop may be a good option, but I'd have to check with her to see if that'll fly.

[bodhi.zazen]

Well I see no reason an old laptop, with an external DVD if needed, would not work.

"speed" is subjective.

[jbrown96]

I don't think that the actual hardware (read performance) matters as much. Generally, most people will not notice performance benefits anymore; computer are "good enough." I think that the human interface devices really make the difference. I have a thinkpad (T61p), which is completely out of the price range -- although I think it is a fabulous machine. I think that I can really take a lot from it. The keyboard and touchpad are fantasitic, which adds a ton to the user experience. On the other hand, the display isn't that great. These are the three things (keyboard, touchpad, display) that I would really look to. They are very important and depend greatly on the user. While I would not suggest getting a laptop from a brick-n-motar (i.e. Bestbuy), it is worth taking your mom to and trying to find something she is comfertable with (sorry about the hanging prepositions). Seriously, it will make all the difference. My gf has a HP laptop, and I always manage to tap the over-sized touchpad with my palm, which resets the cursor to a different part of the document; it's absolutely awful. But then again, she really likes it and can't type on my thinkpad.

My suggestion is don't worry too much about speed. From what you said, her performance needs are minimal. Worry about how she interacts with the device: that is what makes the user happy.

Edit:

Vendors:
I really like Lenovo, but they are probably overpriced. Dell is often on the lower end for regular laptops. I've figured out over the years that women generally care about style ;) and Dells aren't that great; HPs tend to do better on this. HPs have good displays but the keyboards are so-so (I dislike them and my gf likes them; Dells seem to be neutral for everyone).

I wouldn't recommend a netbook. You really pay for the small form-factor, usually with cheaper compenents. I think that build quality will really suffer, but I've never owned one, so take it with a grain of salt -- just test one out before ordering it. I had my mother look at one, but she couldn't do it; she has been a secretary for her whole life (lots of typing!), and she was just too used to a full-sized keyboard.

Battery life might also be important. Don't underestimate this. This is also a double-edged sword; batteries go greatly diminish after ~1.5 years and if she expects the long life that a 9-cell provides, that will be more expensive to replace.

[stuart.reinke]

www.dell.com/outlet

refurbs and scratch and dents. Its where I got the wife's new laptop from

I got my laptop from an e-bay store that sells refurbished laptops that are returned from corprate lease.

This is the third one I've gotten in this manner. One for me, one for my Dad, and one for a friend.

They usually come with a small (30 day) no questions asked warranty, and a long term warranty can usually be purchased from Square Trade for a few dollars.