Hi, my name is Kurt and welcome to the TechNewsMadeSimple. Today, I want to talk to you about purchasing Laptops. Well, a lot of you have asked me questions about what type of laptop I should buy within a certain price range and which one is best for me.
So today, in front of me I have three different laptops of three different price ranges and we’ll start with the one on my left. This is a Dell Inspiron 1520. This was purchased about two years ago for roughly $1,500.00. The best feature about the laptop which is from Dell is the warranty. It comes with a three-year or rather—it purchase a three-year accidental damage warranty so that if water were to spill on the laptop or for the laptop were to drop, this would have been covered so we would have gotten a new laptop. You really can't you know warranty like that.
A lot of people say that Dell’s customer service is not the best and sometimes it isn’t but overall you still can't complain about the three-year accidental damage warranty. Otherwise, this machine is a beast, it is fairly fit. It runs really quiet actually for its size and it is not too hot when you put it on your lap. It has a lot of power and this particular model has a 2.4 GHz processor and two Gigs of Ram which is more than enough for some light gaming, surfing the web, working on Microsoft Word or Excel, just your general day to day functions. So again, the Dell Inspiron 1520 was about $1,500.00. What you can do is actually go to dell.com and if you take a look at their website, they actually have a slew of laptops anywhere from a nine-inch mini all the way to almost 20-inch laptop.
The new Inspiron 15 inches start at around $400.00. Again, if you purchase the accidental damage warranty, you probably bumped that up to about $600.00 to $700.00. But again, I think it’s more than enough for the average user if you just do some surfing, email, white word processing and some light gaming. And if you want, you can go to the higher end Dell XPS which starts to increase the price but you also start to definitely increase in performance as well.
Now, the main laptop in front of me is the Apple Macbook, 15-inch, it’s a Macbook Pro. It’s a little expensive. It starts at—well, this model is $2500.00. It’s a little more power than what the average user needs. The biggest problem with this laptop is the class screen and it does have a reflection otherwise it’s a very sturdy laptop. It is the famous0 laptop out there and it’s very lightweight. And you can also ask for the 13-inch, let’s go here to the Macbook store. The 13-inch, same body Macbook starts at $1,300.00. Again, this is pretty much more than what you need for a laptop. It has you know two gigahertz processor, two Gigs of RAM, 160 hard drive and it has a very nice built in NVIDIA video card. It does come with a burner and you will have to pay an extra $250.00 for the extended warranty but in my opinion it is worth it, it is laptop. You expect things to get bang around.
Other than that, you know, the other best thing about the Macbook is not only can you run the Mac operating system, you can also run windows. I have both operating systems running on this machine right here and it runs like a dream, most of the times I run windows more only because I have a lot of applications that I use in windows but likewise I’m using the Mac OS right now as we speak.
And finally, the laptop on my right is a Lenovo T61. This is a little updgraded. This is my work computer—of the T400 runs or starts about $800.00. This is more than just your computer. It is fairly thin, it’s thinner than the Dell Inspiron and it’s a little bit slower only because this is a word laptop and they can explore on the extra processing power but it does have four Gigs of Ram and it’s a two gigahertz dual core. So, it would be about the same processing power as the 13-inch Macbook.
It does come with a finger print reader so you can, you know, so your data is secure. It has a 14-inch widescreen with a little bit bigger than the 13-inch wide screen Macbook Pro and it does have a nice profile. It is very generic looking but it serves a job and then you can still do some light gaming, word processing, everything that you need to do. So the question back to you readers and viewers is when you’re looking for a laptop what exactly will you be doing with it. Will you be doing some hard core gaming, some video editing, some word processing. If you say yes to—but at least the first too then you’ll need just increase your budget to at least $1000.00 range upward. If you just do some word processing, email, internet you can go actually let’s go here lets at newegg.com, actually have this window open and let’s look and know the price range so running at the left hand side you see the $400.00 to $500.00 price ranges for your laptop available. Display of laptop available from the $500.00 to $750.00 ranges, let’s take a look here and let’s sort by lowest price.
So, immediately the lowest price comes up, it’s $530.00. You have a 2.16 GHz dual core processor. One Gig of Ram, you can easily purchase two to four Gigs of Ram on—and it should only be maybe $80.00 more so mix your laptop about $600.00 overall but it increases the speed and the performance greatly. So, your laptop will last a lot longer. Just even scrolling down here, you can see there’s so many different laptops, some of them with mail-in rebates and you could have some Sony Vaios for $600.00. So again, you can get a great laptop for $500.00 to $600.00 and you can have it do what you want to do and it will last you at least a year or two, maybe in three if you really push it. Any more than three chances are you’ll need to buy more powerful laptop.
Maybe something along with lines of higher in Macbook or lower in Macbook Pro which should last you at least three years if not more, other than that, what should you be looking for a laptop besides price, processing power, battery life, normally laptops bit bought on new—don’t have an extended warranty. You could purchase an extended warranty if it’s available. Most of the time it does not, you have to look around, it’s different for each laptop. It really doesn’t matter what the brand name is. They are all built with spec but definitely read the reviews on newegg.com. People always submit the best reviews and they’re very, very helpful to read and to look at and you can actually look at them here. Right now, underneath the picture of the laptops and you can see you know this Sony Vaio has five star rating but there are only three of reviews.
So, in my opinion, if you are sure in cash, look into a Dell first. See if you can get a lower and 13-inch. Let’s go back to the Dell website. Maybe you can get Inspiron 13 which starts at you know $500.00 or you can even get the Inspiron 15 which is for $400.00 and add some more Ram, increase the processor a little bit, maybe extend your warranty and you might be looking at somewhere around $750.00 but they will last you at least two years which would be probably perfect. If you’re looking for a little bit cheaper, definitely go with some laptop on newegg or you can actually look at—and if you have at least you know $1300.00 to $1500.00 opt for the Macbook, on the—and Macbook. It is a really nice laptop as you’ve seen on some of the Microsoft commercials. They are very sexy and they are built that way and they are very stable and you can run windows as long as you purchase the windows operating system. Other than that if you’re having more questions about buying laptop just let me know, send me an email or just leave a comment and I will answer this as fast I can. Thanks for watching.
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