Laptop Advice

[Crusty McPottydoodle]

So, I'm going back to university next week and have decided that a new laptop is in order. My Toshiba is 5 years old and while it still works fairly well, the battery is hooped, so it is not portable.

I intend to get another Toshiba, but I want the most bang for my buck. One question is whether I will get another notebook, or whether I will get a netbook - which is much cheaper and is loaded with XP rather than Vista, but apparently lacks an optical drive.

I don't want to spend more than $800 Canadian.

Thoughts?

 

[Camelot Farms]

Can you check the Circuit City website?
They went out of business this year and are in the process of liquidating all of their products. I got a fabulous emachine for 289.00. Manufacturers warranty applies just as though you bought it at the store.

They had all brands marked waaay down

 

[boaz]

Have you considered a new battery and maybe a memory upgrade to the one you have now? 5 years sounds like a really long time I know; however, you might be better off to wait for Windows 7 to shake out first. I know you could get a XP netbook now.

 

[Crusty McPottydoodle]

Quote:
I did a little more reasearch and I could buy a netbook and a portable USB DVD burner and still only spend $600. The advantage of the netbook is that it is much lighter and smaller to take to school by bus.

The cost of a new battery is almost 1/3 the cost of the netbook and DVD drive.

 

[saddina]

Quote:
I did a little more reasearch and I could buy a netbook and a portable USB DVD burner and still only spend $600. The advantage of the netbook is that it is much lighter and smaller to take to school by bus.

The cost of a new battery is almost 1/3 the cost of the netbook and DVD drive.

One thing on the netbook, find out if it has microsoft office already installed, and if not how to get it in there, alot of cheap computers/laptops are showing up without office to cut the price, you'll want word, excel etc in your laptop.

 

[Crusty McPottydoodle]

Quote:
If I get the netbook, I will get an external DVD drive, so I should be able to install whatever I need provided the OS is XP and not Vista.

 

[saddina]

Quote:
If I get the netbook, I will get an external DVD drive, so I should be able to install whatever I need provided the OS is XP and not Vista.

Good, you have no idea how many times we get the call "my computer doesn't have microsoft!" When you asked why they picked it, the other one was $100 more.... then when we pull up specs the only diff is the cheaper one comes without office.

Then again at $60 a fix, we do make decient profit off that.