choosing a laptop for college

digs27

Solid State Member
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Im heading out to college and searching for a laptop to bring. I will be majoring in bio and most likely be putting together presentations and projects. I will also be using it to play games like world of warcraft and counterstrike. I have narrowed it down to two choices. One is a Toshiba Satellite that has a Intel® Core™ Duo T2250 1.73GHz processor ,2G DDR2 SDRAM, 120GB SATA hard drive and a ntel Graphics Accelerator 950 graphics card. It is $1100. The other one is a HP Pavilion that has a AMD Turion® 64 ML-34 1.8 GHz processor, 1G DDR memory, 80GB hard drive, and a ATI Radeon® Xpress™ 200M IGP graphics card. this one is $850. My question is how much faster will the toshiba run with games and is it worth the extra money. Thanks for the help
 
looks like a good computer the only problem is that the store i want to buy it from dosent have it. I would like to buy from here because they have a free printer special going on now which would save me some cash.
 
ok in accordance to your post. the performance on games will vary since the toshiba uses integrated intel graphics while the HP has the Radeon Xpress. If gaming is important to you, you should try to get the best videocard possible. So i would try to look for some other laptops if possible. the DELL xps laptops are pretty good.
 
I would search through tigerdirect.com

I buy from both vendors (tigerdirect and newegg),and tigerdirect has had better deals, and better customer support (you actually talk to a human within 2 minutes).

It has been my experience that "free" printers are free because they are garbage, and you would be better off buying a decent printer on your own. Also the "free" printers come with about 2 pages worth of ink and the cartridges are sometimes more than what the printer costs.
 
darkside212 said:
I would search through tigerdirect.com

I buy from both vendors (tigerdirect and newegg),and tigerdirect has had better deals, and better customer support (you actually talk to a human within 2 minutes).

It has been my experience that "free" printers are free because they are garbage, and you would be better off buying a decent printer on your own. Also the "free" printers come with about 2 pages worth of ink and the cartridges are sometimes more than what the printer costs.

I agree. Usually they just give you a free printer to liquidate their stock to try to make room for the bigger, better model. I suggest to get a laptop from the retailer of your choice, and then just buy a nice printer, preferrably laser, elsewhere or on a separate PO (purchase order). Those freebie printers (I had one) aren't that great. And one thing about Dell printers: you can get those cartridges in two places in the U.S. and that's it:

1) direct from Dell, and then they ship it to you
2) get a remanufactured cartridge from Office Depot

Those are the only places that I have seen cartridges for a Dell printer, well at least a Dell Color Printer 720.
 
jervin32189 said:
well at least a Dell Color Printer 720.

I've got that aforementioned Dell 720 printer - got it from my cousin who got it free. The ink is sky-high in price, lasts maybe 1.5 months usually (I'm a dual Econ/Socy major though and admittadly print a lot) and yeah, does have to be ordered from Dell. I didn't even know about the Office Depot option. Even a $40-50 Lexmark off the shelf from Wal-Mart will probably be a better long-term investment.


As far as the laptop goes, if games are that important, definately keep searching around in the video card department.
 
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