Well, for those of you who don't remember or don't know me, in march of 2009, i embarked on an LDS mission to the Philippines. I just got home last week, and the computer world is completely different now and I feel like an old man. I had a Dell Inspiron laptop that was outdated when i got it, and i gave it away when i left, leaving me without a comp right now.

My plan is to take a computer we have in our basement, which is running XP and an old intel celeron, and replace all the major internals(ie, motherboard, CPU, cards, RAM, etc) to make it more up to date. The thing is, I don't know what the good stuff is anymore. I left when Vista was still about half way through it's life, and now they have this Windows 7 out. Dual core was still relatively new back in the day. I think AMD was on top of Intel, but i don't know anymore.

I need suggestions for how to build a decent, but cheap(unemployed college student) machine.

Tigerdirect.com is your friend. As is Tom's Hardware. Beyond that, if you need help pairing together parts, let me know.

I prefer AMD over Intel.

Well I've decided for now I'll just pick up a laptop at Best Buy for a couple hundred bux after a few more weeks at my new job. I just shelled out $3,200 on a Lexus, so I need to wait a while. That laptop will do what I need it to do until I can build myself a computer that really roxxors my soxxors.

*sigh Oh, but for a ridiculously potent PC with a budget in the thousands. I would have the biggest e-peen in the county.

Necroing this thread.

What brands are the way to go in the laptop world. I'm in the position now to buy, and i don't want to buy a POS. I've eliminated Compaq from my selections, because my dad has been through 2 in a relatively short time. I'm leaning towards Toshiba. I don't know how Dell is anymore. I heard Asus is good, but i don't know.

Most of the ones i looked at had Intel Core i3, i5, or i7. AMD seems to be pretty rare. I don't think i want a celeron or pentium. Any ideas here? I think 4GB is a minimum for memory for me.

And to get it out of the way, no mac. I'm staying with PC and i don't want to spend $1000 on a computer.

I've been real happy with the Dell laptops I've bought, and we use them at my office as well. How big a processor and how much memory you want/need are all kind of dependent on what you're going to do with it, but it never hurts to have more than you need. Toshiba also makes good laptops, or did the last time I dealt with them, but it's been a few years on that one so I don't know if it's current.

I love my i3 Toshiba I got at the beginning of the year. I've managed to make it lag a bit whilst playing PuzzeQuest II, so if you're planning on running anything that needs more power than that, go for the i5 or i7. I don't need that much power though, so I'm good.

My one problem with Dell is that I hate their adapters. I've gone through like... 7 or 8 now.

My sister has the exact same problem with her Dell laptop...

I, on the other hand, have only had one problem with my HP laptop but I know I caused it. Overall, I am really happy with my purchase but I really can't comment on other laptops because I only have experience with HP and Dell...

While I only owned one laptop. I can safely say, do not buy a HP. They have some of the worst customer service people ever and the laptop itself gave me tons of problems out of the box,

Holy :censor: my main man Stangmar! How was it? Did you have whacky religious adventures? Could care less about the whole computer thing, though newegg has never treated me wrong.

Don't buy an HP.

I have an 11 year old Compaq Armada M700 that I value more than my current HP, and hasn't had nearly the issues that the HP has! Maybe the Pavilion is just a horrible example of HP.

If you go with a Dell, go for a Latitude. Inspirons aren't worth the money.

I know Asus used to be a decent brand. Not sure if they are still considered to be one.

Acer and Gateway seem to be popular among students, and seem to be relatively sturdy. Toshiba also makes a nice notebook. It depends on your price range, really.

I guess I am the exception to the rule. After my computer stopped working, HP fixed and shipped it for free(it was still under warranty though).

I'd be careful with purchasing anything labeled with an i5 chip or end up unknowingly purchasing a chip with the same quality and performance as an i3. i5's are commonly duo-core, which are the same as the i3's. Under rare occasions, you'll find one that is labeled as a 'quad-core', as this is the standard feature for the i7, I'd go for that one to get your money's worth. But aye... Carefully check to see whether or not the i5 you're buying is a duo or a quad before forking over 300+ dollars for a new lap top.

This can be misleading, as it's not only the number of cores which will dictate the performance of your chip. For example, there are quad core i3s, i've seen them. What the i5 has going for it over the i3 is:

1.) higher clock speed. The cores it has run faster.
2.) More cache. i3 is 3-4MB of cache, I believe the i5 is 3-8mb of cache
3.) It's more energy efficient. Which translates to more battery life (the i3 is efficient too, but the i5 works a bit better at it)
4.) i5 is the first chip with the ability to turn off a core if it's not being utilized.

The down and dirty of it is that unless you're running a lot of cpu intensive processes at once, you probably don't need more than dual core. And the price of the laptop should reflect the number of cores and not just the processor type.

Well, i don't do a whole lot of gaming, so i think i'm going to buy the Toshiba Satellite L655-5105.
-Intel Pentium P6200. Dual core, 2.13 Ghz, 3MB cache
-320 GB Hard Drive
-4 GB of RAM(expandable to 8)
-15.6" Screen(i like that)
Only $399 + tax at Best Buy. Well, i guess shipping too. They don't have it in stock at the nearest best buy(88 miles from me), so i'm just going to have it delivered to my house.


I imagine this will do better for me than my old laptop:
Dell Inspiron 8100
Intel Pentium 4 1.6 ghz single core
128 MB RAM(But i expanded to 1 GB)
40 GB Hard Drive
32 MB Video Card.

Also, i just want to confirm what i'm thinking on this laptop:
Mobile Intel® HD Graphics with 64MB-1696MB dynamically allocated
shared graphics memory
Does that mean it seriously has 1.6 GB of graphic memory? That sure beats the hell out of my 32 MB card on my last laptop.

No, that means you can set how much of your regular RAM the built-in Intel video chipset uses. So it'll use 64MB of your 1G by default (which should be fine if you're not playing graphical games) but you can set it to use up to 1696MB of your computers RAM (which is more than the 1G you will have, so that would be bad).

I might bump the 64 up to 128 or 256, depending on if you play any graphical games

ETA: the detail settings you use for any games would effect this as well. It sounds like 64 may be ok for you though.

The laptop has 4GB. It's expandable to 8GB which I will eventually look into doing. My view on RAM is the same as a car's engine. The bigger the better.

Also, who makes good reliable RAM these days? I'm browsing around on Newegg(i should still have an account there from years back...).
What makers of RAM should I stay away from?