[kwlug disc.] looking for techie thoughts on laptops

[Chris Frey]

On Mon, Aug 04, 2008 at 01:05:19PM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   a friend is sending her son off to college this fall, and needs to
> get him a laptop.  i pointed her at tigerdirect.ca and told her to
> poke around.  she came back asking about an acer celeron-based laptop
> for $640. celeron.  gack.  so i suggested she check out a refurbished
> gateway, of which i have a number and all of which have behaved pretty
> well so far.

This is not really a hardware response, as others have answered that
better than I can.  But college is a great time to learn and focus on
regular backups, considering the work and time that will be spent on
the laptop.

And thinking of backups before you buy may often affect what you buy.

Better to be worried about the reliability of a cheap laptop and make
good backups than have a quality machine fail on an essay's due date.

- Chris