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Need advise purchasing a Laptop computer

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Gomboman:
I need to buy a laptop for home use. We don't need anything hardcore. It will be primarily used for surfing the internet, email, paying bills, photos, etc. I would like something bundled with Microsoft Office if possible.

Anyway, I've never bought a laptop before. I was thinking about a Dell Inspiron E1705 for around $1,000. What do you think? Should I look at some other models?

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_e1705?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

galen:
Gomboman, that is what I have and use it everyday. We have Dells at home and at work and are very satisfied. I'm sure there are other good makers out there, but can't bet the service.  ;)

03fxdwg:
the only laptops I have ever owned have been dell's. not to say they are the best, or the only ones out there, but have never really had any issues with them. (had a screen go bad in one, but it was still under warranty.)

i can tell you this, the inspiron line is more the home line, were the lattitude is the more the corporate line. have only ever dealt with the lattitudes.

i dont really care for dell support since they started farming that out to india, but hey, almost all us companies do that now. :(

good luck.

mattNY:
That's a pretty nice laptop, and Dell has fairly reasonable prices with good support in general.  Core/Core2 Duo are very quick and good on power.  A couple of things to note, it's pretty heavy at almost 8 pounds, so it'll be fine for around the house but difficult to "take on the road" very often.  Also, if you have kids or think it's prone to spills, drops, etc., you can opt for CompleteCare which will give you accident coverage.  My brother has the 17" screen with TrueLife, it's good looking, but there's no way it's worth the $150 upgrade.

I usually check Techbargains.com for deals, you can often find discounts.  Example, see: http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/78426  They can expire quickly though (2-3 days) if a lot of people are purchasing.

Also note, with Media Center you get a free upgrade to Vista Home Premium, which will have the slick new Aero interface (3D Desktop, think Mac OSX).  Vista Home Basic will not have Aero or a couple of other key features, which many people do not yet realize.

MS Office is usually pretty pricey through Dell.  You may be able to find a better deal online, or give OpenOffice a try (http://www.openoffice.org), it's free, open source and quite a good alternative.  I recommended it to some friends who were skeptical, but they tried it and found it met their needs just fine.  And hey, if it doesn't, you can still buy Office.

Tman122:
Thats the machine I have for home use, with a few minor upgrades. I opted for a smaller HD60 Gig but 7200 RPM 1024 Meg Ram and a proccessor upgrade to a Core Duo 2.0 Gig. I have Media Center Windows because we use the machine camping for TV and Movies. It is almost a year old now and still works great. I believe it was about 1400 though.

It is a big heavy machine though, so if your thinking laptop this may not be your machine. For work I use a Lattitude D520 which is a laptop. And my son has an XPS which is also a laptop. But this machine is more of a desk machine you can move around the house. I would also reccommend the battery upgrade and maybe an extra as this thing eats batterys.

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