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Please, when posting a link to a laptop listing, make sure to include the price at time of posting. It helps.
Requesting help with a purchase? Please post here: https://forums.dansdeals.com/index.php?topic=135662.msg2794782#msg2794782

Dell:
Precision - Very powerful desktop replacements - great warranty, ridiculously expensive - Usually overpriced or overkill

Latitude - Good Laptops - Great warranty! Highly recommended for any Business environment - Sometimes expensive.

Vostro  - Lower end Business Machines - Better Priced - still durable - Usually 1 Year warranty.

XPS - The nicer looking dell machines, Some are better than others...

Inspiron - YMMV Every model is different

(Plain) Insprion Series - Dells lowest end laptop
(R) Insprion Series - Perfect Home use, dependable, decent build quality, recommended
(Z) Insprion Series - A little slimmer than the R series, Some are Ultrabooks (Very often don't include Optical Drives)

HP:

Spectre - Top of the line personal (dragonfly is the top of the line for business) - lightest laptops, and beautiful!

Pavilion - YMMV (Some better than others)

Probook - Stable durable business systems - Usually a little on the heavy side.

Elitebook - Business Higher end systems, usually pretty expensive

ENVY - Used to be the HP sleek and nicer systems, they pretty much replaced most of the standard pavilions now and call them either ENVY or sleekbooks

Sleekbook - like it sounds slimmer line of laptops

Lenovo:

Thinkpad Series - Very Dependable Business Machine, Expensive (Not Pretty but Durable)

IdeaPad Series -

S Series
U Series - Usually the slimmer line Ultrabooks, Doesn't always include DVD Drive
Y Series - Nice machines with good specs and features (Cool Backlit Keyboards)
Z Series - Step up from the G Series, all around decent build, priced nicely, great home use laptop
G Series - Lower end

Samsung:

Series 3
Series 5
Series 7
Series 9 - The nicest, sleekest looking laptops I've seen in a long time - Can pass for a Macbook!!


HT: Dh Data Recovery & Name Changed


A great post by caliheat:
I believe that there are many factors when deciding what laptop to purchase.
1) What is your intended use and necessary features. e.g. light use vs. heavy use & optical drive, computer speed etc.
2) As mentioned several times in this thread, RAM itself is very easy to upgrade after you purchase.
3) Brand - IMHO this is pretty important as well - which do your prefer vs. which brand do people recommend.
4) Price - you should decide a price range that best suits your needs.
5) Operating System - Many people like myself prefer Windows 7 vs. 8.1, so this would be another consideration.
6) Warranty - does it include 1 year or more, cost for extending warranty.
7) Detailed Specs:
  Processor  - model and speed i3, i5, & i7 2.0 Ghz, 3.0 Ghz etc.
  RAM - This IMHO should be minimum 8GB, especially if running 8.1, however can be added easily.
  Hard Drive - SATA vs. SSD, the latter being much faster. SATA itself offers 5400 RPM vs. 7200 RPM again, the latter being faster.
  Screen Size - this is a personal preference as you can always attach a larger screen in an office setting.
  Battery & Weight - overall laptop weight preference & battery life.
  Graphics - Integrated graphics vs. dedicated graphics, e.g. Intel 4400 vs. Nvidia GTX etc.

In summary, you have to decide what are you priorities, what can be upgraded and what you are flexible on.



Excellent article about the differences between the Intel processor suffixes.

Excellent "Laptop Buying Guide" by @dailykasha, written for Black Friday 2021, updated for holidays 2023

Author Topic: Laptop Deals Master Thread  (Read 3151151 times)

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #400 on: February 22, 2012, 09:40:40 AM »
Hybrids are an interesting concept, which I have no experience with as of yet. They're only becomming more common in recent times.
Really not common to find them in CTO systems.

But the prices of SSD are now dropping, hybrids might just not really make it.

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #401 on: February 22, 2012, 09:41:34 AM »
Really? Boot time to open IE is 1 min 10 sec on my throw away. If I disable all startup BS my guess it would be under a minute.

Dell 9300 3-4 yrs old
Old Pent 1.7
1GB Mem
Win 7

1. Disabling all startup items isn't real world use.
2. Opening IE doesn't mean other stuff not still loading in the background.
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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #402 on: February 22, 2012, 09:47:54 AM »
1. Disabling all startup items isn't real world use.
2. Opening IE doesn't mean other stuff not still loading in the background.
Did you every run msconfig and see the BS that is loaded. My guess is most people will not know what half the stuff is.

Let me put it this way. Your 2 min comment was way off base!
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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #403 on: February 22, 2012, 09:57:22 AM »
Really? Boot time to open IE is 1 min 10 sec on my throw away. If I disable all startup BS my guess it would be under a minute.

Dell 9300 3-4 yrs old
Old Pent 1.7
1GB Mem
Win 7
That for some reason is really quick for your specs... is it a 7200rpm hard drive?
1. Disabling all startup items isn't real world use.
2. Opening IE doesn't mean other stuff not still loading in the background.
I got without disabling anything
On my desktop (pretty fresh install)
52 Seconds. I am running with a 7200rpm drive, 4GB Ram, Intel E7400 Processor

On my laptop I got
88 Seconds, with 8GB ram, T4400 Processor, 5400rpm HD. But really the webpage took way longer to load, as I had a million other things running in the background. (Time for a wipe)

On a brand new Dell laptop (nothing installed)
62 Seconds, i5 Processor, 4GB Ram, 5400rpm Hard drive

Obviously this demonstrates that the speed of the hard drives plays a big role in the startup time
« Last Edit: February 22, 2012, 10:01:01 AM by Name Changed »

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #404 on: February 22, 2012, 10:03:08 AM »
Did you every run msconfig and see the BS that is loaded. My guess is most people will not know what half the stuff is.



i dont think i recognize anything there but im not a maven in these things. how do i know which of that stuff doesn't need to load?

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #405 on: February 22, 2012, 10:06:31 AM »
That for some reason is really quick for your specs... is it a 7200rpm hard drive?
5400. HD is partitioned, only OS gets loaded to C. Programs, Pagefile, Temp Int Files and all other BS does not go on C. Sys restore off, it is useless.
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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #406 on: February 22, 2012, 10:08:48 AM »
i dont think i recognize anything there but im not a maven in these things. how do i know which of that stuff doesn't need to load?
Mostly application you installed or somehow got installed you could easily disable. For example skype - this really slows the start up. If you disable it, it wont open at startup. (I actually keep it on my startup, cuz I anyways will open it...)


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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #407 on: February 22, 2012, 10:11:22 AM »
Mostly application you installed or somehow got installed you could easily disable. For example skype - this really slows the start up. If you disable it, it wont open at startup. (I actually keep it on my startup, cuz I anyways will open it...)

I don't understand why they can't have a lower priority for some start-up apps, where they'll only load if the computer is idle (or you load manually).
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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #408 on: February 22, 2012, 10:12:39 AM »
i dont think i recognize anything there but im not a maven in these things. how do i know which of that stuff doesn't need to load?
99.9% of the time you can just “disable all”. Not only will it boot faster it will also run faster. You can then go back and enable something you always use after startup, like your AV.
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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #409 on: February 22, 2012, 10:13:35 AM »
I don't understand why they can't have a lower priority for some start-up apps, where they'll only load if the computer is idle (or you load manually).
When you write you own OS keep that idea in mind  ;)

I wouldn't be supprised if there is an app that could do this

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #410 on: February 22, 2012, 10:14:54 AM »
99.9% of the time you can just “disable all”. Not only will it boot faster it will also run faster. You can then go back and enable something you always use after startup, like your AV.

True

Getting a little more technical, you could go to Safemode, and see there the list of apps that started, and note the names...
those are prob the crucial ones


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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #411 on: February 22, 2012, 10:18:01 AM »
99.9% of the time you can just “disable all”. Not only will it boot faster it will also run faster. You can then go back and enable something you always use after startup, like your AV.

none of these things are necessary? i have some stuff random letters starting from the windows/system32 folder

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #412 on: February 22, 2012, 10:22:12 AM »
none of these things are necessary? i have some stuff random letters starting from the windows/system32 folder

If it's truly random it sounds like they might be viruses. Could also be drivers. Try googling the filenames and see what you come up with, then try scanning them.
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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #413 on: February 22, 2012, 10:29:02 AM »
If it's truly random it sounds like they might be viruses. Could also be drivers. Try googling the filenames and see what you come up with, then try scanning them.
+1

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #414 on: February 22, 2012, 10:29:18 AM »
If it's truly random it sounds like they might be viruses. Could also be drivers. Try googling the filenames and see what you come up with, then try scanning them.

they are prob not really random i just prob don't understand them. i'll try googling them

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #415 on: February 22, 2012, 10:31:54 AM »
none of these things are necessary? i have some stuff random letters starting from the windows/system32 folder
I am nowhere near an expert in this field. My understanding is everything in msconfig/startup is put there so programs/utilities run faster the first time you click on them. The problem is they all take time and space at startup. You might not run a certain program/utility for days/months and it still is eating resources.

As an example I have in my startup a program to warm up the lamp in my scanner. I might not use my scanner for months. No need for this to start every time.

AsherO makes a good point about viruses. I do not use an AV program but do run Malwarebytes in the background.
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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #416 on: February 22, 2012, 10:36:09 AM »
I am nowhere near an expert in this field. My understanding is everything in msconfig/startup is put there so programs/utilities run faster the first time you click on them. The problem is they all take time and space at startup. You might not run a certain program/utility for days/months and it still is eating resources.

As an example I have in my startup a program to warm up the lamp in my scanner. I might not use my scanner for months. No need for this to start every time.

AsherO makes a good point about viruses. I do not use an AV program but do run Malwarebytes in the background.

looking thru now it seems i shouldn't be disabling everything like igfxtray or igfxpers

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #417 on: February 22, 2012, 10:39:14 AM »
This kinda went OT, maybe we open a thread for tech support?

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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #418 on: February 22, 2012, 10:42:11 AM »
looking thru now it seems i shouldn't be disabling everything like igfxtray or igfxpers
They are for your graphics card. So you can change things like screen resolution easily.

Sorry for the OT, last post!
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Re: Looking for cheap good Laptop deal
« Reply #419 on: February 22, 2012, 01:45:30 PM »
My exact boot time on my nearly 2 year old Z12 is 25.5 seconds for my background to load and 28.5 seconds for Chrome to open.
Save your time, I don't answer PM. Post it in the forum and a dedicated DDF'er will get back to you as soon as possible.