[acidbrn823]

looking to grab one for my mom for christmas. looking to spend under 400. just need a decent brand w/ ms office and a decent sized screen.


was looking at this one:HP® Official Store — Buy an Compaq Presario CQ61 and CQ61Z series notebook PC from HP



it was 299.

 

[carolicious]

Don't computers usually come with MS Office trials that only last for 60 days?

 

[icevirus]

FYI

 

[all4oldchevys]

Yeah, I wouldn't really recommend HP. I've owned 6 laptops now and the HP was the worst one. All the rest were Dell, the wireless card went out on one of them, but it was still within the warranty. Dells have been good to me otherwise, but I know some people don't like them.

 

[icevirus]

PDF available here to download if you wanna take a quick look thru it

http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf

 

[carolicious]

my last HP lasted me 5 years but that's not w/out trouble. I had to reformat that thing so much every few months or so. I have a HP again, but that's b/c Costco carries them and they allow returns up to 90 days and have a 2 year warranty on them and connect you with an English speaking CS person rather than someone from India who can't speak English that HP themselves will hook you up with. But if you're not getting it from Costco, I also don't recommend HP despite our whole family having HP's :jumping

 

[marty123]

People I know who has HPs can't stop bitching about it. I think ASUS offers some relatively cheap laptops within your stated price range but they may be those smaller models which may be a bit too small for your mom if she plans on staring at the screen for more than an hour. Personally I like Dells and Toshibas, and of the ones I've seen, they do not tend to run into many problems.

 

[emilyLOVESlime]

Asus has decent netbooks, which seems like a good option for your mom minus the screen size. My Dell Inspiron has only crashed on me once in the past 5-6 years, but my HP laptop's motherboard died within 2 years and it was basically not worth it to replace it...so I got a Macbook Pro I'd choose Dell if I was going to get a PC.

 

[acidbrn823]

Asus has decent netbooks, which seems like a good option for your mom minus the screen size. My Dell Inspiron has only crashed on me once in the past 5-6 years, but my HP laptop's motherboard died within 2 years and it was basically not worth it to replace it...so I got a Macbook Pro I'd choose Dell if I was going to get a PC.

mac pro is what i have too. now it is making sounds like it is possessed. think speaker went or is going.

dell only has mini's in my price range. gonna check out asus. thanks for the input everyone.

 

[wutasian]

sorry to diverge the topic a little bit...

I don't understand why HP tells you that there are choices in specs for your computer....and there's no extra fee? well that's gonna be a rip off for that one dumbass that forgot to get FREE upgrades. HP will feel the wrath of average americans >:0