Need a little help!

[Jim Creech]

SWMBO has let it be known that it would be in my best interest to provide her with a new laptop. She currently has an HP Pavilion Entertainment (or something to that effect), and that she would like a newer "up to date" HP. Having little technical knowledge in the way of puters I am in need of advise, suggestions, etc. Any HP laptop gurus out there?
PS: She is not a gamer. Mostly used for church work, surfing and general puter stuff.

[Joe Angrisani]

As a pont of reference, what is the current computer not doing adequately?

[David Weaver]

I am not a HP guru. I am cheap, though, so I have an HP laptop.

the last laptop I got was earlier this year, an HP laptop (the same big size as the one you're using) with a core i7 quad core, 8 gigs of ram, 3/4ths of a terabyte of hard disk..

It was $680 delivered, refurbished. About $100 less at the time than new.

I had the same issue your wife probably does, the older HP laptops were kind of weak in the video department and rendered a lot of stuff brute force. Flash was a major challenge for my machine, as was the overhead that exists with the bloatware all-encompassing virus scanners.

Presume your wife's machine has some sort of AMD turion in it, and it could be 5 or more years old. She would be pleased with the same upgrade I made. In another 5 years, I'll probably do it again unless something has changed significantly in the world of computing.

[Tim Boger]

Have you considered an ipad ..... my wife absolutely loves hers.

Tim

[Eduard Nemirovsky]

I would recommend a iPad or any other tablet. Much lighter, easy to use. Small size, do everything, or most what your wive can do on laptop.

[Steve Meliza]

Two years ago my wife walked in to where I was and said "my laptop just died". Sure enough, nothing I tried would make the 6 year old HP come back to life. I just couldn't see repairing it so we got into the car and drove the the Apple store. After poking and prodding all the available models she picked a 13" MacBook Air that cost just under $1k. For these past two years she's enjoyed having it and you don't hear the phase "Have you tried restarting it yet?" in our house any more. Battery life is still about 6-7 hours and thanks to the solid-state drive the computer goes to sleep and wakes up seamlessly and in the blink of an eye.

My own laptop is getting long in the tooth so I asked a friend about switching to an iPad since he had one as well as a laptop. He advised me that while he enjoys his iPad, he'd not be getting rid of the laptop any time soon. My take on what he told me is that while it was usually pretty good for reading websites and watching videos, it just wasn't a very good platform for creating content like emails and documents.

[Troy Turner]

Walmart (if they're still open ) is having a black friday starting at 10pm Thurs. I believe it's a Compaq for like $179. Thought it was a netbook at first, but realized it's actually a good laptop. Looking at getting one for the boys who like to play games and such, so it should suit her needs.

[Brian Elfert]

Walmart (if they're still open ) is having a black friday starting at 10pm Thurs. I believe it's a Compaq for like $179. Thought it was a netbook at first, but realized it's actually a good laptop. Looking at getting one for the boys who like to play games and such, so it should suit her needs.

That Compaq laptop at Walmart is absolute bottom of the barrel. It probably has something like the AMD E-300 processor which benchmarks at barely faster than my Pentium 4 from 2005! You don't need the latest i5 for most things, but something faster will last longer before being obsolete.

[Jerome Stanek]

Pretty any new laptop will be a huge improvement over what she has now but I would take her with you to let her try a few. each laptopbhas a different feel. We have three toshibas and all three feel differently same for the HPs and Acers that we had.

[Keith Outten]

Jim,

I agree with Steve go straight to the Apple store or Best Buy and purchase an Apple notebook. You'll get a machine that works reliably for a very long time.
.

[David Weaver]

I have to use an ipad for work sometimes. I wouldn't trade the same price HP laptop for it any day soon. The battery life on my new HP version of the same other laptop is about 6-7 hours also, and it runs cooler than the prior generation.

Everyone can do what they want spending money on a mac, but I personally wouldn't do it. They want over twice as much for similar hardware (compare a macbook with a quad core processor and 8 gigs of ram), and unless you're hooked on the way macs engage a user, there is no extra value in the experience. I haven't had a PC die in over 10 years, and the only one I've ever had quit was one that I built out of parts and abused - it quit after 7 years.

[David Weaver]

That Compaq laptop at Walmart is absolute bottom of the barrel. It probably has something like the AMD E-300 processor which benchmarks at barely faster than my Pentium 4 from 2005! You don't need the latest i5 for most things, but something faster will last longer before being obsolete.

Ditto that. Get something with 8 gigs of ram and a decent processor. Ask on here if you need to, but anything with a core i7 should be fine for a while.

the low speed CPUs and cheap video hardware, etc that come on the PCs that sell for $200 will choke on flash in web applications, and if they don't now, they will very shortly. They are probably only suitable as a terminal for linux.

[Jerome Stanek]

At the place I cut for they use apple for their design work but the designers have PC for personal stuff the PC blow the Apples away and were about half the price.

[Jim Creech]

To the best of my knowledge there is nothing wrong with her laptop, she just wants a new one. I suppose her reason for wanting another HP is so that she can use her existing docking station. (I assume they will be compatible). Also, I think she wants to take the old one to church and leave the new one home and work from a flash drive for church stuff. I did look online at the Apple selection and they are a bit out of my price range at this time. I guess the safest thing to do is to follow Jerome's advise and let her pick out what she wants.

[James Baker SD]

To the best of my knowledge there is nothing wrong with her laptop, she just wants a new one. I suppose her reason for wanting another HP is so that she can use her existing docking station. (I assume they will be compatible). .

I would not make that assumption. Check the specs.