Expert: Bobbert - 5/28/2008

Question
I have to buy a laptop for college and I don't know what type to buy.  I am willing to spend around $1000.  In your opinion, would it be better to upgrade a lower end laptop (inspiron 1525) and get the best RAM, memory, etc, offered.  Or would it be better to get a higher end laptop (lenovo thinkpad t61) but not be able to get the highest performance available (even though it would have the same "stats" as the lower end laptop).  Also, are there any other specific notebooks you recommend.  Thanks for your help

Answer
Honestly you won't see much difference between starting with a "lower end" part and adding on the options you'd like, compared to getting a package that comes configured with everything you wanted in the first place (there isn't really that much difference in laptop hardware, in terms of chipsets and mainboards, to make a huge line between "low end" and "high end" very well defined).

I'd go with Dell based on personal experience, although I know Lenovo makes an excellent product as well, personally I wouldn't go with HP as I've seen them fall all over themselves repeatedly (when its the most commonly seen brand having problems, at least in my workplace and through volunteer venues like AllExperts, I tend to wonder about their QC).

Another plus for Dell is their large university discount incentives, and good warranty support. Another option might be to look at Apple, as they produce a sound product, if you can't stand OS X, consider reformatting it over to Windows (it'll run it, legally, as long as you purchase Windows), or running both operating systems.

Just a side note, RAM is the same thing as memory, unless you're talking about RAM and storage (storage would be the hard disk, RAM would be the memory).

Hope this helps, feel free to ask away with more questions.

-bob