Expert: Mohammad Babaee - 9/14/2009

Question
Hello Mr. Babaee,

I'm interested in purchasing a laptop for my fiance.  I've heard good things about Toshiba's and I've been trying to find the best one in my price range for her.  I saw one on Amazon.com for $650.00 (toshiba satellite A505-S6973).  The only thing I did not like was the graphics card.  I saw one on Best Buy's web site for $730.00 (Toshiba Satellite A505-S6965) which has a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570, so I wouldn't mind getting the better graphics card for her.  If you could tell me if getting a ATI for graphics makes that big of a difference, and also, might be slightly out of your expertise, but I've found out that model numbers are not the same with different online sellers.  I've been trying to find the best deals but every seller has a different model # for the same laptops.  Any way of sorting through this.  If you have other recommendations, please feel free to let me know.  Mostly for videos, pictures, music and I'd like to get a tv tuner card for her as well, so any you would recommend would be great.


Answer
Hi Brad;

I think it is affordable to pay 80$ more on a dedicated graphics card.The satellite A505-S6973 uses an integrated graphics accelerator which is not so good in performing graphical jobs.
Some manufacturers like Toshiba do not code-name their same products with different configs. For example you see two Toshiba Satellite A505 with different configs, but with the same name. The resellers usually add a suffix(like S6965) to the code-name so that the different configs can be identified, so the different suffixes from resellers is usual.
I think you can make better choices with 730$. Here are some suggestions:
HP Pavilion DV3
Sony VAIO NS
Dell Inspiron 14
Dell Inspiron 15

Please let me know with any queations.

Best Wishes

Mohammad