When you’ve got all the money in the world to spend, the way you shop for a new laptop goes like this: You check out the stats, then you look at the price. When you’re shopping for the best buy laptop, it’s kind of like solving a maze by working from the finish line back to the start: You look at the price, and then you see the best rig you can get within that price range.
Let’s be honest, in this economy, this is what most of us are doing these days. Not many of us have three grand to spend on an Alienware unit to play Grand Theft Auto 4 at light speed. These are “Do what you can with what you got” times we’re living in.
Luckily, a lot of electronics companies have caught on, and they’ve been providing us with surprisingly cheap, surprisingly high quality hardware. If you want an example, look at the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. The PS3 is still going for around five hundred bucks, while the 360 has dropped its price to about two hundred. As a result, Microsoft is, basically, kicking Sony’s butt in the gaming market. We haven’t seen the laptop market get quite so competitive just yet, but the general trend over the last few years has been towards substantial price drops.
Unless you’re willing to check eBay or pawn shops for something used, you should probably settle for the five hundred dollar range as your starting point for a new laptop. Of course, if all you need is a portable word processor, you could get away with spending two hundred bucks for a perfectly suitable rig, but if you want options within your price range, about five hundred dollars is what you should expect to spend.
You’ll want to be kind of specific when it comes to satisfying your needs. If you want a five hundred dollar laptop that’s great for gaming, that’s possible, but don’t expect it to be equally suitable for say, editing movies. You’ll want to look for a laptop specifically geared for what you need, and be willing to accept that you’ll have to do the rest on your PC.
For example, I have a Mac Mini that I specifically got to edit video on. If I so much as think about sticking a high-end FPS game into the disk drive, the whole machine will crash harder than the stock market. It can run Final Cut just fine, but in terms of 3D graphics, I can do maybe the original DOOM and that’s about it. As long as you’re willing to cut your list of demands in half, though, you really shouldn’t have a problem finding a budget laptop that’s perfectly suitable for your needs.
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[...] The Best Buy Laptop Really Boils Down To Your Budget [...]
love the laptop!!!!!