Portable Laptop Options

[JohnnyOnTheSpot]

Good day everyone!

I've recently been looking at getting a highly portable, long-lasting battery laptop. I'm looking at roughly ~$500 to spend. I don't care about my OS, windows, OS X, linux (or any *nix flavor) will all be fine. It doesn't need to be a powerhorse by any means. What I'm looking for is the following:

• Very portable, light-weight

• Long battery life (ideally a stock battery at 2+hrs, four would be ideal but I can always pick up an extra longer-life battery after the fact)

• Fast (to an extent, it doesn't need to be extremely fast)

• Decent amount of storage space (2gigs would be too small, 4 may be just enough, ideally more but no need to get above 150gb b/c it's overkill)

• Wireless capability built-in

I'm basically looking to have an electronic portable journal. I want to be able to take it to work with me (I bike as often as I can [mostly everyday] so weight is somewhat an issue, though 4-8 pounds with the ac adapter is fine[side note: my last laptop was a media center that weighed over 10 lbs so just about any laptop is "light" to me]). I also just want something that is going to be pretty fast for what I'm doing. I'm looking to run OpenOffice or MS Office in a quick environment, something that will not be bogged down by all the nuances of an extensive software suite (so maybe not MS Office) or extensive OS and something that will allow me to multi-task to a certain extent. At most I'm running Firefox, OpenOffice and Winamp at once. I'm not looking to be running Photoshop and all of that at once, if I could run Photoshop or even GIMP that might be nice but isn't the bigger priority right now and if I could only run it by itself, that'd be fine too, but this isn't going to be a media workhorse by any means. Oh and I'm not at all worried about running games on my laptop...yeah I did that with my laptop and I burned it out within 2 years...not a requirement at all so don't even worry about that.

Like I posted above, I want a quick machine that is going to do what I need it do as quickly as possible, is portable, has a decent battery life between charges, can access the internet wirelessly and will be able to handle a bit of multi-tasking but won't be doing much with media other than playing music or even attempting to playing games on it.

Now, why did I post about the HDD not needing to be too large? I've been looking at the eee pc's and they're relatively inexpensive, seem to be reliable machines (Solid-state HDD's) but have small screen sizes. And what I think for what I'm doing with it, it's not going to need to be a huge screen with all the bells and whistles of other machines. I know that those are extremely portable and light-weight which is defniitely attractive to me. Other than that I've been seeing some great sales from the local big-box retailers for much more powerful laptops for the price range that I'm looking at. Would it behoove of me to consider one of these machines and are there any other sites you'd recommend for purchasing laptops from other than the standard newegg and the like? Would I want to consider dell maybe for a laptop?

Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Frank Booth]

The lighter the laptop is the more expensive it is. I would got for a 15.4 inch as those are most popular and least expensive. However i doubt you can get a recent one for 500 dollars. You would have to try Frys or similar stores which carry older laptops.

 

[Arn0t]

here... i think this would be perfect for you !

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220246
^^ comes with Linux

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220321
^^ comes with XP

Both are the same price, and ive personally seen these and they work like a charm, and they are a Solid State Disk (similar to a flash drive, but faster) so you can dont have to worry about screwing up the hard drive while transporting. only $400 without shipping.

 

[JohnnyOnTheSpot]

Thanks for that post, that's what I've been concluding as well that the eee's are going to maybe be my best option.

And frank I did say that light-weight to me is something between 4-8lbs so I'm not looking for a Mac Air or anything that light-weight and I think for that price it can definitely be had.

 

[Frank Booth]

No, what Arnot posted is really nice. Did not know they make them so cheap, i know i have seen some small laptops that were minimum 1200. Stripping down the HD and other things really cut the price.

 

[Arn0t]

and like i said, ive personally seen and used one, and they are sleek... dont get me wrong, you wont be running games on it in the near future... but for $400, its a steal

 

[JohnnyOnTheSpot]

I may wait because MSI is coming out with a similar model to the eee's called the MSI Wind and that is also looking promising. Well that and my funds will be secured by my birthday in August so that's when I'm looking to buy it.

 

[agent86]

A friend was recently in a similar position, and I helped her pick a laptop by watching the sales at the local big box stores. She ended up with a particularly nice laptop for about $600. It seems like pretty much anything on the market is going to meet your performance specs, so I would look for lowest cost from a reputable manufacturer.

Those Eee PC's and the likes seem a bit underpowered and small - I would probably want to demo one before I settled for it. This laptop's screen is 13", I think, and it sometimes feels a little small. The Eee PC's screen is 7", which seems absolutely tiny! I guess it is a matter of personal preference.

I just bought a Macbook refurbished for about $1k, which is out of your price range but it is a good, light, useful machine. I've had generally good experiences with refurb hardware, so you may look into that to save money.