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I would like to get my wife a new laptop. She currently has an old DELL D600. It will not be a gaming laptop, but she does enjoy and play with the internet games from Facebook. Not looking to spend a whole bunch, say around $500.

I have to ask because I don't know that much about laptop pc's.

I like Acer, Asus and Dell in that order. Sony is too expensive for what you get. Never been too impressed by Gateway although it's owned by Acer now.

I really don't like HP laptops (cheap, under powered, prone to defects IMO although line any company they make good models and bad ones - check online reviews before buying and buy from a place with a 30 day return policy if possible) but you can easily find them on sale for $400 - $500 most retail places.

If battery life is real important, look at the Acer Timeline models. They sacrifice a bit on performance (although more than adequate for the casual computing your wife will be doing) but they get incredible battery life. I bought this one back in August when it was on sale for a week at Office Depot for $550 down from $700. Gets a good 7 hrs if I turn on all the power saving features: http://shopper.cnet.com/notebooks/acer- ... 07364.html

Look at the Office Depot, Staples, Office Max, Walmart and Best Buy weekly circulars for sales. They often have decent laptops in the $500 range, although they generally will not be high-end Core 2 Duos. More often they are "Pentium dual cores" (which are kind of the modern Celeron) or Athlon X2 which are still decent performance for a budget user.

Do you have a membership at a club store like Sam's or Costco? Usually good deals there.

You can also check Dell's weekly business specials page here: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topi ... l=en&s=bsd

There are also good deals listed on GotApex.com: http://www.gotapex.com/

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EDIT:

Office Depot has a budget Acer laptop with an Athlon 64 TF-20 (single core I presume) 1.6 GHz, 3Gb, a Radeon HD 3200 video chipset, Win7 Home for $350. It doesn't get much battery life though (they state 2.5 hours in the specs so it's probably more like 2 hours real world). Not a power house and not something I'd buy for myself, but you can't beat the price.

Trouble is it's listed as in-store only. They usually only have 1 or 2 of them and they go fast.

I do have a membership at Costco. I'll have to check it out. I would like at a minimum a core duos, but do they really cost that much more?
I was surprised that Dell is towards the end of your recommendations. Are they still decent laptops?

I still like Dell, but I like Acer more lately. I feel Dell's laptop quality has gone down a bit lately. I'd still buy a Dell over an HP any day though.

Also you don't have to buy direct - you can buy Dells retail now. Best Buy usually carries them. Just ask the store how they handle the warranty. Sometimes it's through Dell, but sometimes it's through the store.

The one good thing about mail ordering through Dell (at least through the business division) is the on-site warranty. Mobo dies under warranty, they send a guy out to replace it. Just had a client with a bad laptop keyboard the other day and they overnighted the parts to the local Dell service subcontractor and he came out 2 days later to replace the keyboard.

Try getting a keyboard replaced that fast through Geek Squad.

Just be prepared to wait a couple of weeks if you mail order UNLESS you order one of their FastTrack combos. Link here: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topi ... =skb&s=bsd

These have little ability to be configured because they are already assembled and packaged and ready to ship. They promise free delivery in 48 hours.

What is a decent screen size for us old farts?

screem sixe depends on how moble you really want it to be. i prefer a 15" 17" would be better if it stayed in the house, but i carried mine out a lot.
I had a HP that just died. it lasted a year and a half. I found out that HP has a cooling problem with many of their laptops.
I'm looking into acer or dell. I got my girls dells for christmas mostly because of the warranty. I wont have to worry about spilling anything on mine so that warranty is less of an issue.

If you plan on traveling with it at all, don't go over 15", 17" is just way huge & heavy. I've had decent experiences with HP, but Acer definately impresses me, I'd also like to throw one out to Toshiba as well. Well priced for what you get.

I will say this is where AMD is picking up most of their market share because overclocking is a non-issue & their processors tend to make a laptop about $50-100 cheaper for a similar performing chip.

17" is a nice desktop replacement but yeah it's heavy (although a modern 17" weights about what my 5 year old 15" weighed so it's all relative). Not something you would want to lug around an airport though.

Nice thing about a 17" lappy is it has a full keyboard with a numeric pad.

Look at what this unit is going for:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/ ... &cid=24471

Software & Services
Intel® Pentium® Dual Core™ T4400 (2.2GHz/800MHz FSB/1MB cache)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
1 Year Basic Service Plan
3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz
160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
4-cell battery
No Webcam Option
Dell Wireless 1397 802.11g Half Mini-Card
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD
8X CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
High Definition Audio 2.0
Jet Black
My Accessories
Microsoft® Works 9
McAfee SecurityCenter, 30-Day Trial
Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year
Also Includes
Bright, glossy widescreen 15.6 WLED display (1366x768)
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0
Integrated 10/100 Network Card
Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor

For $400.

Walmart has this emachine laptop which I think is an Acer for only $298?
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. ... 2746371502

* Key Features & BenefitsIntel Pentium Processor T4400
2.20 GHz, 800 MHz Front Side Bus, 1 MB L2 Cache
* 3GB DDR2 system memory
Enough memory to handle today's most memory-hungry applications
* 250GB 5400 RPM SATA hard drive
Store your music, videos, photos and documents with plenty of space to spare
* SuperMulti 8X DVD+ with Double Layer Support
Play and create CDs and DVDs with this DVD/CD burner drive
* Wired Ethernet; Wireless WiFi
Connect to a broadband modem with 10/100 Gigabit Ethernet; Connect wirelessly to a WiFi network or hotspot with built-in 802.11b/g WLAN (No Draft-N on this unit)
* 15.6" HD Widescreen High-Brightness LCD Display
1366 x 768 resolution; Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M with 1695 MB video memory

Additional Features
* 5-in-1 digital media reader
* 2 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x VGA connector, 1 x headphone/speaker/line-out jack, 1 x microphone-in jack, 1 x RJ-45 port, 1 x DC-in jack for AC adapter
* 6-cell lithium-ion battery (up to 2.5 hours)
* AC power supply included

Software
* Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (To learn more about the features of Windows 7, click here)
* Microsoft Works & Microsoft Office 2007 Home & Student 60-day trial
* Norton Internet Security 2009 60-day trial

Support & Warranty
* 1-year Limited Hardware Warranty with Toll Free Support

I'm the crazy sort that'd get the Walmart one. Even if it is E-machines. 25% less is hard to argue with. Especially if you take care of your stuff.

I have several family members that have the eMachines, they are identical in build and quality to their Acer AspireOne counterparts. And none of them have had any problems with them.

Yeah I'm going there after work to pick one up for the wife.

Heck, I might pick one up myself.

that is "in store" only? i do not see a link for online purchase (?)

Just be aware these are low-en budget systems. Plenty of power for the average person but they are very low end CPUs: Pentium 4 single core (dual threaded so it will appear as a dual core to Windows even though it's not), and a very slow (by today's standards) 800MHz bus clock.

Basically this is today's Celeron, equivalent to the AMD X2 laptops you see out there for under $500, but the price is right.