Best Laptop for under $500

ok dont buy acer!!

sound - get an x-fi for usb or cardbus

hp laptops often have good sound especially their compaq range. although their compaq range has gotten a bit "cheaper" and more geared towards consumer than business. before they were lovely.

i know over here you can get a nice compaq for about $560 - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169936

on newegg for $500 I think ud be best off with this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16834147997R

but you really cant get a lot of laptop for $500 these days...

I think you'd definitely want something t4000 or better in processor, obv ram and hd are easily and cheaply upgraded anyway and build quality is worth paying for.

what kind of thing will be done on it?

My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite M300
I paid about 800$ tax in last year and it was a -100$ deal back then
it's probably around 500$ now.

It's a 14.1 screen so the laptop is pretty, not too big not too small
The sound is AWESOME, speakers are Harman Kardon (they make sound systemz for cars...).

It's powerful enough to do everything, but don't except gaming on it.

Check it out

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Hmm, In my experience Dells feel horrible, are really bulky, feel like crap all plasticy and they use budget materials for their builds.

Hp do tend to get some motherboard problems but I have had just as many problems will dell machines and could not say one manufacturer is better than another. Certain lines differ and HP pavillion laptops are quite good, a friend of mine bought his over 5 years ago, another bought his three years ago and has had no problems other than the wearing of the casing. Also I have had a hp compaq business laptop and the motherboard did go wrong. But I simply called up and arranged replacement and they not only fixed it free of charge but they also fixed the scratched/damaged casing as extra!

whereas in contrast three of my friends have had Dell laptops go bad with difficult customer support.

It is reasonably well known that toshiba are potentially the best quality build and pretty much have always been revered that way. If I had found one on newegg for under $500 then I might have said go for that.

I would personally look at the experiences of owners of a particular model/line rather than blaming the entire manufacturer for a trend of breakages. Just look at the samsung hard drives, the 1tb f1 vs the f3. F1 had loads of problems and if you took that trend and applied it to all of samsung then you would miss out on some very special and high performance products from them and in this case the f3 which is an amazing drive.

ewww not an atom

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Recommending an Acer laptop is like recommending to buy a house made of twigs and chocolate.

Most cheaply built laptops I have ever come across.