Looking to buy....

I have been looking at buying a new laptop for my girlfriend for her schooling she is going back for. Comparing warranties, etc we narrowed down to a possible Toshiba computer at walmart. This laptop is only sold online which sucks as I cant physically go look at it but for just regular on the go internet surfing, college site downloads, some pictures/music, and running Microsoft word/excel would this work for us?

Wondering if the AMD Sempron™ Processor is any good or just cheap and will not last? thanks for any help!

Here is the link: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Toshiba-15.6-250-GB-PSLV6U-027007/13339216

 

Overpriced for such a low end laptop. I wouldn't pay over $399 for something like that.

A quick visit to BestBuy.com, the five lowest priced laptops are all cheaper with similar specs.

 

best buys ext warranty is also another $100 more for two years then walmarts, i realize it is way more convenient and probably covers more but reading both terms/conditions sound very similar, that is kind of why i was leaning towards walmart

 

Well it all depends what you want it for, but yes that laptop is way overpriced for a single-core laptop with only 2GB of ram. It would be fine for basic internet surfing and excel, but i wouldn't go for the minimum if you want to be able to do other tasks on the laptop in the future.

I would go for best buy, they have newer technology, and if you really want to buy their extended warranty, they can fix it on site if it isn't really serious.

I just bought a new Toshiba for Christmas from best buy that has intel core 2 duo, 4GB ram, 500GB hard drive for $550 CAN (probably around $500 American with the messed up prices)

The laptop from walmart has only 2GB of ddr2 ram with windows 7 (probably only 32-bit) but it will be slow with the single core processor if you plan on multitasking. along with Toshiba's bloat-ware, you can expect this laptop to get slow fast.

looking at laptops on bestbuy.com (alot better selection than canada) I see laptops with 4GB DDR3 ram for the same price. (that's the same as my $1900 laptop)

I wouldn't base buying a laptop on the extended warranty, because if you see what you'll actually be using, you don't get much. Chances are you'll never use the extended warranty if you take care of the laptop. I've bought extended warranty's before and never used them.

Right now I'm using firefox with a few tabs open. I also have windows messenger running in the background with avast anti-virus. I also have under 60 processes running in the background. I'm using just over 1.5GB of my DDR3 1066 ram. I know running a few more programs like word and excel that it won't use up that much more memory, but you don't really have any breathing room if you have just 2GB of ram. I just think that 4GB is a minimum for today.Even if you don't use it all, it will be good to have spent a little more on a machine that will be good for the next few years.

 

It's absolutely stupid to buy a warranty for a $400 laptop. A high estimate for failure within 2 years is 20% but the majority of that is going to happen in the first year, so your expected cost due to failure is probably somewhere around $40. Whereas the warranty is $100.