Best Laptop under $400 for my son?

[Volphin]

So my son has saved up some $$ and wants a laptop for school, web surfing and some minor online games (Minecraft). Any opinions on what would be best?

 

[boatman37]

my son bought an ASUS laptop at best buy for about $289. he loves it. uses it for college. he got it about 2 years ago

 

[Volphin]

Thanks for he heads up! I'll take a look at these with him.

 

[MTboatguy]

In that price range there is a lot of nice laptops you could pick up, I would probably look to see what I could find with a Core I5 or Core I7, some of the companies are even offering convertibles in that price range these days.

 

[Tnstratofam]

I will second the ASUS brand. My stepfather is an engineer with IBM and he recomends the ASUS brand laptops over the rest due to them being better quality. We have two and they are fast and reliable. Both run win 8 and are kept updated with good antivirus/malware software. We expect them to last through most of college for our son. He's a junior in high school this year by the way so we may be asking allot of them.

 

[MTboatguy]

I have had 4 ASUS units in the last 8 years and all 4 of them blew up, transistors on the boards melted down, the ASUS boards are made by the same company that makes the Gigabyte boards. In reality, there are really very few board manufactures in the world, they just brand them for the companies they are making them for that day. Until you move up to the units like the Toshiba Tough book and the Dell Alien Ware units, you are not going to find much difference in laptops these days.

 

[boatman37]

i am not a fan of toshibas. we had 3 at work and 1 at home and all 4 had wireless issues. the one even has wired connectivity issues. contacted toshiba and their only advice was to install new drivers, which i had already done. personally i like dell but have heard good things about the ASUS ever since my son got his. ASUS typically makes good components so not sure what the issues were you had. and like MTboatguy said, most have all the same componetry so its mainly the fit/finish and support. HP support is horrible and toshiba wasn't any better. dell has always been very helpful when i have called them. the best advice i can give though is to avoid acer/emachines/gateway. they use cheap quality components.

 

[MTboatguy]

It is funny, the best laptop I ever had was an acer, I ran that sucker to death for 5 years and it is still being used by a friend of mine that I gave it to, right now I am on an HP, that has never had one problem and I have been running it going on 4 years and my wife's old Gateway that she ran for 4 years is still going strong, I sold it to a friend of mine and he loves it.. My wife has been running a Dell for going on 5 years now with never a problem. Of course Gateway is a company in name these days, and I believe that acer owns Gateway these days. I have not seen an emachine for years now, they were an acer company product, so don't really even know if they are making many computers these days.

So like I said, there are really not all that many computer manufactures these days, I believe Intel even has their mother boards sourced out to other companies.

 

[gm280]

Sounds like most any other "what's best" topic. And the answer the same as well...

 

[boatman37]

lol. HP makes good stuff. its just that their support sucks. basically its a 'you bought it, your problem' attitude. i had one that had a class action suit due to nvidia cards. not HPs root issue but they refused to support anyone that had issues.

my son is sitting beside me with his laptop its an ASUS X551M notebook. he paid about $250. 4GB RAM with Celeron CPU. not the fastest out there but he is starting his Sr year in college and it has been a great buy for him. my Dell i am on now is 5 years old and been great. its a Precision M4500 so it was a higher end (~$3000 new). but every time i have called Dell support they have went out of their way to help even when not under warranty.

you are right about acer/gateway/emachines. they are all the same company now. not sure if emachines is even in business anymore. acer laptops may be better but the desktops used bestec power supplies that would only last a few months usually and would sometimes wipe out the motherboard when it went. i had fixed several of those. my advice when anyone bought an acer desktop was to replace the power supply right away.

my daughter has an HP laptop and loves it. she also has an HP company provided laptop she loves. so its mainly about personal preference anymore, with support second in my opinion.

 

[Volphin]

Well it was our tax free weekend here in TN, so we headed out to look. He had his eye on a toshiba, with an AMD? processor. He liked it, and we ran it through it's paces. Went to stream some video and the speakers were awful! Not to mention the cheap screen that looked milky. So I told him I would loan him some cash if he wanted to look further up the quality chain… (I was thinking about the processor here&#133 and saw an HP Pavilion with an Intel i7 a few slots over. 17 inch screen, 6Gb ram, 750gb HD, USB 2&3 ports and a DVD drive. It also had a titanium like case. $599. He really liked it. Tossed him a few bills and he is working on it as I type. Told him I own him until the loan is paid back in yard work. Once he has paid it off, we may look at SSD drives. hahaha!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I'm a die hard mac guy and have not really kept up with the PC world in years. Your assistance was greatly appreciated.

Second question: What is the best anti virus anti malware package for PCs right now?

 

[boatman37]

i use AVG free. it does good but is a pain with updates. Avast and Avira are good free ones. i also use malwarebytes free. it doesn't scan real-time but you can scan manually if you suspect an issue. i also use CCleaner to clean it about once a month. as far as paid A/V, Trend Micro is supposed to be pretty good. i don't like any Symantec/norton products. i have not paid for A/V for about 6 or 7 years (have been using AVG free) and have had 0 viruses but i am careful about where i go and what i open or download

that HP sounds like a good deal. i just haven't had any luck with their support but they make good computers

 

[oldjeep]

For cheap laptops I've had good luck with the kids Lenovos - Best Buy stuff. For more money I prefer Dells, but find that their entry level consumer stuff tends to crap out pretty quick.

 

[oldjeep]

For anti-virus We just run microsofts anti-virus (Forefront, Defender, Security Essentials) and the paid version of MalwareBytes

 

[rogerwa]

At work I have used Lenovos, what used to be IBM stinkpads, for years. They have been very reliable and durable. I used mine at least 8 hours a day and at least half going from meeting to meeting and then home every night. I can say I have been using these for the past 12 years at least and I can only think of one or two h/w problems and think those were drives. I also like Acer's and Asus - as they are often mfg of other name brand units.

I also use the MS AV, firewall, and use Malware bytes (i just use free version) and have had little problems with viruses or malware..

 

[boatman37]

yeah i have heard good things about lenovo. we had 1 at my last job. also, i haven't used MS security essentials but have heard good things about it

 

[JASinIL2006]

Can't go wrong with Lenovo. They generally have really good keyboards for a laptop, too.

 

[MTboatguy]

Interesting little tidbit about Lenovo that popped up yesterday:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/...-to-ensure-its-software-could-not-be-deleted/

And of course Lenovo had to respond:

http://news.lenovo.com/article_disp...ay.cfm?article_id=2013&PUBNAME=VigLink&NID=CJ

 

[aspeck]

For anti-virus, I hate Norton because of the resources it hogs, but it is free with my internet subscription, so I am running it. I run Spybot and Malwarebytes (free versions) on all my units and I like Avast or AVG free for anti-virus. You can do a lot for free, and you can support them with a little "gift" or upgrade to the paid versions.

 

[thumpar]

We used to be an IBM authorized provider and then Lenovo (china) bought out their desktop/laptop division. We still stuck with them for a while but there support when to crap and so did most of their products. You get what you pay for with them. The only good ones them make are the very expensive ones.

What ever you are looking to buy look at Costco. The online store has much more than the actual stores stock. They have good prices and add an extra year to the warranty. I have had customers use the extra Costco warranty before and they have been pleased.