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sooo im going to get a laptop for college but i just cant seem to find the patience to wait until the summer so im thinking of getting one now since my birthday is coming up.  Im basically looking for the best bang for your buck laptop around $500.  Im not trying to push $600 because im most likely going to replace the usual 5400 rpm HDD with a 7200 rpm one.  ummm and yea, i probably wont do too much gaming but good integrated video or a card would be nice.  and i think anything with a core i3 350M or 370M is around my range because thats what ive been aiming for.  also a good webcam will be very handy...i guess at least a 1.3 MP.  sooo yea any suggestions?

I found this one on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220763&Tpk=Asus%20U50F-RBBAG05
tell me what you think.  can you top it?

Watch this page:
http://slickdeals.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9

Really good deals will be posted here:
http://slickdeals.net/
I would subscribe to the RSS feed if I were you.


Outside of that, I know approximately jack shit about current hardware and even less about current laptops. If it's just for college work (and not highly demanding tasks) then I would be tempted to say pick one off Craigslist for about $300 and it should easily do what you want, that extra $200 would go a long ways in a new hard drive, memory, extended battery or maybe even a better CPU. Best bang for your buck will either be used or a crazy insane deal on Slickdeals. But if it's Slickdeals, you either buy it right when you see it or don't buy it at all. Good deals go very fast on Slickdeals. Buy now, think later is their unofficial motto.

Laptops these days are getting so fast its ridiculous. My suggestion is keeping waiting on slickdeals and nab whatever is in your price range. If you don't like it you can sell it to some bloke for more than you paid.

Oh and here's a really good suggestion. When you buy a laptop, make sure you wipe the HD and install any 'normal' copy of windows on it. The software they ship with computers these days is getting progressively worse.

its kind of hard to follow on there since its not just laptops...but ill take a look at it.

and does that mean that i will need to buy a windows disk? because i have XP but ive used the disk already for this computer. or can i just use the windows that comes on the HDD already?

Stick around on Slickdeals, it's really worth your time.

As far as the OS, wiping would be best. I unfortunately don't have much experience re-installing Windows 7 on OEM computers that came with it but I think you can just grab a copy of the same version you have on the internet and install it with the key on the bottom of your laptop. As far as I know, there's no "Windows 7" discs that come with OEM computers these days, I'm pretty sure they just come with "recovery" CD's that are mostly useless.

As for downloading Windows on the internet, I believe it's 100% ok for any version. The legal problem comes when you crack or bypass activation thus giving yourself an unlimited free copy.

Yes

Shoulda watched Slickdeals =\

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?sduid=806177&t=2516593
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?sduid=806177&t=2505587

I wouldn't actually wipe your hard drive, let the Windows install disc do that (there's formatting and partition options when the time comes to install). Get yourself an untouched image (check out MyDigitalLife.info) and either use the Windows Image Burn tool or IMGBurn.

What do you mean by "get yourself an untouched image"

One that hasn't been modified by a 3rd party. You can integrate updates and programs into the install but you can also integrate viruses and other nasties. MyDigitalLife should have hashes on unmodified images.

ill give you an update on how this goes in a few days.  I just had to send it back for a new one because the hard drive was making a very high pitched whistling noise when it was idle.