Best source for a half-way decent laptop for around $500 that has MS Word and Excel?

Question

I'm a grad student. I want a laptop for word processing, excel spreadsheets, wireless internet, and watching DVD's. There are lots of discount computer stores in my town selling refurbished units, and there's craigslist, and of course e-bay... The discount stores offer a limited warranty, but generally wipe the hard-drive so I'd have to spend $$$ for word and excel, but I dunno how trustworthy e-bay and want-ads are - or if I'm likely to find someone offering the software with the computer. Anyhoo, curious what source y'all would recommend (and if you have any recommendations for minimum system features as well - ?GHz, ?size H.D., ?best screen, etc.)...

Answer 1

You aren't an economics major, are you? People don't give away $375 worth of software (what is costs those of us who are no longer in school) on laptops they're selling for $500.



BTW, laptops are so expensive, people usually don't sell them until they are broken, or sorely outdated. I'd look around in the sale papers on Sundays until you find one that's got at least a 1.5ghz Celeron M or faster processor. You probably should go to/call your college bookstore, they may very well have a good deal or two.



Also, you'll want to add a 512MB So-DIMM (notebook memory) to whatever you buy, because 256MB is just enough to boot into Windows these days. Newegg has them at really good prices: http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=381 Just make sure that the laptop you pick out has all of the features you are looking for, because it's not possible to add anything other than memory to a laptop.

Answer 2

Go with one of those local stores who will back it with a warranty, then get your butt to a store that sells MS Office Student and Teacher edition for about $125. Yes...you read that right. Students and teachers can get the whole thing for much less than the rest of the world.



Tiger Direct has it for $125 as do other online merchants.