My parents’ laptop crapped out on them, and because a decade ago I used to purchase computers for a company where I worked, they always call me for advice. I would love some advice to pass along to them.
has to be a pc, I’m a mac convert, but I think they would have too tough of a time switching
no real special needs, just a lot of hard drive space 'cause dad is an amateur photographer and it’s not unusual for him to rack up 500MB of pictures in a day
low end of the laptop price range, probably $700-1000 give or take
generally, less bells and whistles is probably better than more, they are not power users
prefer a company with excellent tech support
So…any recommendations? Specific brands and models and personal experiences with them would be great.
You can’t go wrong with a Dell. I really like their widescreen models. I would look at up-spec video and display for viewing/editing pictures. The external drive is a good idea, but still get a decent internal drive, and probably more importantly a CD or DVD burner to archive the photos.
A DVD burner with the appropriate software would allow him to create DVD from still pictures slideshows.
You can search for pretty much anything you want and quite often there are several reviews by people who have purchased them. In my experiance they are about the cheapest out there. The other suggestion for laptops would be Dell.
My wife is not very savvy about computers at all, and had only PC experience. She was very uncomfortable when I convinced her to buy an iMac. Within a month, she said I could take it away when I pried it from her cold, dead fingers.
I’m sure your parents would be the same. Especially if you throw in a copy of Photoshop. And of course, the new dual-core Intel models will run Windows if they insist.
Of course, the price might kill the deal. But they’re worth it…
Plan B would be a Dell. I’ve beaten my work laptop (a D600) to death over the last couple of years and it has held up surprisingly well.