Preferably Sub $500 or $600 laptop. (lolol get a mac!)

Anyway, a friend of mine needs a windows laptop for work. His laptop (a macbook pro! they just work!) recently crashed, so he's in need of a quick replacement.

The machine needs to be windows to fit in with the work environment. He just needs something quick for typing, emails, maybe some photoshop. A decently fast machine with a large hard drive is what I'm looking for.

I'm not sure if he cares about it being a netbook or not, so recommend some of those too!

Dell are advertising laptops here atm for about four hundred quid - there's probably a similar thing going on over your side o' pond too.

/me googles

EDIT

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-1545?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&ref=lthp&s=dhs

Inspirons.

asus eee pc, seriously.

or the msi wind.

even my 900mhz celeron variant runs photoshop okay, so the 1.6 atoms should run it really well and if you go with a standard (non-flash) harddrive you get ~120gb for good price.

Yea when I say Photoshop, I dont mean anything intensive. Probably adding a text layer at most.

If you don't go eee pc or the like, definately check out dell. They make some decent midrange products.

I would have to concur with the people above me. Netbooks are awesome! (although I did just get rid of mine for a Macbook Pro ). They really are a very good value. It's a shame this wasn't later, as I know Lenovo has a new IdeaPad coming out that is quite a beast (iirc).

Even the Dell Mini is very good, specially if he'd like to run OSX on it. Maybe go with the Dell and get a good warranty on it?

those are the two things I was going to suggest

only problem with the dell mini is it's ssd and I don't think you can replace it with a normal drive easily.

Dell mini has atrocious battery life--the MSI Wind clocks the best at ~6 hours. The EEE pc's get 3-5.

There are rumors of an Apple Netbook floating around.

I work on Asus EEE's on a daily basis & overall I like them. They also make decent eReaders when you rotate the screen.

The new generation of netbooks are fairly beastly. There are some that are hitting 10-12 hrs of real use battery life, no joke.

Anyways, Dell Mini 10v (NOT the Mini 10, which has the GMA 500 chipset) if he wants/cares about putting OSX on it. Or the Mini 9 if he wants OSX and doesn't mind a smaller weird keyboard.

Otherwise, the best netbooks:
EEE 1000HE
HP Mini 2140 (mainly for the keyboard)
Any of the Samsung ones (NC10, NC12, etc)
Any of the 10" Aspire One variants

Check www.umpcportal.com or Engadget if you want to check out a ****ton more of them.


Edit: the Acer Aspire Timeline series (not 'netbooks' but sorta halfway between full-powered laptop and netbook) are coming out soon and look pretty sexy. Apparently for around $600. http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/26/acer-aspire-timeline-out-of-the-box-and-loving-life/

I don't have a specific recomendation, but If I were you I would keep an eye out for Closeout / Openbox sales at your local Microcenter (microcenter.com). The one in Paterson NJ isnt too far from you, and I often find some great deals there.

T500

About that

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=706293

Thanks for the reccomendations guys, I'll forward them and see how that goes! I dont think he'd be switching the hard drive out, and I'm willing to bet that these netbooks with 160gb is more than enough.

And Jon, unless I'm reading the Lenovo site wrong:

There was a sale last week that had the T400/T500 for under or around $500 or so dunno if it's over, though

Edit: So I just checked, and the CPP site has the T400 and T500 starting at $636 and $662, respectively. If you can find an e-coupon (I'm sure there are some floating around, there always are), you could probably get it under $600.

[url]www.lenovo.com/cpp[/url]

passcode is familyandfriends

SL500

I thought the point of a "netbook" was to be relatively cheap and very practical.

FYI

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1368687

Damnit, I was just going to post that..had it in my clipboard and everything!

After all this wonderful advice (thanks!) he got a toshiba from best buy o_O