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My computer went kablooey, so I am in the market. Any recommendations? It'll be used mainly for light word processing, surfing, and to watch stuff. Toshiba used to be recommended as a reliable brand, is that still true?
Since I lost all my media in the crash (most of it recoverable from other places/discs) and since my S.2 TiVo is becoming more unreliable in talking to my computer, I'm thinking of also getting something kind of media streaming device. I'm thinking of the Roku3 or the WD TV Live. Anyone have experience with those?
(I'm more interested in being able to get video from my computer to my TV, than watching streaming media on my TV, though that's nice too. It's just outside of sneaky VPN moves, I don't have a lot of access to streaming services in Canada.)
If you're willing to look at Apple, I'm a really big fan of the 11" MacBook Air. The reconditioned ones can be had for around $750 US.
The refurbished ones on the Apple site are $1K in Canada. (Note that the exchange rate doesn't really bear the cost difference.) I was hoping to get away with cheaper.
Totally understood. The stock of reconditioned ones is also always changing. I just purchased 9 Mac Minis for $509 and now those aren't on the site.
I'm on my second Toshiba and am pleased with it.
I am very happy with my Toshibas. The big laptop I bought in 2007 as a desktop replacement and the small laptop I bought in 2010 for travel are both going strong.
Whatever you get, I recommend Windows 8 only if the machine has a touch screen.
I fear it will be hard to avoid Windows 8 on a new machine.
I'm in the same boat as Sue and I'm curious about memory. My needs are pretty much exactly as Sue described (surfing, email, word processing, limited gaming [nothing fancier than Candy Crush or Plants v Zombies], some TV/movie watching). How much memory is, "it'll run fine", how much is "that'll be awesome for your needs", and how much is "you REALLY don't need that much, save the $200-300 difference"?
I'd go with 4GB is fine, 8GB is more than you'll need for what you listed.
What about hard drives? I'm assuming that either the 500GB or 750GB that I'm mostly seeing are probably sufficient to my needs, and 1TB would be overkill (no matter how awesome it sounds conceptually)?
