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Okay, explain this to me like I'm 5 (laptops)
I'm in the market for a laptop. I don't need a lot of bells-and-whistles, I need Microsoft Office stuff & wireless capabilities (I'm okay buying the 'external' card if necessary--is that even what it's called? where it's not built in). I'll mostly use it for documents, email, facebook, the nest 
, pinterest, etc. Pretty basic stuff. It would be nice if I could play DVD's, watch TV episodes online, etc but it's not 100% necessary.
So according to Walmart's black friday ad, they'll have the following laptops that I'm considering. Problem is, I haven't a clue what any of the following means, especially in terms of what I want/need.
Compaq Presario 15.6" AMD C-50 dual core, 2GB RAM/250GB HD for $198.00
HP 15.6" AMD E-350 dual core, 3GB RAM/350GB HD for $248.00
Anyone care to tell me if either of these is worthwhile*?
*IF I get my hands on it on Black Friday. I refuse to be part of the evening newscast over it. I'm not that desperate.
Re: Okay, explain this to me like I'm 5 (laptops)
The second one is definitely the better deal. I'd stay away from Compaq altogether, and those specs are pretty bare bones for a laptop these days. Don't worry about external cards, all laptops have WiFi built in now (unless you want a card to use the internet through your cell phone provider).
If you can find one with a 500GB hard drive or larger I'd go for that though. Wait for the ads from the slightly less popular places, like Office Max and Staples, they usually have decent laptop deals also and won't be as busy.
Agreed. I'd skip out on the compaq, and keep your eye out for other deals. But the HP isn't a bad deal.
Thank you both.
Are there any websites that explain computer specs & what they mean in terms of performance (i.e. this much HD = this level of functionality) in layman's terms? Everything I find is in 'techie language' and well, I'm obviously not part of that target market.
Well basically the amount of RAM dictates the speed of your computer. At this point in time, 3GB is standard and will suit most people well unless they want to play a lot of video games or use high powered software like Photoshop, etc.
A 500GB hard drive is pretty standard now, and 1TB is becoming very readily available. Either one is pretty much way more storage than you will ever need, unless you have a TON of music/movies/photos on your computer. I have hundreds of albums on my computer and my hard drive is still only using about 250GB so far. In addition, if you run out of space for some reason you can easily purchase an external hard drive for under $75 (it's a good idea to have one to back up your data frequently anyway!)
Also look for a computer that actually HAS Microsoft Office on it...some will only have a trial version or the "Starter" version that only includes Word and Excel.
Those are basically the only specs you need to worry about.
If you dont need bells and whistles, you are totally fine with either. The HP is going to be a better machine, for Microsoft Office functions, but the Compaq should handle it just fine too (might be slower though).
The Compaq is just fine if what you want is an internet machine that can produce Word documents and print PDF files. No problemo.