Posted on 05/31/2009 3:15:59 PM PDT by Netizen
Is is worthwhile to try and build your own laptop?
Our son is going to college in the fall. The college sent out a flyer and you can purchase a Dell Latitude from them for $1054.00. It would have Vista Office pre installed.
I had spoken to one of my cousins and we went through the Dell website and the same system would have cost an additional $600. So, $1600.00
Now, a the high school graduation, the father of the son that our son will be sharing a dorm room with says that he built his son's laptop and that he can build one for son too, if we want to save money.
My cousin who also does this sort of thing says building your own laptop isn't feasible. Parts or too expensive and everything is too proprietary.
bump to hear the answer
Will the ‘father of the son’ be troubleshooting and repairing it also...?
ping
I used to know where to get a lapdance for 20$.
Extremely difficult, costly, time consuming, and error prone.
I’ve built probably 30 computers over 15 years. You don’t want to do a laptop. Just buy it. There are plenty of good, cheap ones out there.
Whatever you do, price in the 4 year warranty on whatever you buy.
PCs do break.
Yeah. It'll look like telphone switchboard, but you can do it. Try finding the parts at Home Depot and Radio Shack.
Not really. Since individual components are so crammed-in on a laptop (in order to achieve a compact design) most parts are just soldered together on one board according to an OEM’s specification.
There are “barebones” laptops, but they’re still mostly complete devices, and you only really have a choice of CPU, RAM, and hard drive. Hardly a completely custom build. And then you’ve got to worry about the lack of tech support and warranty in case something goes wrong or blows up.
My personal suggestion? Look into Apple’s MacBook line. Starts at $900 for the white plastic MacBook, $1100 for the aluminum series. Applecare (which is separate from the standard warranty, costs extra but is worth every penny) is industry-leading, and even without Applecare, Apple Stores are notorious for their great service; they’ve been known to replace out-of-warranty machines free of charge.
It’s almost impossible to beat the deals that colleges and universities can get you. Take their offer.
That's one of the questions my cousin asked! The way I understood him, his son is pretty computer savvy too and plans to use those abilities to make extra money on campus. What I didn't think to ask was whether the son dealt with hardware versus software.
I really wish they would have said something earlier because then my son could have checked their son's computer out a bit, you know.
We have some time for dealing with this and I told my cousin I may need her to come up with questions!
What are the exact specs on the Dell laptop? There might be another manufacturer with the same specs, less expensive.
Try Dell website..I bought a VERY nice Dell studio in thier scratch and dent section for $550- 4gb ram..230GB HD Vista..can’t think of more your son would need other than software...but he will get a discount because he’s a student
Doubtful, almost zero chance of being successful.
I’ve taken a large number of them apart. They are pretty much designed “in toto”, and missing any piece would make it useless.
It’s not like picking up a PC Desktop case, going out and buying a power supply, picking up a board and some memory and a hard drive and stuffing it together.
Yeah. Basically it boils down to this: If you have to ask, you can’t do it.
If your son is going away to school and the school provides the tech support, buy the school laptop.
Unless your son is going to need a powerful PC for college work (highly unlikely), you could purchase a used laptop, over 2-3 years old, for dirt-cheap prices.
Laptops will see rough use in college anyway, so why waste money on a new one?
I just bought a great HP notebook for my son this past weekend with a 17” monitor, 320HD and 4GB memory for $480...
Have a copy of the student Microsoft office at a reasonable cost...about $125...
I’ve done that before. The joys of being broke and in college :D (my hard drive didn’t work still (/grumble)
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