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.
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.
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...
If you want a legal copy of a Windows OS, it is far easier to design your own and then have HP, Dell or Lenovo build it for you and ship it.
I customized an HP laptop so my daughter could use it in college (architecture degree) and I could NOT have built it myself for less, and included Vista.
Look here for specials:
http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/deals/
and choose from multiple manufacturers. You can customize your laptop to take advantage of specials (free memory upgrades, etc) and get upfront discounts.
I did buy a laptop recently from the clearance pile at Micro Center which matched these specials, but it is truly rare that I save money over these deals.
I haven’t done it, but lat me say this: He will learn a lot about the mechanics of laptops, of drivers, compatibilities between various equipment etc. than if he were to read of them in a book.
I’ve lost count of how many desktops I’ve built for me, friends, family, and work. I won’t even attempt to build a laptop/notebook. Just go buy one. And $1600 is about $1100 too much for a notebook just for college.
Toshiba 17” Satellite L355-S7905 Laptop PC with Intel Celeron Processor 585 ($398.00)
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=11040413