Decent laptop and simple photo-editing software?

Low budget, internet surfing, an occasional powerpoint, decent battery. (for a high school student interested in photography)

quote:

---

overall quality.

---

Why don't you elaborate here.

A mostly fair assessment, because the low-end machines may have chassis designs that cut corners wherever possible. But these laptops are built in the same factories. Same company that fabricates the motherboards and onboard i/o for your macbook pro also does the same for Dell, Acer, Lenovo, HP, etc. The company that makes the shell (chassis) for your macbook pro also makes them for the aforementioned. Quanta, Compal, Foxconn, Wistron, etc. are the names behind the big brands.

One thing to consider is the perception of ownership. I'm going to treat a $1500 laptop differently from a $400 laptop. Your wife is also a separate person and may have treated the laptop differently. A perfect example is my own. for nearly 8 years my wife and I have always owned the exact model/spec of laptop. We had a couple of cheap Dells years ago, then both upgraded to an ASUS gaming laptop.

She uses her laptops on the couch and occasionally in her classroom (she's a teacher). Mine was lugged all over the place in a laptop backpack. I used mine on planes, in cabs, in various offices, LAN parties, friends' houses, outside, and the ASUS has been my 3-year-old's device of choice for watching her favorite videos on youtube.

Naturally, my wife's laptops remain in mint condition, and mine, while functional, have seen better days. I've soldered a USB port in my time, as well as an onboard power connector. I've done modifications for my stuff too. Similarly, when I was the editor-in-chief of a magazine, they issued me a PowerBook, which I used rather than toting my own laptop everywhere (which included bars and theaters because this was an entertainment publication). I would describe the ultimate condition of that PowerBook to be similar to my others that underwent the same treatment for years - fully functional but worn. This was before Apple began using all-aluminum though.

While I admit that chassis design is one of Apple's strong suits (they spend a lot on proprietary designs and pay Quanta a lot of money to fabricate them with quality materials), flux is only so strong and PCBs only so flexible, and fan motors only so resilient. A lot of that can be affected by the sturdiness of the outer casing. The big name PC makers do make odd choices sometimes, but corners have to be cut when you go cheap. That almost always means a plastic shell and a TN panel.

quote:

---

the trackpad blows

---

FWIW, I've never, ever been satisfied with any notebook's trackpad right out of the box.

quote:

---

Always look on Amazon, Newegg, and CNET for reviews before purchasing. Always!

---

And I'd like to add: READ those reviews rather than just going by the star rating. Particularly if it's a newer model with few reviews. There's always a few morons bringing down the average because the vendor was slow to ship, UPS smashed it, they had a bad experience on the phone with support, their rebate was denied, they're pissed it didn't come with a Windows recovery disk, they can't figure out how to do something simple, etc.