Laptops Arena

Christmas is a time for gifting. Aside from all the religious and spiritual feelings, this holiday is tons of fun when you think about all the gifts you can receive from your loved ones. Personally, I love giving gifts more than receiving them because I like to see my dear ones happy. And since I am writing this article for a laptop website, it’s fair to talk about laptops as a good gift for Christmas. I have browsed the internet to see if I could find sales on laptops since the holiday also bring some nice promotions and discounts for different electronics.

First of all, you should know that there are website which offer discounts to certain groups of people all year long. For example, www.usanotebook.com offers 5%discount for the education and the military system and also for the senior citizens. They also have resellers discount and corporate discount. Corporate discounts are actually quite popular because big companies buy a large number of units and it is in the manufacturers and retailers best interest to lower the price if many units are sold to same company. It seems that all the laptops on this website are refurbished but they do offer some excellent prices even for these so called “second hand computers”.  On the left side of this web page there is column “Shop by Brand”. You will see that the list of brands is quite small as it only includes Acer, Dell, eMachines, Gateway, HP, IBM, Lenovo and Toshiba laptops. The prices are awesome and the most expensive laptop I saw a red Dell Inspiron 1525 available at a price of $650. Unfortunately, this model is all sold out so the next expensive laptop would be a red Gateway M7356U for $550.

Now, if you want a good website that offers tons of models to choose from and that can also give you a list of all the shops where that specific model is, try http://shopper.cnet.com. Shopping for laptops is now very easy since you have filter that allow you to refine and choices and narrow them down to the units you are particularly interested in. you can shop by price, by manufacturer, by the notebook type (budget or gaming laptop are some examples) and if you still a list too big for you to check out, you can choose the product line, screen size, weight, processor, RAM size, operating system, hard drive size, graphics card series and environmental standards.



For example, we have chosen Acer as the manufacturer. The website generated a list with 174 results for Acer laptops. For each of this laptop we get a picture, the model’s full name, the CNET Editor rating, the user rating, the quick specs and some brief information about the products and we get a list of websites that sell this product plus the price tags for each of these stores. The second name on our list was the Acer Aspire One D250 with a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, 1 GB of RAM, 160 of available disk space and preinstalled Windows XP Home Edition operating system. We are shown that this laptop is available on the B&H Photo Video website and on Amazon.com. The first website sells this unit at a price of $289 and the second has a price tag of $315.



After you choose the manufacturer, you are still left with all the other options in case you want an Acer with a specific price or from a certain product line. I selected the $600 - $700 price interval. If I choose to filter my options further, I can choose the product line and the screen size. Let’s say I want a desktop replacement and I chick 16 – 17 inches. I know have 8 laptop results that are priced between 600 and 700 dollars and that have a screen size of approximately 16 or 17 inches. This is how you can also buy the perfect laptop to gift. You first have to establish the budget and try to find out what that person would use a laptop for. The possibilities are numerous.



www.laptopcloseout.com has some very attractive sales on laptops as well. If you access the website now, the first 3 things that are going to attract your looks are the $329, $339 and $429 price tags for 3 laptop models that are on sale. The $329 laptop which is on sale is a Lenovo ThinkPad T42 with a 15 inch display. It has a 1.73 GHz Intel Pentium M Centrino processor combined with 1 GB of RAM. The size of the hard disk is 40 GB. Other features are the CD writer and DVD reader, the built in microphone and the stereo speakers. As you can see, this laptop is pretty basic. The components plus the fact that it is refurbished are the 2 factors that contribute to the low price of this unit.



Even if it is refurbished, you still get the Windows XP Professional operating system preinstalled plus a 3 months warranty period. This is why I keep telling you that refurbished laptops are not equal to damaged or junk. For an extra fee of $39, you can extend the warranty period from 90 days to a full year. In my opinion, you should always take advantage of these warranty extension packaged because you never know when your laptop might crush down on you.  You can still add some extra features, just as you can in the case of a brand new laptop. Here, for instance, you can pay $29 and get a port replicator and for $19 you get a standard nylon case. Options are everywhere.

So, if you want to gift a laptop this Christmas or just one for yourself but your budget is limited, there are laptop promotions available this holiday so hurry up before retailers empty their stocks. And if you want a certain laptop which you believe is too expensive, do not be afraid to go refurbished. The warranty period will guarantee that you did not make a bad choice.

We are now back with a new episode of “Pimp my laptop”. Just kidding. But we thought it would be fun if we wrote some more about how to personalize your laptop especially since we know how it important is it to have an everyday gadget that matches you personality. Besides, if you are a person that has to make a living while sitting in front of a laptop, like I am, might as well buy a sticker or personalize one that can be pleasant to look at. It could make you forget for a while that this is a work instrument.

Our topic for today is Asus laptop skins. Well, skins are not made for a certain manufacturer; they are made in different sizes. For example, www.schtickers.com lets you choose the laptop manufacturer and you have a table with the width, height and screen size and they will tell you what size the stickers are available. Normally, when you choose a certain manufacturer on such a website, you are given a list of all the models and under each particular model you will find the exact size of the laptop. Then all you have to do is browse the skins by size (for example, 15.4 laptop skins or 13.3 laptop skins).

www.laptopskins.net is one of the coolest websites with skins for any laptop model, not just an Asus.  A laptop skins costs 20 Euros and they have some of the neatest models I have ever seen. Like I said in one previous article, laptop skins are not only made for design purposes, they also help keeping the laptop protected from scratches and other visible marks. The categories which you can choose from are Blue Sky, Water Bubbles, Camouflage, Cream, Depth Styles, Flowers, Frozen Light, Geek Out, Graffiti Art, Industrial, Paisley, Pastel, Plain, Rorschach, Spring, Tiles, Trees, Typography, Vector Art, Vintage and Warning. Unfortunately, each category only has 9 models available which is terrible disappointment, considering that other website have hundreds and maybe thousands of skins available. My favorite category was the Water Bubbles because when I looked at those skins I really had the feeling that bubbles were going to burst right in my face. When you choose the laptop skin that you mostly like, it’s time to choose the size of your laptop. Payment can be made online though your credit card or PayPal. It’s that simple.



Another nice website where you can find Asus laptop skins is www.skinweaver.com. The best part is they also have keyboard skins if you want to add some color to those plain white and boring keys.  I have to say, the skins in this website are amazing. I saw an incredible Christmas picture with 2 very cute and animated red nose reindeers. The skin is designed for a 16.8 inch laptop and it costs only $15. The package even includes some matching palm rest skins to personalize even the interior of your laptop. Although there was no visible information on this matter, I’m guessing these skins are removable and replaceable because it would be pretty weird to go to work or school with a Christmas skin on your laptop in the middle of July. The names of the categories are a bit different here then they were on the previous website. We have: Premium Skin, Transparent Skin, Netbook, Translucent, Animals, Bling, Cars, Cartoons, Dreamy, Executive, Fashionista, Flowers, Graffiti, Legends, Music, Off-center, Patterns, Peace, Retro, Romantic, Sleek, Temptress, Unicolor, Valentine, Winter and Zero Gravity. The names of these categories sound pretty interesting so I decided to check out some of them.



The Animals category is by far one of the coolest I have even seen. I saw some beautiful pictures of Collies, Golden Retriever puppies, white tiger, Shar-pei, butterflies, bunnies and even an ugly tarantula. Except for the spider, my guess is that animal lovers will have a very difficult time in making up their mind which picture is better and which one they should by. It will be easier for those that actually have a Collie or a Golden Retriever at home. I also wondered what kind of skins that Executive category could have in store for us. Most of the skins in this category are abstract and they use serious cold and dark colors, with different shades of green or blue. One picture even shows some documents and money, both paper and coins and even some gold bars. Talk about CEO material! The Legends category has some awesome pictures with characters we all heard about. I liked the Superman skin which shows our hero on the right side of the sticker and the background is composed by one clear blue sky. This Legend category mostly contains tribal images or dragon images and even some abstract designs.



The Cartoon category holds some really nice images, very colorful and cute. They are excellent for kid’s laptops and some high school girls may even fall in love with those cute bunnies and teddy bears. To tell you the truth, when I saw the Cartoons category I imagined I would find skins with famous cartoon characters like Tom and Jerry, Donald Duck or Chip and Dale so I must admit I was a bit disappointed. Just to be in the holiday spirit, I had to see if there was anything interesting in the Christmas category. I found a beautiful image which reminded me of those paintings that my grandmother used to have with cottages in the middle of the woods, surrounded by tons of snow. All those lights that were lit inside the house suggested there was a big family inside which was getting ready for Christmas and it really used to put me in the holiday spirit. This picture was about the same.



The main idea is that laptop skins take your boring laptop out of the ordinary. The majority of Asus laptops are not famous for their design so when you look at that plain old black lid, it really is a working turn off. Imagine filling it up with color so it will be a pleasure to open up your Asus laptop and work, while the others admire that beautiful skin you have there.

The other day, we spoke a bit about the best rated laptops, naming the Lenovo ThinkPad T400, the Acer Aspire One and the Apple MacBook Pro. We wrote about why these laptops are the best rated ones around and as I recall we had a couple of more names on that list. It’s time to continue with the best laptop ratings.

The HP Pavilion tx2500z is not only a useful tablet PC but it also looks nice and we are just crazy about that display that you can rotate around as if it was some toy. We believe it’s a great laptop for students because it makes taking notes in class really easy. It has a solid design and very good features, all that for a reasonable price. The processor is an AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology which can be combined with a maximum 4 GB of RAM memory. The 12.1 inch display is a beauty for ultra portables. Students and anyone who uses this laptop should be able to play some nice games, mainstream ones of course. Unfortunately, the battery will only last about 2 hours and 30 minutes so be prepared and equip yourself with the charger wherever you take your laptop. It is a highly ranked laptop because it’s the cheapest tablet notebook on the market. It has the best speed compared to all the laptop in the same category and the touch screen and the active digitizer are a couple of features that the users love. It also has some nice entertainment features considering the low price.

Next in line for best laptop ratings is the Dell Studio 15. It is a combination between a portable laptop and a multimedia notebook. It has a 15.4 inch display which is backed up by LED light and has a resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels. It has some cool features that will eventually come in handy like an Express Card slot, a couple of touch sensitive media control buttons and a HDMI output. It is one great choice and in one of our past article we even recommended it as one excellent choice for college students. The battery life is ok and it is also easy to upgrade if you even feel the need for more space, speed or power. The sad part is that the only option for a better graphics card is the ATI Radeon HD 3450 when Dell could have done much better. There are 23 expert reviews that give the Dell Studio some very high ratings. 205 out of 447 real users have given a 5 star rating to the Dell Studio 15 and it is ranked 3^rd as far as customer support service goes.



In a certain manner, I feel responsible to promote Toshiba since it is one of the brands I use every day. Except for some speed and battery issues, I love my Toshiba laptop. But it is not as cool as the Toshiba Portege M700. It has a Centrino Pro processor and combined with the 12.1 inch display you get all the power and portability you need from this beautiful laptop. This is a business tablet but that does not mean students can’t use it as well. The beautiful display has a 1280 x 800 resolution and some multi touch capabilities which are not only easy to use but they are also fun once you learn how to get along with the touch screen. The screen is easy to rotate and you can switch between landscape and portrait modes. You even have a built-in webcam right above the display which may come in handy for Skype conference calls or just for chatting with your friends on the internet. There is also a fingerprint reading which offers security and speed for logging on to Windows.



The hinge keeps the display steady in place. The stylus pen will come really in handy when the PC is in tablet mode. The speakers are weak but I guess this is quite a common feature for ultra portables. The battery life is not impressive either and this is one big minus for a laptop which has the right size to be carried around anywhere. However, Toshiba spoils its customers with a 3 year warranty which is three times the period of normal warranty.  We gave to say that the Toshiba Portege M700 offers some nice performance for a tablet PC. The display is easy to read under different light conditions and even if you plan on using this laptop outside. This means that students can now write projects in the school’s yard even on a sunny day.  There is also a number of 24 reviews that have rated this laptop with greats marks (Laptop Magazine and Good Gear Guide are just a couple of names).



Why is the Dell Mini 9 one of the best rated laptops? Well, it is small and portable and it has a very nice design. For an 8.9 inch mini laptop it is extremely functional. You can upgrade to a maximum 1 GB of RAM. The price of $400 is excellent and the battery life can reach almost 4 hours. The nasty part is that all the free storage space you get is provided thanks to the flash drive so you can only have a maximum of 16 GB of free disk space. The expert ratings for this netbook were very high, reaching even the impressive score of 97 out of a possible 100. CNet Editor Rating says this mini laptop is excellent. It is easier to configure than most similar subnotebooks and you can choose between Windows XP and Linux operating systems. The design is incredibly solid considering the very low price of this unit.

With these 4 models, we now have a total of 7 best rated laptops. We may come back and continue this list in the future but only if you readers found any of this information useful. We can assure you that you will find more models to write about in the future.

Christmas is knocking at our door. And each of us is welcoming it in our own way. Some start baking cakes, other buy them from the bakery. Some make cookies and buy milk for Santa, other believe there is no Santa. Some of us listen to 'Rudoph the Red Nose Reindeer', other listen to Ring Christmas Bells'. Some buy natural Christmas trees and decorate them in as many colors as possible, others have an artificial tree which they decorate in only two colors. Some people like to gather around the fire and tell Christmas stories while drinking hot chocolate, others like to have fun by browsing though some Facebook applications.

Let's talk a bit about that last category, the 'internaut' that loves Christmas so much, that he wants to celebrate it online and offline as well. Giftreez is an application brought by the guys at GreenPixel and it is Facebook's way of reminding us that one of the joys of Christmas is that of giving and receiving gifts. When you first launch the application, you get to choose between 6 different Christmas trees. Some are bigger, some are smaller, and some are even decorated with a red garland. After you have chosen your favorite gift tree, it's time to start giving. The application will always let know how many gifts you have given and how many you have received.

Underneath your tree there are 3 options. The first one will let you upgrade the tree. You can upgrade to medium or large size, but in order to do that, you have to achieve 750 or 1500 points. How does it work? Well, you get 10 points for every gift that you send to your friends and 5 points for every gift that your receive from others. When someone visits you tree, they can say if they like it or not. For every person that likes your tree, you get 2 points and 1 point for every tree that you like.

The second option allows to customize the produce. In other words, you can redecorate the tree anytime you like by moving the decorations around the tree. This option will not make any sense until you have gathered some Christmas decorations, so you would better start inviting some friends.

The third option lets you view all the gifts you have received. From here you can choose to put some new decorations in the tree. The main idea is: the more gifts you receive, the better your Christmas tree will look and you can decorate it every day just the way you like without having to worry that you are going to break any tree decorations. It's time to let your imagine run wild! Go ahead and invite your Facebook friends (careful, only 35 at a time) so you can start the gifting process.

Let's give a special Thank you to the application developers at Christmas site for letting us feel that Christmas is not only on the streets and under the tree, it is also in our computer.'

When they first appeared on the market, laptops were these cool and expensive gadgets. Some of us thought we could never afford one because they were expensive so we believed they were computers only for business people. Today, laptops are a necessity and not a luxury item. In our modern society, where work seems to be the most important aspect, we are tempted to take our work everywhere with us. Even on vacation! This is why laptops were invented, so we could have portable agendas that we can fill with data and that could help us get our work done wherever we are.

This is why college students also need laptops. Because it’s easier to write essays. Because professors find it easier to correct printed projects rather than hand written ones. Because they need to do internet research for class. Because they have to chat with their friends back home if they are living on campus. With so many laptop models available on the market today, I can see why it is such a difficult choice to buy a laptop. If you are not a bog technology fan that you probably have no clue why there are so many types of processors and video cards. Well, in our opinion, the best laptop for college students needs to have 2 main characteristics. It has to be light so it can be easily transported and it needs a good battery life so it can be taken to class to keep notes.

One of the wisest choices is the netbook. Netbooks are small as they have displays that vary between 8.9 to a maximum 12 inches. They have weak components and as they name suggests, they were made for internet purposes like writing e-mails and doing online research.  They are also used for editing documents and running some other basic tasks and applications. They are excellent because they are light weight and you can carry around in your bag or backpack all day without getting a sore back. Some really good models like the Sony VAIO have batteries that can last even up to 6 hours which means you can definitely rely on them for almost a full day of classes.



As for the specs of a good laptop for students, you should buy a unit with at least 1 GB of RAM. RAM is what allows you to run applications. The more RAM your laptop has, the more applications you can run simultaneously.  You should have about 120 or 160 GB of hard disk capacity because your files and pictures, movies and music are going to start piling up in your laptop and it’s quite annoying to keep making DVDs all the time when you need to store your files safely and then make some extra room on your HDD. The graphics card does not have to be fancy. You can go with an integrated video card unless you are a heavy gamer. If that is your case, you will need a graphics card with at least 256 MB of video memory (512 MB would be nice).



That being said, let’s see what laptop models we can fit into this best laptop for college students category. The Dell Studio 15 is good choice for students (or their parents) that have about $800 to spend. This is not a big price to pay considering there are $2000 laptops are out there. It has a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor which gives you laptop good speed to run your applications. Alas, we don’t recommend a 15 inch laptop that does not have an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU.  4 GB of RAM is more than enough for you to choose a 64 bit operating system. Although people have gotten used to Windows Vista, we recommend the new Windows 7 which can really squeeze the juice out of your RAM. You can have up to 320 GB of free disk space which is more than enough storage capacity for whatever files you have to store on your laptop. Above the display you have a 2.0 mega pixel webcam which will provide very clear images in different light conditions. If you use the Skype video chat application, you can get real time movement and you can chat with your friends or family if you are living on campus and they haven’t seen you in a while (in fact, you could tell your parents you need this laptop so they can see you when they really miss you). The ATI Radeon HD 4570 graphics card comes with 256 MB of video memory. Besides, you have a DVD combo drive and a 15.6 inch display.



If the Dell Studio 15 did not convince you, maybe the HP Pavilion dv2 is a better choice. It is powered by an AMD processor (the AMD Athlon Neo to be more exact). The RAM and HDD have the capacity as the Dell Studio 15 but as far as the graphics card goes, you have 512 MB of video memory instead of 256 MB like the Studio 15 has. We recommend this laptop because it’s smaller since it has a 12 inch display. It is as cheap as $700 and I really think the specs are worth the money you pay. You can even take it to class as it occupies the space of a bigger book in your backpack. But it does not matter if you plan on keeping it in your dorm or using it in class or at the coffee shop. This laptop is definitely one very wise choice for college students.



Other models that I recommend you look into for college purposes are the Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 (with a price that varies between $550 and $750 dollars), the Toshiba Satellite Pro U400 S1001X (which can be found at about $840), the Dell Inspiron 1318 laptop or if you are looking for a laptop which you can also use to play games, the Dell XPS M1530 can be bought for $1000 with an 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor and some 4 GB or RAM.