Back To School Technology Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on August 4, 2011 8:55 PM ESTMonitors
Displays are the one category of computer hardware that I always actively encourage others to spend a lot of money on. They depreciate in value much slower than most other components, the technology does not develop as rapidly as, say, CPUs and GPUs, and they can be re-used over and over, no matter how many times you upgrade specific components or entire systems. The 24" LG MVA panel I spent $500 on in 2007 still looks very nice—the same can't be said of the Intel Core 2 Duo system that cost $600, which is now quite long in the tooth. [Note from Jarred: I wish I could say my Dell 3007WFP was holding up better; I've got issues with image persistence now. It's not unusable by any means, but having images persist for a minute or two after the content is gone worries me for how much longer this LCD will last!]
Another reason why college students in particular should consider spending a substantial chunk of their tech budget on displays is that dual displays can boost productivity. My usual workflow requires two monitors for maximum productivity. Or, if you're not dedicating 100% of your attention to working, you can always watch Hulu, Netflix, or even cable TV (with a tuner card) on a second monitor while you work at a more relaxed pace on the primary monitor. We outline here what type of display you can expect to buy at given price points.
$100 or less
Monitors at the lowest end of the price range are functional. They're not going to win awards, they have limited features, but they get the job done. You can usually find a 19" LCD with a 1440x900 or 1600x900 resolution screen and a standard D-sub input (but neither DVI nor HDMI) on sale for less than $100. The Acer V193WEJb is about as good as you'll find for $100 barring a ridiculously hot deal or clearance.
Around $150
At this price point, you should expect to be able to find LED LCD monitors that are 20" or larger and have 1080p resolution. These monitors should also support DVI as well as D-sub inputs. Viewsonic's VX2250wm-LED and ASUS' VE228H are good examples of good deals at $150 and $145 (after $10 rebate), respectively.
Around $300
$300 is about where displays start diverging between increasingly large (24"+) and increasingly quality panels. VA and IPS panels look nicer than less expensive TN panels for just about every use, and you should look for an MVA or IPS panel if you're thinking about spending $300 on a display. The Viewsonic VP2365wb is a 23", 1080p IPS panel display. It also features a height adjustable stand. If you'd rather have a bigger TN panel, Planar's PX2710MW is about as good as TN panels come, and its screen is 27".
$500 or more
For $500, you can get a gorgeous 24", 1920x1200 resolution IPS panel like the perenially popular Dell UltraSharp U2410 or HP ZR24w. The only real downside to using a 1920x1200 IPS display (aside from the high cost) is that other, lesser monitors will look worse than they did before! If you're able to sit a bit further away from your monitor than typical of most desks (like on a couch), you could also consider using an LED LCD TV for your monitor. If your computer has a DVI out port, you can buy an inexpensive DVI-HDMI converter cable to hook the two together. You'll lose sound, but if you have a speaker system hooked up to your PC, that's no real concern. However, most modern, mid-range to high-end desktops and laptops feature an HDMI out port, so you just need an HDMI cable to connect the computer to the TV. You can expect to find 32" 1080p LED LCD TVs for around $500 or less, such the Vizio XVT323SV and Sony BRAVIA KDL32BX420.
If you don't have space for a nettop or desktop and a monitor or prefer portability to screen real estate, we cover netbooks and laptops on the next few pages.
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overseer - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
What I saw was the ASUS F1A75-I Deluxe, however I didn't confirm the stock with the etailer. http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=10954053720ASRock has an A75 ITX board around the corner as well. I believe those will be available at major channels in a week or two.
But 65W Llano SKUs... might be due out in Sep. (along with Bulldozer?) Umm this whole year has been about waiting AMD new arrivals.
frozentundra123456 - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
Great article by the way.I have a question regarding the AMD E-350 APU. The first machine I saw this in was the HP dm1v, and I thought it was great. Thin, light, good battery life, and both better CPU performance and graphics than any atom.
However, I am seeing a lot of 15.6 inch laptops in local retail stores with the E-350.
Does anyone have any experience with this platform? It seems like an ideal fit for a netbook, but underpowered for a full size laptop.
And I also question the abiity of the Llano laptops to play all the games he mentioned at decent settings even at a 1366 x 768 resolution.
Granted, they are way better than intels integrated graphics, but can you really get a decent gaming experience with the titles listed without a discrete card?? (Decent to me would mean over 30 FPS at medium settings at native resolution.)
andymcca - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
I've only had it for a day, but I just got a low-end Llano laptop (A4-3300M, the cheapest one they have at the moment), and I'm already impressed with it.I realized after playing with my settings that I was on battery power (for an hour, and still ~70% battery after gaming!), so performance may have been scaled down. Even so, I was getting 25-30FPS average in WoW and SC2 on medium. I was not in huge battles or anything, though.
I imagine the more capable models must kick some medium-setting butt. Most of the reviews seem to indicate this, too.
Taft12 - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
However, I am seeing a lot of 15.6 inch laptops in local retail stores with the E-350.Does anyone have any experience with this platform
It's an idiotic platform. Toshiba, HP et al. are only doing it for the sake of putting a $350 price tag on a full-sized laptop. Most laptop shoppers are looking at the price only and don't know or care about any technical specs.
Chron79 - Saturday, August 6, 2011 - link
I recently purchased an E-350 Lenovo from BB for $300. This is basically a test purchase to see if I want/need anything more once the fall semester begins.It handles internet video fine up to 720p I would say. 1080p YouTube and Netflix streaming HD content can get choppy at times, but those are both luxuries. I loaded Office 2010 and have put Acrobat through its paces with my summer seminar work and everything seems responsive. Also tried WoW, and would call it passable in low-to-medium settings but nothing to write home about. If you plan to game at all on a laptop the E-350s are not for you anyway.
What I love is the overall package and battery life. Fingerprint/face recognition, media card reader, hdmi out, 4 gb RAM and anywhere from 6-8 hours of use depending on your video use. Also the base stays super cool - just a tiny bit of warmth in the upper left quadrant the quiet fan handles. If you are a basic college student who does not game or has a desktop for gaming I really don't see where you would need more than this. To me the next logical step up is $600-700 with BR drives and/or the new A6/A8 cpu/gpu functionality. If you can afford these then more power to you, but for those looking to make ends meet this $300 model is a great deal.
yourwhiteshadow - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
i made the mistake of buying just a laptop. its not comfortable to do your stuff on a laptop. best bet is to get netbook + desktop. get high productivity in your room, and be able to take notes or do whatever in the class room.honestly though, note taking on the laptop is overrated. i don't remember taking that many notes on my laptop as a science major. my $1200 macbook pro was honestly a big waste of money. should have bought a $500 laptop and upgraded my rig, imagine how far $700 would have went when you already have a case, PSU, fan, etc...
frozentundra123456 - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
No one mentioned Windows Live Skydrive for cloud storage. You get a really large amount of storage (25 Gb I believe) for free.Is there some reason not to use this, such as lack of security or difficulty transferring files??
I used it to store some photos that I did not care if anyone saw, but I am not sure you can load entire folders at once or if you have to upload one file at a time, which would be impractical.
duploxxx - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
It's hard to defend any atom based netbook these days, even the Ontario based APU is way better in the lower end netbook area.for the Asus EEE pc 1001P there is a much better solution called 1015B with a c30 apu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
its even cheaper....
A series LIano are in the range between 500-700$ its artificial OEM prices that keep these solutions expensive, the cost price of the A series liano is less expensive then the new intel i3-i5 series, yet priced higher.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...
mtwardochleb - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
I'm heading up to Cal Poly SLO next month with a gaming desktop and an iPad 2. I used them together for the last few months of high school and quite enjoyed the experience. Being a tech-savvy user I'd like to share some experiences and recommendations.Having a fast computer paired with a 24" monitor seems essential to me for productivity since it enables one to comfortably read a web browser while using Word. It's also fantastic when editing video and watching movies in full HD, or browsing the web without having to minimize chat client windows. I use a SSD for my boot drive and a 2TB green HDD RAID1 array for hardware failure-resistant storage. A backup and image of the SSD are run daily and everything is copied to a 2TB external once a week. I consider this to be a very comfortable level of data redundancy and highly recommend it for anyone who has a lot of data.
The NoteTaker HD app on the iPad is exellent for notes on the go, especially since it lets you annotate PDFs and pictures you take with the iPad cameras. I used this feature to take pictures of handouts in class to consolidate everything in one location. For PDF textbooks I use iBooks and for all other books I find Stanza to work extremely well, especially since it can download books wirelessly off your hard drive when paired with Calibre. There's also a wonderful app called Splashtop HD that gives very good remote desktop functionality over the Internet that's smooth enough for videos or playing Starcraft (albeit clumsily). For EE majors I also found a great app called iCircuit which allows you to design and simulate circuits in real-time.
As for other peripherals, I can say having a more expensive printer is very nice. I have an iP4300 which has automatic duplexing, a very large black ink tank, and a paper cartridge. The cost for text printing is pretty low and the picture printing is superb. Printing 8x10 pictures and other odd sizes also comes out cheaper than having the work done at a lab, which is nice if you enjoy photography. A wireless mouse and keyboard are a must for reducing clutter. If you're a serious musician or just really appreciate music I highly recommend splurging for the Audio Technica ATH-M40fs studiophones. They can be had for around $80 and provide excellent sound quality with great responsiveness to equalization settings (I prefer a bump in bass since I'm used to my Logitech Z-2300 system). Be aware of the 10ft cord and 1/4" professional TRS plug, both useful features in certain situations and annoying in others.
Blaze-Senpai - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
I don't know about you guys, but I don't mind a slightly bigger laptop that can do everything I need it to do decently, although I can understand people not wanting large computers.I still think its weird people complain about laptops being too heavy, do people notice that much of a difference between 6 and 7 pounds? Just get a backpack that can hold it.
...actually, why aren't bags included? You need a way to carry around all of that stuff, after all :3