Stressed out finding a laptop around $ 500 for my daughter, please helpmeeee

[mstaica]

For my daughter's 16th bday/christmas present we are getting her a laptop. The specifications/ requests are; dvd / CD rom/rw whatever, can play sims 3, faster as opposed to touchscreen or fancy gymnastics, (though I think she would appreciate the touchscreen myself) , her dad wants it to last her to (through?!) College, more than 4 GB ram. I have a TBI that makes it very hard for me to decide things,I always have to try and get the best bang for my buck and usually end up getting nothing or upset and regretful. I was leaning toward Amd and now not so much, she wants it two weeks ago.I need some help please, I'm so confused, I've spent way too much time look ing at stuff and now I'm just blown. Cookbook here are some choices, Costco has a dell touch 15 3000 i5 8Gb 1 tb for 499, and an Acer aspire e5 i5 8gb 1 tb for 429, Wal-Mart has a Toshiba l55 amd a10-7300 8gb 1tb for 499, best buy has an asus r510ca-hs31-rd or blue i3 3217u 8 8Gb 1tb 499, and a lenovo g50-80e3005nus, or 59433840 , i5 6gb 500gb for 449. There are some hp s also but I'm confused about them right now. Thanks for the help God bless

 

[z_4]

With your budget you'd have to make compromises.
Hardware common to options mentioned below would be be :
1TB HDD, 6-8GB RAM, HD Screen , DVD Writer ,OS - Windows 8.1 , and other common accessory .
Your option go where you'd have to decide b/w CPU & accompanying GPU.
Option are:
1. If you go intel you have option of i5 ,i3 . but it suffers from from lack of dedicated GPU. This is fine as long as one does not game. Web based games will do. What you get is a powerful CPU.
2. if you go for AMD APU, they provide overall experience in terms of CPU & GPU (more able than Intel). What is lacks is horsepower compared to Intel CPU. However during normal usage you won't find perceptible difference.

So it's up to you decide which way you want to go.

Possible options include :
$500 - Toshiba 15.6 Amd A10 - http/www.walmart.com/ip/Toshiba-Satin-Gold-15.6-Satellite-L55-Laptop-PC-with-AMD-A10-7300-Accelerated-Processor-8GB-Memory-1TB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-8.1/39173353
$500 - Acer - Intel i5 - http/www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-Midnight-Black-15.6-Aspire-E-15-E5-571-563B-Laptop-PC-with-Intel-Core-i5-4210U-Processor-6GB-Memory-1TB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-8.1/36998829

If you can stretch to $550 Have a look at this laptop from Acer :
http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=34-314-535
You may look into other options.


Hope this helps.