Walmart Electronics

Keep it away from freezing temperatures as well. Like don't leave it in the truck on your 34 hour in the winter. Extreme colds are harmful to a overall battery life of rechargeable cells.

 

How to maintain the battery depends a lot on what kind of battery it is. Lithium ion batteries do not develop a "memory" in the same way or to the same extent that the older style batteries did. That's one reason so many product makers are switching over to them.

Avoiding freezing is very important.

Cycling any battery through charge/discharge will help maintain a longer life despite the "memory" issue.

The reality is that the battery is going to have a limited life span and is the most commonly replaced device in any laptop regardless of brand.

 

Just buy a macbook and never look back

 

I don't see a problem buying a laptop from Wal-Mart, so long as you understand what you're getting. It will likely be the cheapest, most poorly build POS available. The bonus for you, though is that it's cheap.

I also don't understand the desire for support from the retailer where you buy it. Unless you're buying from a local mom and pop, the only difference between places like Best Buy and Wal-Mart will be which national repair center your computer is sent to. Heck, you might be the one taking it to the repair center! LOL

Further, I wouldn't let Best Buy's Geek Squad touch my laptop (or any computer for that matter) with a 10 foot pole. There's the lucky possibility you'd get your system serviced by the one good tech, but there's the more likely possibility it would be the psychology major from the local college who knows as much about computers as I know about heart surgery (I'm not a surgeon!).

Honestly, the best bet is to just buy direct from the manufacturer these days if you can wait. If you don't hit the "customize" button and stick with the preconfigured units you can get a laptop for as little as you'd find in a store. Any service you need would be just as quick because your laptop still has to be shipped somewhere, but chances are the tech is wearing a shirt with the same logo as on your laptop.

I have purchased two laptops from Wal-Mart, but I knew going in what I was getting. I got an Acer Aspire One many years ago for around $250. Slowest pile of junk ever, but it did exactly what I wanted -- it browsed the internet. I could barely manage YouTube videos. It died after two years and I salvaged all the working parts from it and chucked the rest. I'm typing this from that laptop's replacement -- an HP mini-210 that I got for $250. It's a smidgeon faster and can actually play low resolution YouTube videos, but it's still not a speed demon. It still does the tasks I got it for, however and I feel $250 was appropriate. It'll probably die in another year or so and I'll then have another 2GB of RAM and a 500GB slim hard drive to use somewhere else.

 

Well, my smaller HP has been bouncing around with me in the truck since 2007 and my newer HP is still going strong at 2 years. My really old laptop was retired to the shelf with nothing wrong with it. I like my machines to last more than two years so no walmart for me.

 

You guys realize that you can buy the same brands and models at walmart that you can anywhere else right? Yes they sell some of the lower end computers that some other stores don't sell but they also sell some of the top end stuff too.

 

You realize that what's stamped on the outside has nothing to do with what places like walmart demand is used on the inside, right? No, it isn't the same.

 

Hey if you believe so more power to ya it's your money.

 

That's correct

To meet the price point that Walmart demands from their suppliers, in many cases what you are buying from them is not the same product you'll find at other retailers. This is especially the case in electronics. Case in point: before you buy something from Walmart that has an external power supply that can be plugged into a 110V socket, make sure you can replace it when the cheap POS fails. Otherwise, you'll have to rent a rowboat to China to get another one.