Whats a good buy for a laptop? AU$1000

Our "family" computer is pretty much relegated to the breakfast bar and is used buy us, kids, grand-kids, and anyone else who stumbles through. The machine is three years old and is a factory refurbished HP. Other than upgrades that I chose to do (ssd, more memory) there have never been any problems with it. It is used only for Internet surfing, Face Book, Skype, etc. Factory refurbished machines are less expensive which was my initial reason for buying it for that location in the house. Basically, if it got trashed, I wouldn't be out that much. As it turns out it is a good machine and has exceeded my expectations. So basically, it depends on your intended use. For us, we didn't need anything exotic. I will say the more memory the better. If it's intended use is an entertainment center, then a large hard drive may be required. hth

For minimum specs, I'd say either an Intel Core i3 or AMD A4, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD. But as Roki stated, "it depends on your intended use". If you want to be able to play modern 3D games & play them well, you'd need a better CPU, more RAM, & a discrete graphics chip.

For AUD$1K you should be able to get something in a Core i7 with a reasonably large drive.8G ram and decent graphics. I paid that much over a year ago for HP systems for my kids. I suspect the "factory refurbed" HPs that Roki mentions were from a batch of early Core systems that had bad overheating issues and were pulled off the shelves to have their motherboards replaced. Goin' Fishin' (Some day)