Laptop Buying Advice

[Macbeth]

The Dell 1100 series laptops are pretty nice. My girlfriend has had one for 3 months and no problems. They are fairly bulky and i think in the upper end of 7 lbs(that is heavy for laptop). My 2 coopers

Gariig

I'm also very happy with my 1100. A bit heavy, yes, but considering how cheap it was, even with a P4 and huge RAM, and a decent harddrive, CD-RW/DVD drive, etc. I, too have heard some horror stories about Dell, but never first hand. My only experiences with Dell have been very positive. one note: if you have any interest in gaming DO NOT get the INtel Integrated graphics card. The intel graphics card is the ONLY part of my 1100 that I at all regret (actually, more harddrive space would be nice, but thats only because I store quite a few full movies on my Harddrive at any given time.)

 

[Macbeth]

Also, a bit of advice on saving money: Skip Microsoft office and get OpenOffice instead. Completely compatable, and also completely free.

 

[MarauderX]

How about a Sony? A friend of mine loves his, loves it. Says it's compatible with everything since it has so many features (firewire to video connections to TV output) and keeps trying to sell me one like he works for them. I admit, it's impressive and better vs. the IBM and Compaq laptops our workplace has. And he has had it for 4 years now, says he never had to call up tech support once, and told us all about how it worked perfectly with his new DVD burner he got a month or so ago. It's nice to have IT guys for friends when you have questions like this, but sometimes they get a little too excited for you when expressing interest in buying a new laptop.

Oh, and stay away from apple IMO. Just compatibility frustration waiting to happen, as well as lacking networking security to match the latest out there.

 

[Aeolius]

Oh, and stay away from apple IMO. Just compatibility frustration waiting to happen, as well as lacking networking security to match the latest out there.

Never used OS X, I take it?

 

[Pevishan]

Also, try looking at ubid.com. It is an auction site, but you are dealing with companies not individuals. Either ubid or some small time companies. Some things (like basically all of the kodak products) are actually placed their directly from the manufactuor(sp).

Mininum warrently of about a month(ubid itself). New (overstock) and refurbished products.

 

[ciaran00]

Once I got VAIO, I never looked back.

ciaran

 

[jdavis]

If you don't mind refurbished stuff (they have some new overstock too) then try computer geeks: http://www.compgeeks.com/products.asp?cat=NBB It's where I got my laptop (a Ashton Digital without the label on it) and I saved about $500. It's warrantied for a year through them too, although I don't think they have a year warranty on all of the computers they sale, you have to look at the fine print at the bottom of the description page.

A big thing to do before you buy is to do a little research into it and figure out exactly what you need, laptops can get expensive and you can do very little to upgrade one once you get it. A little reading up to know exactly what you will need out of your laptop will help a lot when you go to buy one. For instance I wasn't all that worried about battery life and I wanted game quality graphics, my 2.8gig P4 drains the battery like crazy but is more powerful than many desktops and has ATI moble 9000 graphics card so it does a decent job with games. You wouldn't want to carry it around with you as it is heavy and thick and has sucky battery life, but I mainly use it as a desktop replacement so those things don't matter as much. Make sure you match the laptop to your specific needs.

Here is a review of a laptop from Tom's Hardware which is a good example of a latop review: http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20031118/index.html You can find reviews like this one out there on about every laptop made, a little snooping and a little google work can get you some good information, sort of like reading a movie review before you go to the theater.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I just bought a laptop (my MS completion present to myself ) and went with a Dell Inspiron 8600, and I'm quite pleased with it -- I've had a number of Dell desktops that have all performed well, and a number of friends who had good success with Dell laptops, so it seemed like a good brand. As I did my searching, I found that for the features I wanted (Pent M, 512 RAM, 40+Gig HD, 64+Meg video, CDRW/DVD in a modular bay) the Dell prices were extremely competitive vs other new brands (Toshiba, HP, Acer IBM). It is a bit heavy -- I was originally going to get the 600 model which is much lighter, and whose base price is cheaper, but I found that once I added the cost of the upgrades I wanted, the 8600 priced out cheaper. (The 1100 series are nice, too, but I needed a parallel and serial port for my wife to use with her sewing machine interface, and those were only available on the 600/8600). One nice thing that kind of balances out the weight is that with the large screen, I can view two full PDF pages side-by-side, which is great for reading gaming PDFs. Plus having mobile capability is cool -- added a wireless router and now I can surf the net from anywhere in the house, or on campus.

There's probably a feature/price point that favors any given brand out there; I'd recommend you figure out the specifics you want (minimum requirements and stretch goals) and then price various laptops against your requirements -- it makes it much easier to shop competitively when you can compare apples to apples.

Another thought: you may want to wait to purchase hardwar -- and especially software -- until you're officially enrolled as a student. A number of places offer heavy discounts to students, particularly on software (I picked up MS Office Pro at the academic rate for under $200, which was far better than both the street price and the "bundle" price I'd have paid to have Dell load it on the system. For all the Office haters out there -- I don't have a choice, short of pirating software, since Office is the standard both at work and where I go to school.)

 

[MarauderX]

Never used OS X, I take it?

I have. Yikes. I would stick with Win 95 over trying to find connectivity to an integrated system on OSX. Each to their own I suppose.

 

[d20books]

I have. Yikes. I would stick with Win 95 over trying to find connectivity to an integrated system on OSX. Each to their own I suppose.

If you're talking about OS 9, then yes... there were compatibility issues.

OS X comes out of the box with Windows file and print sharing and internet print sharing, etc.

My wife is still on her Windows 98 machine and I print to it all the time to the laser. The neat thing about it too is that she can log into her computer and access her files on my Mac too.

I don't know what problems you had but this has been a dream compatibility-wise.