Just don't have the problem my Mom did. See the first post here: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=126792
I don't reccomend overstock.com.
I don't reccomend overstock.com.
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Laptops
- Thread starter Angel Tarragon
- Start date
evildmguy said:
It's very hard not to get XP (with SP2 slipstreamed in) on a new Windows box (assuming it has a new and legal copy of Windows), as Microsoft makes other versions of Windows very difficult to get a hold of, and since using any other version of Windows on a non-ancient PC (any PIII or better with at least 256 MB of RAM) very rarely makes sense (some developers need to run Win2K3 for testing; some DOS programs don't work under NT-based operating systems).
I've had no problems with my Dell desktops (on my third), but that doesn't really say anything about their laptops (though the consensus seems to be Lattitude good; Inspiron sometimes good, sometimes not).
My standard advice for buying laptops is to figure out what's important to you before looking. Are you going to carry it around a lot? Make sure it's light. Will you want to use it a coach-class airline seat? Then don't go for the 17" screen. Will you want to use it for a long time unplugged? Check the battery life numbers. Will you want to play games on it? Check the video card. Will you wan to watch DVDs? Get a widescreen display.
MarauderX
Explorer
Another vote for Dell. They work great and you can push them harder and faster and not worry about them crapping out. We have used their laptops and desktops exclusively and not one has punked out on us. We can't say the same about the IBMs, of which our company had 6 laptops and 20+ desktops, and 2-3 had configuration problems right out of the box.
Speaking of craptacular, have a hacktacular time with the OSuX, panther, and that whole breed of miscre-... well, you can count on me never spending a dime on an apple product, no matter how much tech bill gates gives them. Let the flame war begin...?
Enforcer said:
Speaking of craptacular, have a hacktacular time with the OSuX, panther, and that whole breed of miscre-... well, you can count on me never spending a dime on an apple product, no matter how much tech bill gates gives them. Let the flame war begin...?
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Angel Tarragon
Dawn Dragon
Please, let us not go there. I do need advice on this topic and don't want this thread to get locked. Please people, lets try to be civil.MarauderX said:
Bobitron
Explorer
I just bought my Janice a dope-tacular new Sony Vaio for her graduation present, and inherited her old Dell. It's slow and uber heavy, but it is fine for running Paint/Excel/Word and such. I agree with some others here that something fancy isn't needed, but sure would be nice.
Edit: Whoa, how the heck did I get to over 1000 posts?!?
Edit: Whoa, how the heck did I get to over 1000 posts?!?
Michael Morris
First Post
Frukathka said:
Get it at Best Buy or Comp USA and shell out the $120 or so for the extended warranty. Laptops are vulnerable to a lot more abuse than desktops due to their portable nature - and one trip to the doctor is all it takes to get your money back. Mine has had 3.
Normally I don't push those extended warranties - computers break so rarely it's a windfall for the companies that offer them. However, with laptops the chances of some toddler or the like knocking one off the table are a lot greater.
BTW, if you have it, shell out another $100 for a good hardshell carrying case.
GlassJaw
Hero
Honestly, you should probably hold on to your $400-600 until you can save a bit more and get somethign in the $1k range.
Dell is hit or miss. My brother and his gf both bought Dell laptops for school and they both had to send them back for one reason or another. Some people won't have a problem at all. Personally, I think they are overpriced.
Check out HP too. You can get something cheap from them than Dell (and just as good IMO).
And if you buy a new laptop, you won't get anything except XP, and that's a good thing. You certainly don't want 98. Heck, you'd be hard-pressed to even find a copy of it these days.
Dell is hit or miss. My brother and his gf both bought Dell laptops for school and they both had to send them back for one reason or another. Some people won't have a problem at all. Personally, I think they are overpriced.
Check out HP too. You can get something cheap from them than Dell (and just as good IMO).
And if you buy a new laptop, you won't get anything except XP, and that's a good thing. You certainly don't want 98. Heck, you'd be hard-pressed to even find a copy of it these days.
Michael Morris
First Post
My current system rang up at $1000 even, and $1000 - $1200 is the sweet range for laptops. I'd save up for that.
Some other things also to keep in mind:
1) Upgrading hard drives on laptops is trickier since you need special cables (you can't just put both drives on the IDE cable and ghost one to the other.
2) Laptops are not as upgradable as desktops. You can up the memory, the hard drive, and maybe the CPU, and that's it.
3) SODIMM memory modules, which are what is used in most laptops, retail at about $100 more than comparable DIMM modules in most desktops.
4) Try to never fully discharge your battery - every time you do you reduce it's total capacity by about 10% to 20%. Use AC Power when possible, keeping battery sessions to a minimum.
5) Get a unit with WiFi preinstalled - it's becoming standard in many areas and most laptops have internal WiFi. My unit has a WiFi PCI card, but that's vulnerable to getting tagged and damaged.
6) If you have broadband at your home, strongly consider changing over to a wireless router when you get the laptop. The freedom to move the laptop to any room of your house to work on things is work the expense.
7) If you ever drop it hard and it turns on a beeps at you, open the memory bay and make sure the SODIMM modules are still seated properly. Of the internal components that can be knocked loose, that's the most likely.
And finally, since it hasn't been mentioned yet I'll chime in for my brand - Toshiba's Satellite. I've put this little box through hell - broken it's outer case in two places. After 2 years the backlight to it's monitor failed - that's the only real problem it gave me that could be called a manufacturer thought (I dropped it at Gencon and knocked a memory card out of socket, but was too dumb to check for that).
For the record, I'm running a 1.4 ghz with 1 GB RAM, 100 Gig HD (60 GB avail to Windows, 30 to Linux, 10 shared) running Win XP Pro and Red Hat Linux 9
Some other things also to keep in mind:
1) Upgrading hard drives on laptops is trickier since you need special cables (you can't just put both drives on the IDE cable and ghost one to the other.
2) Laptops are not as upgradable as desktops. You can up the memory, the hard drive, and maybe the CPU, and that's it.
3) SODIMM memory modules, which are what is used in most laptops, retail at about $100 more than comparable DIMM modules in most desktops.
4) Try to never fully discharge your battery - every time you do you reduce it's total capacity by about 10% to 20%. Use AC Power when possible, keeping battery sessions to a minimum.
5) Get a unit with WiFi preinstalled - it's becoming standard in many areas and most laptops have internal WiFi. My unit has a WiFi PCI card, but that's vulnerable to getting tagged and damaged.
6) If you have broadband at your home, strongly consider changing over to a wireless router when you get the laptop. The freedom to move the laptop to any room of your house to work on things is work the expense.
7) If you ever drop it hard and it turns on a beeps at you, open the memory bay and make sure the SODIMM modules are still seated properly. Of the internal components that can be knocked loose, that's the most likely.
And finally, since it hasn't been mentioned yet I'll chime in for my brand - Toshiba's Satellite. I've put this little box through hell - broken it's outer case in two places. After 2 years the backlight to it's monitor failed - that's the only real problem it gave me that could be called a manufacturer thought (I dropped it at Gencon and knocked a memory card out of socket, but was too dumb to check for that).
For the record, I'm running a 1.4 ghz with 1 GB RAM, 100 Gig HD (60 GB avail to Windows, 30 to Linux, 10 shared) running Win XP Pro and Red Hat Linux 9
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MarauderX said:
You were being a bit too blatant in this post. Though the "tech bill gates gives them" was moderately clever as a dig at apple users. Nicely calculated to really outrage us.
So were you trying to be a jerk or did someone simply post using your account? I find it a bit surprising that someone on here as long as you have been, would be so deliberately obnoxious.
