Much to do about Laptops

[Dei]

I'll soon be starting a group at college playing several games and I've decided to use a laptop to cart around all the campaign notes and e-tools stat sheets to save having to print off reams of paper. Also I want to use it for a lot of general college work. The thing is when I look online I find a bunch of machines that rival my desktop box for performance and cost about three grand.

The thing is I don't want something that can run Oblivion, I just want something I can use basically as a portable word-processor and similar so I was wondering if you fine fellows had any tips on makes and models as well as where to look to find them. I'd prefer not to have to spend more than £500 ($1000) on it so you can probably understand why I'm having trouble finding what I want in online catalouges who seem determined to make me part with at least 3-4 times that :S.

Thanks in advance guys.

 

[Rackhir]

I would wait a little bit before making decisions. Intel is just about to announce Merom which is the 64 bit successor to their very good and very popular Core Duo chips. Should be in the next two weeks or so IIRC.

The Merom machines are likely to be more expensive than you are looking for, but should drive down prices on the older Core Duo Chips and machines based on them. Particularly if you are going to be running a suite of apps on them, the dual core chips should be quite nice.

 

[Steel_Wind]

The ultimate PnP laptop is a tablet PC due to ease of reading .pdf materials and making quick notes during combat. Being able to read a .pdf - full page is pretty cool.

The Gateway Gateway® CX210X is the leat expensive on the market. A friend of mine has one and we are all envious as hell. You can get one for a base price of $1299.

 

[Mycanid]

Well sir ... Dell has good prices ... but ....

For the office I am an "IBM/Lenovo-or-nothing" fan to be honest, and e-Bay has some very good deals. I have often used the seller "Thinkpadworld". Dual core machines you will find amazingly useful, but try and be sure you can get one that does not run HOT. In some ways it's better to go with a single core if it won't fry the machine.... And, of course, try to purchase machines with warranties - as much year wise as your budget will allow.

Check with your university too about getting student discounts on laptops and software. Sometimes they are quite good!