Help -Jrabbit buy his first PC laptop!

[-Jrabbit]

In terms of online deals, Dell looks pretty friendly.
IBM looks pricey.
Ibuypower doesn't have any brand I know.

Is CDW worth checking out?

[Q Classic]

ibuypower isn't going to sell you a brand you know. it's really a rebadged acer laptop.

cdw's decent, but they're not spectacular for personal purchases. on the other hand, for bluk and company stuff, they're not not bad.

[Agathon]

Because I'm going freelance and most potential clients want to have confidence when exchanging files.

It's just how things are done in the business world. When I show up for a client meeting, packing an iBook could create issues. I don't need that.

In other words, many businesspeople are superstitious idiots? Wait... I already knew this.

Microsoft and other companies are pretty scrupulous about compatibility between various versions of their programs and VPC will do pretty much everything other than gaming.

What a world we live in...

[Whaleboy]

UR don't get all evangelical and recommend people tools that are inferior when they have asked for something specific. If someone asks you for a bag of Walkers cheese and onion crisps you don't go getting them Golden Wonders salt+vinegar.

Agathon: If a PC laptop is the path of least resistance for the task that he's specified, then wtf is the point in suggesting something different?

Jrab, buy an IBM laptop... it's got this accelerometer thing that detects if you throw it out of a window in a rock n' roll moment and parks the disk heads. The only other company that provides that is Apple iirc. The IBM R-series is good value. 256Mb of ram is sufficient for word processing/office stuff, email, internet, music and DVD's, though not all at once.

If you must get hands on before you buy, go to a reseller like CompUSA but don't buy. In the case of IBM's, they all feel essentially the same (same design philosophy) and what's under the hood you can read about.

Avoid Dell and Sony.

Acer are good, but AFAIK don't do the hard disk protection.

[DaShi]

UR just hates Sony. Probably because its J

[atomant]

Toshiba, it does everything except make toast (apparently that is in the next MS upgrade package) It even has a dinky little cup holder on the side for when you are not playing Civ II

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Agathon

Microsoft and other companies are pretty scrupulous about compatibility between various versions of their programs and VPC will do pretty much everything other than gaming.

Hah ! When MS word refuses to open a file saved b a previous version , I turn to OO.org writer to solve the problem .

[Agathon]

Hah ! When MS word refuses to open a file saved b a previous version , I turn to OO.org writer to solve the problem.

Maybe you should use Office for Mac. It doesn't seem to have that problem.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
UR don't get all evangelical and recommend people tools that are inferior when they have asked for something specific.

That's only your perception Ben. Just because a program has less features than another doesn't mean it is inferior, especially if 99% of the users never use these features. Meanwhile, everybody can use a PDF converter.

Originally posted by Whaleboy
If someone asks you for a bag of Walkers cheese and onion crisps you don't go getting them Golden Wonders salt+vinegar.

Sorry, not familiar with any of these.

[Zopperoni]

Re: Help -Jrabbit buy his first PC laptop!

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
Requirements:

Portable. Centrino preferred (good experiences) but will consider anything stable and recommended, that won't be outmoded in a matter of months.

Centrino is the way to go as far as weight and power consumption are concerned.
Even then, I'd take a close look at the weight of the machine. There are Centrino notebooks that weigh 3+ kgs.

Is 512 MB RAM enough? Is 256 MB sufficient? What's up with processor speeds these days?

256 is OK, but you won't get the most out of your system with 256. I own a PIII 600 MHz laptop and 256 MB suffices, but if you want to run smoothly, an additional 256 MB of memory wouldn't be a wasted investment.

Gonna hook to the Web via wireless to my cable modem. Hints and tips welcome.

Everything seems to have built-in wifi. This sounds cool, but does anyone actually use it? Should I just disregard this, or are there key features I should be watching for?

With the revised wifi support in Windows XP SP2, hooking up your system to a wireless station should present no problems.

Must be able to burn data discs. Playing DVDs would be nice, esp when I travel.

A lot of the new notebooks are multimedia-ready (unless you pick a model from the business line), so you'll even be able to burn DVDs.

I wanna run winXP. Home version should be sufficient from what I know. Any known issues?

Should be good enough.

Other software: standard stuff. MS Office suite a must, plus PhotoShop, maybe some basic graphical and sitebuilding tools. I'lll be loading some games, but unlikely to be doing anything very intense in that regard.

You can pay for it, I'm not sure what the US prices are, but you can also decide not to pay. I'm not implying illegal practices here, but there are free alternatives for nearly everything. Check out this site: http://www.theopencd.org/

Recommended brands? In my corporate life, I was always on a ThinkPad and had good luck with them, but from my new perspective, they look overpriced. Sony Vaio looks sexy but seems similarly pricey. Should I be looking at Dell? HP? Gateway? Other?

IBM is top notch, and their R-series are pretty good value, just check the upgrade price for 512 MB; most of the times it is way cheaper to plug in a stick of memory yourself.
I have no experience with Sony, but I'm not impressed by a colleague's VAIO. I've seen a rise in complaints about Dell, my five-year old Dell works just fine, but maybe it's still something to take into account. I generally don't like HP, but I'm intrigued by their new online customer support system. Then again, you shouldn't have to use customer support
Gateway died over here... that's not a good sign. Acer and Asus are relatively inexpensive, but their architecture is dodgy leading to malfunctions or heat problems. Toshiba is very decent, both in system building, price, and support
Finally, a brand that's severely underrated is Packard Bell. A friend of mine is an IT professional and mentions that PBs are built as tanks.

what processors should I be targeting/avoiding?

The Pentium-M (Centrino) is the best choice.

Laptop + software -- what should I expect to spend?

I definitely don't think you need to spend more than 1,500 dollars on the notebook. There may be some good models that fit your needs under the 1,100-dollar mark. I have no idea what software packages cost in the US You may get some decent software bundled with the machine.

[Agathon]

Make sure that you get high speed wireless, although most laptops come with that. I set up a wireless network at home. For all you know, I could be posting this from my lavatory!!!

[Zopperoni]

Yea, you can see that on the wireless designation. 802.11b is the slower 11 Mbps network and 802.11g is the faster 54 Mbps network.

Originally posted by Agathon
For all you know, I could be posting this from my lavatory!!!

MS has made it possible for me to surf Poly on the toilet without using my notebook:

[Agathon]

I hate to say this Zop, but that was actually copied from an Apple parody, and the original was much better.

I have 802.11g. Good for streaming hard porn while I'm in the bath.

The doofus next door has left his network wide open too. I should go tell him to close it off.

[Zopperoni]

Yea, but the Apple one has no wifi capability. to Apple's functionality

Originally posted by Agathon
I have 802.11g. Good for streaming hard porn while I'm in the bath.

I have 802.11b, because it's fast enough to handle my 3 Mbps connection. If I want to transfer files, I usually plug in an oldskool cable to get 100 Mbps.

The doofus next door has left his network wide open too. I should go tell him to close it off.

I assume that he doesn't have hard porn that you can stream?

[Agathon]

Yea, but the Apple one has no wifi capability. to Apple's functionality

Are you sure? That was a parody of the toiletbooks (the original, horrible ibooks) and they had wi-fi back in 1999.

I assume that he doesn't have hard porn that you can stream?

I've no idea. I haven't tried to get into his computer. My machine was set to automatically join open networks and joined his – which made me wonder why my internet widgets were working when I thought I wasn't connected.

I guess I could get him into trouble by posting threats to Canada through his account. But I'm too nice.