Help -Jrabbit buy his first PC laptop!

[Agathon]

He's talking about the toilets, UR.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
But it's a POS. The *only* thing that would cause you to choose OOo over MSO is the price... as a product MSO is far superior... speed, usability, features, compatibility, stablity, appearance... the works. OOo's PDF thing is horrible anyway, the files it creates are enormous...

MSO starts up faster, but there is no appreciable difference in speed after that. Everything else are about the same, the perceived differences are caused by your familiarity with one (and lack of such for another). I don't found MSO more stable than OOo, and I have used OOo extensively in the past year.

As for PDF, of couse they are big, they are images more or less. However the advantages of using them far outweigh the increase in size.

Originally posted by Whaleboy
if you need that kind of thing you'd shell out on Adobe Acrobat, if you don't you distribute documents in .doc or .html.

It's like saying, if you want to drive a car, you must get a Lamborghini, or you should stick to a bicycle.

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Walkers and Golden Wonder are companies that make crisps (British for potato chips).

Cheese+Onion & Salt+Vinegar are flavours of crisps.

I gathered as much. The question is, is Walkers that much better than Golden Wonder? And is Golden Wonder free?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Agathon
He's talking about the toilets, UR.

Pffftt

[-Jrabbit]

I'm trying to keep the hardware cost around $1k USD. So here's what I'm looking at...

Acer Aspire AS1681 -- $930
512 MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, combo drive, Centrino Pentium-M.
WinXP Home OS, 15.4" "brite" screen, firewire. New, 1yr warranty.

HP Compaq nx6110 -- $910
512 MB RAM, 60 Gb hard drive, combo drive, Celeron-M processor.
win XP Pro OS, 15" screen, "scroll zone" pad. New, 1 yr warranty.

Toshiba Tecra A2-S316 -- $1199
512 MB RAM, 60 GB hard drive, combo drive, Centrino Pentium M715.
Win XP Pro OS, 15" screen, (2) USB 2.0 ports. New, 1yr warranty.

Acer Aspire 1522LMi -- $999
512 MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, CD+DVD burner, Athlon Mobile 64.
WinXP Pro, 15" screen, USB2+firewire. New, 1 yre warranty.
Included software: several Acer utility pgms, acrobat Reader, Norton AntiVirus, NTI CD & DVD Maker 6.

All have ethernet, IEE 802.11b/g, etc. Reactions to the above choices welcome.

Other than that, I mostly see refurbished units, which seem to carry a 90-day warranty. The upside is that some of them have "some" software. Am I right in assuming that refurbs are a bad idea?

[Asher]

It's like saying, if you want to drive a car, you must get a Lamborghini, or you should stick to a bicycle.

If MS Office is the Lamborghini, OpenOffice is the Lada...

[Asher]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
I'm trying to keep the hardware cost around $1k USD. So here's what I'm looking at...

Acer Aspire AS1681 -- $930
512 MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, combo drive, Centrino Pentium-M.
WinXP Home OS, 15.4" "brite" screen, firewire. New, 1yr warranty.

HP Compaq nx6110 -- $910
512 MB RAM, 60 Gb hard drive, combo drive, Celeron-M processor.
win XP Pro OS, 15" screen, "scroll zone" pad. New, 1 yr warranty.

Toshiba Tecra A2-S316 -- $1199
512 MB RAM, 60 GB hard drive, combo drive, Centrino Pentium M715.
Win XP Pro OS, 15" screen, (2) USB 2.0 ports. New, 1yr warranty.

Acer Aspire 1522LMi -- $999
512 MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, CD+DVD burner, Athlon Mobile 64.
WinXP Pro, 15" screen, USB2+firewire. New, 1 yre warranty.
Included software: several Acer utility pgms, acrobat Reader, Norton AntiVirus, NTI CD & DVD Maker 6.

All have ethernet, IEE 802.11b/g, etc. Reactions to the above choices welcome.

Other than that, I mostly see refurbished units, which seem to carry a 90-day warranty. The upside is that some of them have "some" software. Am I right in assuming that refurbs are a bad idea?

I would say refurbs are a bad idea.

Out of the ones you've listed there, I'd go for the Toshiba. Toshiba is the best of the bunch there with quality reputations.

[Whaleboy]

MSO starts up faster, but there is no appreciable difference in speed after that.

That's because it's loaded into RAM

Everything else are about the same, the perceived differences are caused by your familiarity with one (and lack of such for another). I don't found MSO more stable than OOo, and I have used OOo extensively in the past year.

I've used OOo a lot, when I was using linux exclusively and recently when dual booting with the 1.9's so it's hardly accurate to say that I have familiarity with one and not the other. MSO has quite simply never crashed on me, it's performance has never degraded whereas 1.1 has crashed. 1.9 also crashed frequently but it's a beta so I can't hold that against it.

As for PDF, of couse they are big, they are images more or less. However the advantages of using them far outweigh the increase in size.

Ever used Acrobat? You can control image quality, control the text, so the size of the files need not be OOo big. In as far as OOo uses them, you may as well distribute the files in *.doc format. To get the real power out of PDF, you use Acrobat.

It's like saying, if you want to drive a car, you must get a Lamborghini, or you should stick to a bicycle.

What, £30 worth of fuel for a ten minute ride around the park?

I gathered as much. The question is, is Walkers that much better than Golden Wonder? And is Golden Wonder free?

Assuming it be to true, which it isn't.. if someone gives you a basic, specific request and you wish to fulfill it, you fulfill it by sticking to the request. If I give you £10 and ask you to buy me a pack of cigarettes, I'll be pissed off if you come back with a bar of chocolate and a tin of tuna, even though the latter may be more healthy.

[-Jrabbit]

I've figured out that Acer is a Texas Instruments label. Found another at a friendly price --

Acer Travelmate 4150 -- $949
512 MB, 60 GB hard, combo drive, XP Pro, 15" screen, Centrino/Pentium M.

I also found a $999 version of the HP 6110 that is Centrino/Pent-M, but only 40 GB hard drive instead of 60.

Just when I thought I was getting close, things get confusing again...

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
I've figured out that Acer is a Texas Instruments label. Found another at a friendly price --

Isn't Acer a taiwanese company?

[Agathon]

It's sad to see the Dark Side of the Force claim another. Anger, Fear, Hatred... this is what will consume you if you use Windows.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
It's sad to see the Dark Side of the Force claim another. Anger, Fear, Hatred... this is what will consume you if you use Windows.

You sure it's not the other way around?

That's all I see from the Mac camp whenever Windows is mentioned: Anger, Fear, Hatred...

[Agathon]

No. Its former Windows users like me reminiscing.

[Nostromo]

Btw, Jrabbit, laptops have typically 2 slots for ram. So if your laptop comes with 512 MB, but with 2 x 256 DIMMS, you'll have to remove one of these DIMMS if you want to expand it later on. So it would be better if your laptop came with one 512 MB DIMM, instead of two 256 MB DIMMS. A while ago, I noticed that most cheap laptops that came with 1GB of ram came with two 512 MB DIMMS.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by nostromo
Isn't Acer a taiwanese company?

Yes.

IIRC, Asus is making its own line of notebooks as well. Not sure how good they are, but Asus is the top of the line mobo maker.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
That's because it's loaded into RAM

So, what's this claim of difference in speed?

Originally posted by Whaleboy
I've used OOo a lot, when I was using linux exclusively and recently when dual booting with the 1.9's so it's hardly accurate to say that I have familiarity with one and not the other. MSO has quite simply never crashed on me, it's performance has never degraded whereas 1.1 has crashed. 1.9 also crashed frequently but it's a beta so I can't hold that against it.

OOo 1.1 has never crashed in our office, and we have quite a few people using it. So I'd say it doesn't have a stability problem.

Of course, this is refering to the Linux version. The Windows version may be flakier, I don't know, since we only have a couple of boxes with that around here.

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Ever used Acrobat? You can control image quality, control the text, so the size of the files need not be OOo big.

What's the size difference? 10%? 50%? 100%? When the PDF files are only 100-200K typically, a 10% difference is only 20K max. A drop in the bucket. I am not going to tweak the settings to optimise on size.

Originally posted by Whaleboy
In as far as OOo uses them, you may as well distribute the files in *.doc format. To get the real power out of PDF, you use Acrobat.

No. If you can distribute files in another format, you do. Not only .doc format is a vector for viruses, but they can be modified. So unless that is what you want, and even in that case, the preferred format is RTF.

Originally posted by Whaleboy
What, £30 worth of fuel for a ten minute ride around the park?

No.

Fit a tool to the task at hand, not buy the most expensive solution there is. Why do somebody wants to pay for PhotoShop when all that power is not required? Get something cheaper! I guess that is the difference between somebody who's in the business sector and somebody who doesn't care about the cost.

Originally posted by Whaleboy
Assuming it be to true, which it isn't.. if someone gives you a basic, specific request and you wish to fulfill it, you fulfill it by sticking to the request. If I give you £10 and ask you to buy me a pack of cigarettes, I'll be pissed off if you come back with a bar of chocolate and a tin of tuna, even though the latter may be more healthy.

Ah, but your analogy doesn't work. MSO is an office suite, but so is OOo.

It is more like MSIE vs Firefox. Both are Web browsers, the former is a Microsoft product, the latter is FOSS (free and open source software).