Shopping for a Laptop

Been shopping for a laptop the past few days, and I have no idea what I'm doing. I've built PCs my whole life, but this laptop biz is completely new to me. I have no idea where to start, or who's reliable, etc.

My price range is ~$1000 so, can anyone give me advice?

Thanks in advance.

Heres something neat I have been looking into. To do, well, everything a laptop does, and then some.


http://www.oqo.com/

scroto said:

Heres something neat I have been looking into. To do, well, everything a laptop does, and then some.


http://www.oqo.com/

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What part of 1,000.00 didn't you understood? Wally, I personally don't know much about PC'S, but one of my friends bought this little number:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/

Although it's 200.00 more than the budget, you get those 200.00 back on rebates. Seems decent for standard use.

Walter said:

Been shopping for a laptop the past few days, and I have no idea what I'm doing. I've built PCs my whole life, but this laptop biz is completely new to me. I have no idea where to start, or who's reliable, etc.

My price range is ~$1000 so, can anyone give me advice?

Thanks in advance.

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Well, what are you going to be using this for? for 1000 bucks, your going to be limited.
I've used cnet.com as a guide in such things. helped me find my laptop. It was 2k but I use it as a (barely) portable graphics workstation.
For macs, the 1000 iBook has been well received.
For PCs, they usually hover around 1200 as a base. Those that can be found for cheaper I'm pretty suspicious of. Laptops are a different animal, heating and monitor concerns are pretty high. As are battery life, etc, for some people.

But, like I said, its what you're going to be using it for that gives you your options.

EDIT: Dell's always got some deal going: (from Bensbargains.net)

Configure this Inspiron 6000 Notebook with 2GHz, 15.4" WSXGA+, 100GB, 8x DVD+-RW, Radeon X300 64MB for $1499 - $500 code 5KTG5F4TX8339P [Exp 12/21, 8k] + $24 shipping = $1023.

# Pentium-M 2.0GHz, 512MB DDR, 100GB Drive, 8x DVD+-RW, 15.4" WSXGA+
# Radeon X300 64MB, 10/100 + 56k + 802.11g, XP MCE, 1-Yr Warranty

CnC said:

Well, what are you going to be using this for?  for 1000 bucks, your going to be limited.
I've used cnet.com as a guide in such things.  helped me find my laptop.  It was 2k but I use it as a (barely) portable graphics workstation.
For macs, the 1000 iBook has been well received.
For PCs, they usually hover around 1200 as a base.  Those that can be found for cheaper I'm pretty suspicious of.  Laptops are a different animal, heating and monitor concerns are pretty high.  As are battery life, etc, for some people.

But, like I said, its what you're going to be using it for that gives you your options.

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Funny that you mentioned the ibook, I was actually going to post that as well, but you know how some people react to Mac.

Nomad said:

Funny that you mentioned the ibook, I was actually going to post that as well, but you know how some people react to Mac.

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I use a mac at work. And as a computer, it works very well. OSX is great for multitasking and has yet to crash on me (programs do rarely).
However, there are just some programs that don't run on macs. So I have PCs at home (computer/laptop).

EDIT:
http://www.newegg.com, which might as well be called "thissiteownz.com" (its great) is also a good source to find laptops in that price range. Just in case you hadn't looked there yet.

CnC said:

\Configure this Inspiron 6000 Notebook[/url] with 2GHz, 15.4" WSXGA+, 100GB, 8x DVD+-RW, Radeon X300 64MB for $1499 - $500 code 5KTG5F4TX8339P [Exp 12/21, 8k] + $24 shipping = $1023.

# Pentium-M 2.0GHz, 512MB DDR, 100GB Drive, 8x DVD+-RW, 15.4" WSXGA+
# Radeon X300 64MB, 10/100 + 56k + 802.11g, XP MCE, 1-Yr Warranty

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This one sounds like a good deal, but it ends...tomorrow

Nomad said:

This one sounds like a good deal, but it ends...tomorrow

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Its dell...
if he doesn't need it immediately just wait a week and the deal will be back.

I mostly need it for work stuff. As a journalist, I'm on the move a lot in town, and I hate having to cart my notes back to the office just to type it on a shitty, 4-year old Mac.

I'd like a laptop that can do basic shit as well as play Civ IV when I have time off But really, Im trying to get the most ridiculous specs within the $1000 price range. Right now it's a toss-up between a Thinkpad Z60 and the Dell CnC mentioned above.

Walter said:

Right now it's a toss-up between a Thinkpad Z60 and the Dell CnC mentioned above.

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I've heard civ IV is addicting..
Well as a wordprocessor those thinkpads are workhorses, I just never could get used to the nipple (pencil eraser) as a pointing device, plus those celeron processors, meh. Either would work for you well, as both have good reviews.
Let us know what you decide

I would stay away from Dell. My experience (not with notebooks but with desktops, but should be similar) with them has been horrible. Cheap components, cheap support that doesn't understand or speak english -_-. You haven't mentioned Sony, but they're also not so good with laptops - we've had four Vaio laptops and every single one had a faulty power block that needed internal replacements at some point. Acer is supposedly good (and definitely fits your price range), but I'm not sure they sell in the US and I've also never owned one. I've also had good experience with IBM ThinkPad (I had the A31 model iirc), solid performace and no breakdowns despite my rather rough treatment of it. The downside with mine was that it was rather cumbersome to carry around.

Edit: Like CnC I also had a rough time getting used to the clit on the Thinkpad, I eventually switched to an optical usb mouse.

Edit 2: To prolong battery life, you want a laptop with a lot of RAM and probably a large L2 cache, but those guys are pricey.

Edit 3: As for Civ IV... I suppose if the gfx card in the laptop will be ATI or similar, it should be fine. Might be a problem if it's some Intel onboard chip though, _rumor_ has it that those chips have flaky games support (I have no experience with them).

darkbane said:

I would stay away from Dell.

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I'd also go with the Thinkpad if I had to choose. My former company had a somewhat wide park of laptops (~500), and Dell never failed to fail, both for desktop and laptop computers. HP and IBM are the two brands that were the most reliable for professional use.

Now stuff like this can vary a lot, but I wouldn't trust Dell too much basically.

darkbane said:

Acer is supposedly good (and definitely fits your price range), but I'm not sure they sell in the US and I've also never owned one.

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I own an acer 1710. Its been great. There was an incident with the monitor a while back but that was fixed via the warrenty. I later found out it was because I had some graphics drivers (to play battlefield 2 on it ) that caused it to flicker while on battery power and occasionally when plugged in. S'been fixed.
Other than that its been flawless.
But like I said in my previous post. It cost me closer to 2 grand. But its been a year now. I bet its closer to 1500.

CnC, I was thinking of the models that come with Celeron or Semperon chips, they are around 700-800 euro. Of course, those processors might not be acceptable...

I do not know how to make myself clear but..

DO NOT GET A DELL

They suck ass, all of them. I work with the pieces of shit all day everyday, im Dell certified, they are crap.

That is all.

darkbane said:

CnC, I was thinking of the models that come with Celeron or Semperon chips, they are around 700-800 euro. Of course, those processors might not be acceptable...

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dunno 'bout those. But concerning the build quality of the acer in general, I've been more than satisfied.

I ended up getting an IBM Thinkpad Z60m. It's got 1.73GHz with 512DDR and a decent enough Radeon video card to play Civ IV on... Oh and it's widescreen too

Thanks for all the help guys!

Walter said:

I ended up getting an IBM Thinkpad Z60m. It's got 1.73GHz with 512DDR and a decent enough Radeon video card to play Civ IV on... Oh and it's widescreen too

Thanks for all the help guys!

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'grats

I was looking at the dell site a year ago. They offered an "upgrade" to a whopping 512 mb of ram with every purchase. Amazing!

Dells are crap - They're made to only last the first year year and a half. After that they break down and break down FAST

I have a Sony laptop, it's a little more pricey, but without a doubt well worth it. Havent had any problems with it at all.

If money is an issue, go for a laptop that are in the ads of your sunday paper, or you can get a Dell... That's if money is the thing that you're looking out the most. Otherwise go for a dell, or an Apple if you prefer Apple.

Topic resolved, locked.