29-05-2005 21:45									#1
	Help -Jrabbit buy his first PC laptop! Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

OK, it's finally happening. It has become clear that in the next stage of my life, I will be needing a PC laptop. I love my Apples, but this is business. And what better place than Poly to troll for advice.

I'm looking for a best-deal scenario -- not the superpower slicer/dicer model, but rather the killer value proposition. Need to know whether I should be looking for prebundled software or doing that separate. What companies are notiously strong and weak on aftersale support. that sort of thing.

Requirements:

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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?

I assume I can share my USB printer with the Mac -- it's an Epson CX6400.

what processors should I be targeting/avoiding?

what websites offer dependable advice?

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

Thx for any help yoy can offer.

	29-05-2005 22:02									#2
	Inflate your Upload Space

www.ibuypower.com
www.ibm.com
www.toshiba.com

If you get centrino, make sure it's centrino/sonoma. that includes built-in wireless. the sonoma part just means that it's the new, updated centrino version; centrino includes both the wireless and the processor. often times, places will just have the pentium m processor, and some other wireless card--that is NOT centrino.

512 is enough, better than 256, if you're going to want to make it last. honestly, you can never go wrong with too much ram, though there's a point where it becomes an excessive cost for your purposes. such as: while it's not wrong, per se, for your laptop to have 2gb of ram, most people will never need that much. it's doubtful you will.

i would still suggest 512+, instead of 256.

most laptops these days will have cd-rw/dvd combo drives.

i'd avoid dell laptops, mostly because the newer, lighter ones tend to have heat dissipation issues. i've never liked gateway or hp, partly because both of them seem to take shortcuts in their design and manufacture.

the software will set you back quite a bit. while xp will come pre-installed on your laptop, and office just might, photoshop will not. that's 200 at least, right there.

depending on what your laptop will be doing, you could get away with spending as little as 1000 on it.

	29-05-2005 22:03									#3
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

we should have a goddamn sticky thread, what with all the requests about laptops.

	30-05-2005 01:10									#4
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Thx Q Cubed.

Interesting. Went to ComUSA today, was told HP was the way to go. Vaio also favorably mentioned. Of course, the salesdude was pushing for 1024GB RAM and 100GB drive as basic necessities for a biz machine.

Was also told that prebundled Office is a thing of the past, that I could expect "probably Norton, not much else" along with "some version of XP."

He said to expect to pay $1000-1400 for hardware, another $1000 for software, plus a few hundred to get my 3 machines (the new laptop and 2 Macs) networked into my comcast cable modem. Is this out of line?

	30-05-2005 01:12									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Please don't listen to CompUSA salespeople. They're totally unqualified.

	30-05-2005 01:23									#6
	Suffering from ads?

HP is not the way to go. Go with IBM. Hell, you're better off with Apple than HP. That, and Toshiba seems to be what people recommend even though I won't recommend you Toshiba laptops. No way.

	30-05-2005 01:24									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Why not just buy a copy of Virtual PC?

	30-05-2005 03:34									#8
	Tired of ads?

Mine's a Dell Inspiron 5150, with extra memory and DVD rewrite drive. Oh, and Civ 2 looks great on it, because that's all that matters really.

	30-05-2005 07:19									#9
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: Originally posted by Agathon Why not just buy a copy of Virtual PC?

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.

	30-05-2005 07:23									#10
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Asher Please don't listen to CompUSA salespeople. They're totally unqualified.

Well, you gotta go somewhere to touch the machines, and once you do that, you gotta deal with the sales dude.

Your opinion on the questions posed would be most welcome, Asher. I already know CompUSA's reputation. What I don't know is where I should go.

	30-05-2005 08:07									#11
	Get a bigger avatar today!

Honestly, I don't think you need to go anywhere. IBM and IBuyPower are both inet shops, and they're just fine and dandy.

	30-05-2005 08:09									#12
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Do not get the Sony Vaio notebooks. They are overpriced, problematic heaps of junk.

	30-05-2005 08:09									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

quote: Originally posted by Q Cubed Honestly, I don't think you need to go anywhere. IBM and IBuyPower are both inet shops, and they're just fine and dandy.

Perhaps -jrabbit wants to get his hands on the machines to get a feel...

	30-05-2005 08:11									#14
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Well, go someplace to get a feel for them, but for chrissakes, don't buy them there.

	30-05-2005 08:29									#15
	Re: Help -Jrabbit buy his first PC laptop! Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by -Jrabbit 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.

Maybe you could take a look at OpenOffice.org, which is a free open source replacement for MS Office. The price is sweet (free), and it does most of what you want to do. It doesn't have the full capabilities of, say, Office 2000, but I don't think 99% of the users will ever require that. In fact, I suspect OpenOffice.org has more features than the average user will ever need already. The PDF generator is very awesome.

The new beta version, which is quite stable, has an Access replacement. Though if you don't need a lightweight database the stable version is probably all you need.

As for PhotoShop, you could try GIMP out to see if you like it. It's also free. While it is nowhere up to the power of PhotoShop, again I have been using it and it can probably do most of the things you need to do. Cinepaint is in the same league.

For building websites there are some excellent FOSS tools around. Browse around Sourceforge to see if there is anything you like.

	30-05-2005 09:35									#16
	Full PM-box? Change here!

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?

	30-05-2005 09:38									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

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.

	30-05-2005 11:05									#18
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: 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...

	30-05-2005 14:54									#19
	Increase the size of your Attachments

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.

	30-05-2005 14:59									#20
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

UR just hates Sony. Probably because its J

	30-05-2005 15:01									#21
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

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

	30-05-2005 17:06									#22
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: 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 .

	30-05-2005 17:48									#23
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: 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.

	30-05-2005 20:57									#24
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: 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.

quote: 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.

	30-05-2005 21:43									#25
	Re: Help -Jrabbit buy his first PC laptop! Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: 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.

quote: 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.

quote: 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.

quote: 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.

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

Should be good enough.

quote: 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/

quote: 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.

quote: what processors should I be targeting/avoiding?

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

quote: 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.

	30-05-2005 21:48									#26
	Got spare money?

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!!!

	30-05-2005 21:55									#27
	Put an end to popups!

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.

quote: 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:

	30-05-2005 22:10									#28
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

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.

	30-05-2005 22:15									#29
	Support Apolyton

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

quote: 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.

quote: 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?

	30-05-2005 22:19									#30
	Put an end to popups!

quote: 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.

quote: 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.