Question:
Advice for laptop shopping
Hi, I am entering university next year and have started shopping for my laptop...would like some advice.
Primary Use: Student(Main), Gaming(Frequent, like Warcraft III)
Size: Not really important. (14" or 15"?)
Battery life: Important! (4 hours?)
HDD: 40 to 60 GB should be sufficient
CD/DVD: Probably just need to be able to read DVDs...
Weight: Important! Don't really want to lug a stone around...(less than 2.5 or 3kg?)
Graphics: Would very much prefer a dedicated graphics card rather than integrated ('cos of gaming)
RAM: Min 512 (Is this the norm?)
Connectivity: Built-in wireless
Price: Max $2000 USD
Was thinking of getting Acer Travelmate 3202...it meets everything. But is the quality and service standard good? Saw the Acer TM 4502 also but it seems heavy to be for college...IBM Thinkpad T42 seems reasonable too, but it's a tad above my budget...I live in Singapore and IBMs are real expensive...and don't even start to mention Sony...heh. Or are there any other worthy brands?
Answer:
Acer makes a very nice machine, I wouldn't hesitate to go that route. You're not going to see 4 hours of battery life though, not without a machine that offers a second battery bay.
Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com
Answer:
For the best battery life look at a centrino I would also suggest you look at the jetbook 9520 -- it should fill your needs well and it will be well under $2000 very well equipped 2.0 pent m dvd burner gig of ram 60 gig 7200 still under $2000 Battery life shows 4.5 mark 4.01 -
Owner / Partner http://www.mtwolfcomputers.com
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Jetbook C235:Pent M 1.7: 40 Gig 5400 rpm: 512 MB :
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Answer:
Just a thought...how heavy, or rather how light should a laptop be if it's to be used for university work? I mean it need not be an ultraportable, but I am quite sure a desktop replacement would not be advisable right? Any comments?
Answer:
It depends on what you get, but 4-6.5 pounds is reasonable.
Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com
Answer:
Hi tensai_jin,
It's good to start shopping early, The best time to buy would probably be in the spring as come summer time the back to school demand will raise prices. For 4 or more hours of use on one battery, you need to get a notebook with the Pentium M processor, if it say centrino on the notebook it has the pentium M in it, if it does not say centrino it may or may not have a Pentium M in it; this is because centrino is not a CPU or processor brand/type, it is a marketing slogan that means the notebook has 3 intel parts in it.
1. Pentium M
2. Intel 855 chipset
3. Intel wireless card
So a notebook could have the power saving pentium M in it, but someone elses wireless card and it would not be allowed to have the centrino name.
The thought that the IBM thinkpads are too expensive is not entirely true anymore, they have become very competitive on many models. Besides the Acer, checkout prices on the Thinkpad R40/R50 or 51 they can be a real value. Earlier this year I bought an R40 model (2897GAU) for $1600 USD that had 15" (1400x1050) display, 1.5GHz pentium M, 60GB hard drive, 256MB memory(which I upgraded to 1GB) and the battery life was incredible. It would run just over 6 hours on a charge!
One other thing that is very important, make sure you get a notebook with the professional version of XP, not the home version. The reason is that you will need pro to get connected to a large network like what colleges and corporations use. The home version will only work for very small home networks.
Good Luck in your search
Jack
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Ben Franklin)
http://pbase.com/joneill
Answer:
Hmmm.....so its not true that Acer TM4500 can get up to 5 hours?
zv5000z AMD 64 3000+ 1.8 Ghz 768 DDR SDRAM 15.4" WXGA (1280x800) 30 GB 4200 RPM Hard Drive 64MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) 4 440 Go
Answer:
Thanks for the advice on Win XP! Didn't realise the difference...guess that just made my budget even tighter, since I gotta get Win XP Pro...hmmm.
Still find Acer within my budget...but the only problem is its HDD is only 4200rpm in my country...and they offer XP Home. Would jack up costs a bit if I have to change drive and upgrade OS.
IBM T42 seems a nice machine..but graphics memory a bit too low? Advice?
Saw this Sony S28GP also....cool machine...but small and EXPENSIVE! Argh I hate being poor.