Laptop gurus, speak to me

[Onkel Neal]

I'm thinking about getting a laptop, lord knows I could use it. Here are the things I think I want/need in one:

• Light and portable, something like 10" to 13" would be ideal
• Windows XP
• Wifi and 3G ready, whatever it takes to connect to the web at hotels and coffee shops
• Cellular internet ready, internal or have a slot for a phone card-thingee, whatever it takes to connect to the web through ATT/Version/Sprint when there is no kind of wifi or connection available.
• Powerful enough to run Office, Front Page, FTP, and Image Composer, IE and e-mail.

What I would also like but these are more optional:

• DVD burner (esp. a slot type with no tray )
• 2GB RAM
• 40GB or more hard drive/flash memory

I'm open to ideas, suggestions, and especially information from people who are up to date on the latest tech... thanks

Neal
(stuck with a 2003 destop)

[SUBMAN1]

Get an Asus Eee 901. The reason I say that is it sounds like you want portability above all else. The 901 has the Atom CPU and it only weighs in at 2 pounds and costs about $400-$500.

It also has a SSD hard drive (20 GB) making speed to the HD (The laptops slowest component) lightning fast and not prone to crashing. I suggest buying a Linux version and loading your own XP to save $$$.

Without any more info, that is what i would steer you towards.

http://eeepc.asus.com/global/901.htm

-S

PS. Did I mention over 8 hours battery life?

PPS. Did I mention tiny too? I'm buying one for myself. Great to have something like this on an airplane or while traveling.

PPPS. 40 GB is more than you probably need if you don't plan to game.

[SUBMAN1]

Second choice throws out all those options and that would be if you wanted a fast vid card (for playing SHIV or DW LAWAMI 3.08 on the road). Then that should be your only criteria since any laptop with a fast vid card will far exceed your specs as listed automagically.

-S

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Second choice throws out all those options and that would be if you wanted a fast vid card (for playing SHIV or DW LAWAMI 3.08 on the road). Then that should be your only criteria since any laptop with a fast vid card will far exceed your specs as listed automagically.

-S

Yea, I was about to say that. If you definitely want a fast vid card, then your choices are pretty much limited to the higher-end laptops. Anything more modest usually comes with on-board video which is a no-no for gaming.

That's sort of how I picked my laptop last year (it's a 17" HP, with an 8600GS card). I'm very happy with it and it's definitely a good, if modest, gaming station (shame it doesn't run SHIV as well as I'd like it to... but it's all I got!)

Sounds like an Eee would be the choice for you if it's just a business lappy, though! I'd definitely consider it.

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

I'm thinking about getting a laptop, lord knows I could use it. Here are the things I think I want/need in one:

• Light and portable, something like 10" to 13" would be ideal
• Windows XP
• Wifi and 3G ready, whatever it takes to connect to the web at hotels and coffee shops
• Cellular internet ready, internal or have a slot for a phone card-thingee, whatever it takes to connect to the web through ATT/Version/Sprint when there is no kind of wifi or connection available.
• Powerful enough to run Office, Front Page, FTP, and Image Composer, IE and e-mail.

What I would also like but these are more optional:

• DVD burner (esp. a slot type with no tray )
• 2GB RAM
• 40GB or more hard drive/flash memory

I'm open to ideas, suggestions, and especially information from people who are up to date on the latest tech... thanks

Neal
(stuck with a 2003 destop)

Good luck with the XP part . i just bought an intel dual core, 4 gig of RAM, the newest wifi, not g but N. Consumer reports rated it a great buy (it's a gateway) for $750. It does have vista on it It plays SH4 just fine.

[CCIP]

I actually wouldn't complain about Vista nowadays all that much, especially if you have plenty of RAM on the system. After SP1 it's gotten quite alright. I don't notice any performance differences and to be honest my laptop's more stable nowadays than my XP system was... buuuut that's another discussion, no?

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I actually wouldn't complain about Vista nowadays all that much, especially if you have plenty of RAM on the system. After SP1 it's gotten quite alright. I don't notice any performance differences and to be honest my laptop's more stable nowadays than my XP system was... buuuut that's another discussion, no?

Vista didn't bother me until I tried to instal SH3 . 64 bit explorer is fun, but then there's the driver issue!

[SUBMAN1]

If you need WWAN, and don't care about cost, look at Sony sub notebooks.

http://b2b.sony.com/Solutions/subcat...able/tt-series

-S

[lesrae]

My 2p worth, I wanted a new XP PC recently and Dell were able to supply one, it wasn't from their catalogue it was 'old' stock from their business side, but did exactly what I wanted. They may be able to offer similar on laptops if you speak to them.

[DeepIron]

Howdy Neal!
My recommendation: the Sony VAIO NR430/E: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1211587728587

It's a little larger than you mentioned but I just purchased one and I'm extremely pleased with it. (Not to mention that I'm VERY picky when it comes to these kinds of devices!) It meets all your specs save two .. It's got Vista Home Premium on it, but I've it configured to look and act like an XP machine and it has a "tray-type" DVD unit. So far, it runs all my XP programs. It has 4 USB ports to support just about any device you might want, has an SD card slot, memory stick slot and Express card slot. Very handy! The battery life is between 3-4 hours and the unit is light and very well built.

The screen is somewhat reflective and I thought this would be annoying. The truth is, the on-axis viewing angle is excellent and the "glossiness" of the screen is hardly noticeable at all. Besides, it's getting impossible to find any LCD screens on laptops that have the old style "matte" finish anymore...

The performance is very snappy. The Intel Core 2 1.86GHZ CPU has more than enough horsepower for this class of laptop. The 2GB of RAM is more than sufficient IMO. One cool thing, you can add a memory device, like a SD, memory stick or USB drive and have Vista use it's ReadyBoost feature. This allows Vista to write "cache" writes to the device and does speed the laptop even more. I added a 4GB SD stick to the laptop, configured it for ReadyBoost and leave it in place semi-permanently (I seldom use SD devices favoring memory sticks and USB drives for program storage).

One note: it has an Intel X3100 graphics chip. While the performance of the chip is quite good (I play a few games like Galactic Civilizations II on it) it is NOT a gaming chip... That being said, if you want to keep a few movies on the drive or DVD for replay (I have an entire series of Sherlock Holmes episodes on the drive), the performance is excellent!

I researched (for about 3 months) a number of netbooks like the Asus EEE, Aspire One and the MSI Wind along with numerous "portable" laptops before purchasing this Vaio.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by lesrae

My 2p worth, I wanted a new XP PC recently and Dell were able to supply one, it wasn't from their catalogue it was 'old' stock from their business side, but did exactly what I wanted. They may be able to offer similar on laptops if you speak to them.

Do not buy Dell. You will get propreitary parts that can only be updated by Dell and they will never update the drivers. I fought with them for 4 years and was always promised a driver update for an ATI card that couldn't use generic drivers - I never did get that update. In 5 years, they never updated one driver for that entire laptop and I spent $3000 on it.

-S

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by DeepIron

Howdy Neal!
My recommendation: the Sony VAIO NR430/E: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1211587728587

That looks like a solid machine, but it's bigger than I want.

Subman, I have been looking at the Asus Eee 901 and the Eee 10 model. The 10 is about the right size, but I am hesitant to pull the trigger, I am hoping a version will come out that that has a DVD unit. Sure would be nice to watch movies on a plane....:hmm:

Low price is not a must but I would like it to be under $1200, and it is nice to know that if something breaks on a $400 unit, or if it falls off the motorcycle, I drop it or lose it, it's not a major problem.

There is no urgency to play games on the laptop, that can wait until I get back to the office. Of course, I am guessing that any modern laptop will be able to play AOE I and II, Starcraft, Mah-jongg, etc, older games with ease.

[longam]

I purchased the low end dell XPS for sales and they love it. I never had any problem with the higher end stuff from dell, but never buy from the bottom shelf that’s where all the proprietary comes in.

[DeepIron]

Neal... The form factor of the net books like the EE pretty much preclude the inclusion of a DVD player. You could, however, use a utility like Alcohol http://www.alcohol-soft.com/ and solve the problem...

I'm using the non-expiring freeware version of Alcohol with my Vaio. You have to search around the website to find it... It allows me to mount up to 6 "virtual drives", each drive contains the contents (a disk image created by Alcohol) of 1 DVD which in turn has 4 Sherlock Holmes episodes. Basically I have 24 1hr movies... Each image is around 7Gb in size for a total of 49Gb of disk space used. It would be a simple matter to use Alcohol to create the disk images and mounts for full-length features. The limitation would be disk space...

I think you could create the disk images on your PC (with a copy of Alcohol installed there) and then transfer them to the net book via USB drive or similar, placing one image to one directory. You'd need a copy of Alcohol on the net book to create the mount points for the directories and bingo! movies without a DVD player.

One of the pay versions of Alcohol (Alcohol 52%, more suited to laptop use) allows up to 31 drives to be mounted. Probably far more than a net book would need tho'...

[Onkel Neal]

WTH?? You cannot build and buy a Gateway online anymore?? When did this happen? OMG, I feel unstuck in time....