Laptop gurus, speak to me

[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.

[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....

[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

[lesrae]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

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

Fair enough, I've bought about 10 laptops and 20 PCs from them over the last 5 or 6 years and never had any snags - everyone has different experiences with companies.

[nikimcbee]

Dell was fun to argue with, because they wouldn't let me have XP, only vista. Their business computers you can choose either, and I called them on it. It was a fun conversation because their call center is in India:rotfl: .

My gateway has an HD monitor and HD port! Can you say big screen HD TV!:hmm: I bought mine from bestbuy, on a side note. I was their newest computer model.

[nikimcbee]

Oh, and on a side note. Intel has totally rejected vista:rotfl: as a corperation. Now there's a vote of confidence.:rotfl:

[lesrae]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

Dell was fun to argue with, because they wouldn't let me have XP, only vista. Their business computers you can choose either, and I called them on it. It was a fun conversation because their call center is in India:rotfl: .

Yup, pretty much what I did :O)