Laptop gurus, speak to me

DeepIron · 10-02-08, 06:27 AM

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.

10-02-08, 06:27 AM	#10
DeepIron Sea Lord Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Too far from the Pacific right now... Posts: 1,634 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	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. __________________ RFB / RSRDC Beta Tester RFB / RSRDC Modding Forum: http://forum.kickinbak.com/index.php RFB Top Post link: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=125529 RFB Loadout: RFB_V1.52_102408: RFB_V1.52_Patch_111608: RSRDC_RFBv15_V396 Last edited by DeepIron; 10-02-08 at 06:54 AM.