To buy a latap or not

Yes I am aware that there is a similar thread lurking nearby but I’m not interested in laptop brands just yet.

I’m thinking of buying a laptop. Currently, I have a computer I bought in 2001, I believe. Windows ME came with it puke. It’s an HP pavilion, I guess, since I just read that on the monitor. I used to have a lot of crashes before I reformated, so I probably had a lot of viruses as well, but they’re gone. Anyway, without viruses, I don’t really have a problem with my comp, except windows ME. Who wants it? Now you get my problem. I can easily upgrade to XP, but I’ve been thinking of selling this thing and getting a laptop for convenience now. My comp is out in my living room and I feel more comfortable working in my bedroom. I want something portable, and something that I have easy access to in there. Meaning I can set it on my lap, on my desk, or whatever. The mobile-ness really interests me. I have a lot of questions.

I have highspeed internet on this computer. It cost about 200 to put in over a couple hours. Will I have to go through all of that again if I have a laptop? Do laptops have highspeed internet or something equivalent? Meaning that, you can get this enabled? How do laptops access the internet for that matter anyway?

Also, if I get a laptop, are they compatible with outside hook ups and stuff like a webcam? I just got a webcam not too long ago for 80 bucks, I’d hate to just…not use it anymore.

What is a good price for a laptop? What shouldn’t be surpassed?

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/class.asp?logon=&langid=EN&catid=1002

Out of this selection, can anyone give me a good idea of what is a desirable laptop and what I should keep away from? What features do I want in a laptop? I know something about that ram thingy…I have a really low number on my comp now…how much ram should be in the laptop I’m looking for? What else should I be looking out for?

As you can see, I know nothing about what I want to buy. I just know that I want a laptop for convenience purposes. I spend a lot of time working at my computer for website and creativity related purposes, and I want to be comfortable while doing it. I don’t like my computer right now, but the hassle in selling it and fighting to get highspeed back doesn’t appeal to me. Mostly, it’s because I don’t know what I’m doing. Help? Oh and what should I sell this computer for? Everything is in working condition, mic and speakers come with, as well as all of the papers it came with…I think we bought it for around 2000…what should I ask for it?

I just got a dell latitude 810. id highly reccomend it. a little pricy though. i got a student discount though my school, and it cost me about 1900. regularly i think my model would cost about 2500. look into them though, dells pretty good.

id also reccomend Sony Vaio. i dont know their cost, but i know they are reliable.

most laptops now come with builtin wireless and ethernet ports. on the ram, becuase of xp, no lower than 256, id reccomend 512, i have 1gb, but its not necessary, but its nice. webcam, dontknow, what port does it hook to? usbs are in it, and some models have serial ports. few though have parallel ports. most laptops have semi small HDs, no larger than 80 gb, standard is about 40. get a pentium M processor though, good on battery, moblity, and cost. Do not get a pentium 4 even if offered, it will probably burn out. laptops arent good at cooling, so fast processors dont work well in them. plan to get no higher than about 2ghz.

hope all this helps, if you need anything else, dont hesitate to ask.

Features you’re going to look for:

Centrino Processor - Centrino processors are far more power efficient than pentium or AMD chips. Their downfall is that they are less powerful (Usually a bit below 2.0 gHz is standard).

Ram: Any laptop is limited to 2 slots of ram AT MOST. I would recommend getting a 512 in a single stick with laptop. Do not get suckered in to the “Get 2 256 for less!” shit that some companies pull - you’ll have a hard time upgrading since you’ll need to replace both.

Hard Drive: HDs are expensive on laptops. see what you’re using right now, then try and decide how much you’ll need. Traditionally, an OS, Office, a few programs and stuff like that total anywhere from 10 to 20 gigs by themselves. Movies and music can pile up fast, which brings me to…

CD/DVD-ROM/R/RW drives. Ideally, you’ll want at least a CD-RW drive. Usually you can find them as DVD-ROM/CD-RW. You will be burning more CDs to store stuff on your laptop probably. If you really want to, you can go for a DVD-R and burn DVDs to store stuff, but that costs a lot more short term

Port Replicators: These things are purely for convenience and you’ll usually only find them in businesses with the amount they cost. All your ports are color coded anyways, so it’s pretty easy to connect devices when you sit down

Battery: There are polymer-based batteries out on the market now that can give you 10+ hours of battery life on a centrino processor. Stay away unless you’ll really need battery life. These things take away your CD drive to make room for themselves.

Keyboard/Mouse: Get at least a mouse! There are USB Travel mouses which the cord can actually curl up in something. They’re a bit more expensive, but convenient for travelling.

Brand: The brands to trust are: Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and IBM.

For internet, you’ll probably want to hook yourself up with wireless 'net. You will need:

  • Wireless ready laptop (Pretty much standard with new ones. Older ones you’ll have to buy a PCI card for)
  • Wireless router (About $80 CDN for a Linksys router at Wal-Mart)
  • Short length of Ethernet cable to configure the router (literally, less than 3 feet)

You’ll want to attach your computer to your router, configure it as per the instructions, and make sure you use a WEP key. Write down the key, or make it something you can remember. This will prevent people from just randomly leaching on your wireless. Then configure your laptop as per it’s instructions, and you’ll be good to go.

I really can’t hink of anything else, but I just worked 15 hours straight.

Xelo has most of it down pretty good. I’d advise against Toshibas though, some folks I know had problems with em. I also wouldn’t trust compaq and though people will talk shit about Dell (not completely invalid), I have one and its pretty decent (and was very expensive, which might explain why).

Something I like about Dell’s site is the ease with which you can customize your computer and see how much it costs. For me, that aided greatly in giving me an idea about what I was shooting for.

You want :

40-80gig HD. You’ll know how much you need depending on how much music and video you keep right now.

512mb RAM minimum, 1 chip (NOT 2 chips)

CD or (optimally, but about 200 more, ick) DVD burner

Centrino technology (Centrino is the intel mobile chip with the intel wireless set up - I highly suggest you get the mobile chip, by using less power for more punch, you save battery life ). Its not centrino officially without the intel wireless, but intel or not intel, doesn’t matter. Get wireless. Its really simple to set up and if you don’t even want to do it wireless, just connect it to the modem or router like you would a desktop. To use wireless , you have a carb built in (usually) that will scan for available connections and allow you to pick and choose which one you want to connect to. There might be a little more to it, but that’s the gist of it. The only special thing about wireless is that you need a router that’ll have the wireless set up with your modem (connect modem to set up, simple as hell) so your laptop can connect to it when it scans.

You probably don’t need:

A really powerful video card

A LOT of ram

DVD burner

A LOT of memory

Little extra packages

You wanna watch out for all those add ons because these really drive up the price to your machine really fast.

On the other hand, you could get a mac. Macs are good technology if you ask me. Problem is that its pricey. BUT any good laptop will be pricey. So…shrugs. If anyone would want a laptop and had minimal interest in using it for gaming, I’d say get a mac (although macs get the major games released on them, even if a bit late) . Macs are good quality, they’re easy to set up and easy to use and they like to be on the forefront: you’re sure to have prearranged high speed/internal wireless already set up in the machine with all kinds of other gizmos like firewire (think USB but better)

Oh and keep the desktop. Its worthless to sell and it might be useful in emergencies.

By the way, to help us be more precise in our suggestions, as I’m doing my suggestions based on assumptions, tell us what you use your computer for. Give us a break down of the tasks you do or plan to do. I gave my suggestions on how you’d want to browse the net kinda from everywhere, listen to music, chat, use office type programs for stuff.

This probably sounds chaotic cuz I keep re-editing.

I checked, for something like I mentionned here, it’d cost you 1443 Canadian to get an iBook. If you check with your university or something you might get a further discount or something like a free iPod. I know there’s a free iPod thing going around right now at UCI. The Insipiron 600m from Dell which I would say compares and maybe is a little better as it has a little more memory on the vid card and a little better HD is 1549.

Check it out at www.dell.ca, and www.apple.ca. If you’re HONESTLY curious about getting a mac, they have a phone line with people that’ll be more than happy to feed you lotsa fun info at 1800 MYAPPLE. They’ll be able to answer all your questions live and tell you pretty much what you’ll need and what kinda challenges you’ll face switching over and what you’ll need to do or watch out for. And if it doesn’t compare to what we’re saying here, come back and we’ll talk about it.

By the way, I saw you talking about video editing once. I don’t know how its done on the pc but I saw how it was done on the mac and I was impressed. You might want to check it out, it might be up your creativity alley. You might find it interesting. The macs come with all kinds of programs including some video and audio editing programs that look nifty.

If you’re just going to use it around the house, you might want to get another desktop instead. Laptops these days have a habit of burning your balls, and you’d be able to get more power for less money.

Dude, it’s Eva. No balls.

Neither do most of the males on this board, but that doesn’t remove the fact that it’s good advice.

Yeah. And most people also generally use their laptops on a table or desk or something.

Mobile chips or Macs won’t overheat like that.

By the way, I have seen in the news a guy burnt to like the 3rd degree because he had a laptop on his lap in bed, so TD isn’t full of shit when he says a laptop can burn your balls. By being energy inefficient, non mobile chips waste a lot of battery juice and a lot of it is given off as heat.

Eva just has to realize that there’ll be a couple extra costs to getting wireless internet in her house if that’s what she wants since she’ll have to get a wireless router and make sure whatever computer she has has wireless connectivity. Its simple to set up, but it will add to the costs.

Okay I’m glad you guys mentioned the RAM because that’s basically the only thing I really understand. I heard 512 is pretty fast, so I’ll take your advice and go with one stick, rather than going cheaper and getting two or whatever was mentioned. That will be kept in mind.

and it cost me about 1900. regularly i think my model would cost about 2500. look into them though, dells pretty good

wooo…I don’t think that I’ll go over 1300…I mean, this is all pretty much on my shoulders and that would take awhile to pay off. On that note, you can do monthly payments on some laptops, depending on where you buy them, right? Oh please say I don’t have to pay all or half up front :\

For internet, you’ll probably want to hook yourself up with wireless 'net. You will need: (etc)

Well I don’t really care if it’s wireless or not. Just as long as I can move it around in my bedroom (like from my bed to my desk or something). My question was, is a laptop capable of gaving highspeed internet or cable, just like my desktop? I don’t want to ever go back to dial up again…

40-80gig HD. You’ll know how much you need depending on how much music and video you keep right now.

Well, I have maybe 200 video game tracks (as in songs, not soundtracks) on my comp and maybe 30 regular music tracks in my shared folder at any given time. I try not to download movies or anything, or if I do, it’s one and then I watch and delete. So how much gig would I need for this approx estimate?

CD or (optimally, but about 200 more, ick) DVD burner

yes yes yes I forgot to mention this. I NEED to have a CD burner. DVD burner would be nice, but I’m not going out of my way to get one. On my comp now, I have both. What about burning data? Laptops can do this, I assume. So do laptops come with cd burners?

On the other hand, you could get a mac. Macs are good technology if you ask me. Problem is that its pricey. BUT any good laptop will be pricey. So…shrugs. If anyone would want a laptop and had minimal interest in using it for gaming, I’d say get a mac (although macs get the major games released on them, even if a bit late) . Macs are good quality, they’re easy to set up and easy to use and they like to be on the forefront: you’re sure to have prearranged high speed/internal wireless already set up in the machine with all kinds of other gizmos like firewire (think USB but better)

If they’re pricey I probably wont be able to :\ I’m so used to what I have now, that making the change over to a mac may be too weird for me…

Oh and keep the desktop. Its worthless to sell and it might be useful in emergencies.

I’m not so sure…I mean, I need some extra money to actually pay for a laptop, that isn’t coming out of a paycheque…a couple hundred dollars would even be nice.

By the way, to help us be more precise in our suggestions, as I’m doing my suggestions based on assumptions, tell us what you use your computer for. Give us a break down of the tasks you do or plan to do. I gave my suggestions on how you’d want to browse the net kinda from everywhere, listen to music, chat, use office type programs for stuff.

Well, i’d still want to download music (kazaa) and my video game tracks. That’s a big thing I do. I also work a lot in microsoft word (processor). I do some photoshopping from time to time, and I do eventually want to get into making music videos (which requires a ton a space I’m sure, but I could always ration my space out for that). Uummm website creating, I want to focus a lot on that (which goes hand in hand with the MWord work I do). So I have a lot of written data on my comp and floppy discs. I also love to work in RPG Maker, and I have folders and folders of resources in that. Plus AIM. I don’t intend to do anything totally high maintenance (just the sort of stuff I do now).

I checked, for something like I mentionned here, it’d cost you 1443 Canadian to get an iBook. If you check with your university or something you might get a further discount or something like a free iPod. I know there’s a free iPod thing going around right now at UCI. The

I do not attend uni; I go to community college in a year, but I don’t think that they have this sort of program…I’ll look into it though.

Laptops these days have a habit of burning your balls, and you’d be able to get more power for less money.

Is this literally? Like if you set them on your lap they will burn? In that case, i echoe what Xelo said, I don’t have any stuff there to burn :\ But I’ll keep this in mind and be careful about my legs and whatnot. I had no idea.

Eva just has to realize that there’ll be a couple extra costs to getting wireless internet in her house if that’s what she wants since she’ll have to get a wireless router and make sure whatever computer she has has wireless connectivity. Its simple to set up, but it will add to the costs.

Does this mean, like I can surf the net without having something to plug in? I stated above that I really wouldn’t mind this…I mean if I can keep the price down, then I can put up with it. My main concern is just having a really fast connection.

EDIT: Okay I checked out your link Sin, and just looked at the two cheapest notebooks there. Can some of you look at these and tell me if they are worth the price and fit into what I want?Like how much memory and stuff it has. I don’t understand all of this MHz stuff.

http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/featured_notebook_2200?c=ca&cs=CADHS1&l=en&s=dhs

http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=ca&CS=CADHS1&l=en&OC=OCINSP6000_FEAT_CH60P12

All laptops have integrated ethernet ports. Usually they’re 10/100 Base-TX, meaning they can reach speeds of up to 100 mbps. Usually though, your ISP cuts you off at about 3 or 4. As for actually moving it around in your room, you’ll need a lot of slack cord to do that. It’s about 50 cents per foot for cord, CDN, so keep that in mind.

Both are pretty good, the processor speed is decent, the second one is nicer and has a bigger screen, but you’d obivously be paying more for it. Oh, and with the second one, you picked 2 dimms of ram, you’d want 1, it’s worth paying the extra 50 bucks in case you want more ram later (a dimm is just a stick of ram).

And about highspeed, there isn’t really any configuration on an XP system, you probably just had such a horrible time setting up your cable because your current computer is running ME.

To get a cheap wireless network set up, it’s about 50-100 dollars for a router (depending on file transfer speed, but 10 Mbps should be more then enough for you, which is cheaper) and 20 dollars for a wireless card, which your laptop includes. It’s also good because if anyone else in your house has a wireless card in they’re computer, instant internet. The alternative is running a really long ethernet cable from your modem to where ever the computer is.

I already backed up TD’s claim about laptops burning your lap. But that doesn’t happen so much with the new technology you find in macs and intel’s M (mobil) chip. They generate less heat, waste less energy and so the battery lasts longer.

I updated your second link so that it contains some extra things you’ll need like the wireless router, and 1dimm (1 stick) 512 mb memory and other things. Its a little more pricey than your first link with the mods I made, but its a little better imo.

http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=ca&CS=CADHS1&l=en&OC=OCINSP6000_FEAT_CH60P12#bottom_anchor

Your first link will be more expensive since for example, you need to buy office. That’s a lot of money right there , although no matter what you get its something you gotta get (or some equivalent thereof). You also want 1 dimm of 512 memory, not 2 (that means 2 chips will occupy your 2 slots, making it a pain in the ass to upgrade). The nearest upgrade to take advantage of the 512mb in 1 slot is really expensive. I have 40 gigs on my laptop, but if you want to use it as your main computer, I’d advise you get more space. That costs 100 bucks more! Really by the time you’re done with this , it costs almost 1500 bucks and nowhere do I see a video card being mentionned.

And also, I want to note that on your future computer, you WILL NOT install Kazaa. I make it a point to tell everyone I know who uses it to not use it because of the virus and spyware problems I keep seeing people have from using it. Find another safer source of music.

As for mobility, if you wanna be anywhere with your laptop, comfortably, you need a wireless router and internal wireless card in your laptop. All you do is plug the modem to the router and your computer will recognize the signal and offer to connect to it. As for your desktop, if it has no wireless set up, you can connect it directly to a router output instead of connecting it directly to the modem. About your dial up worries: don’t worry. Wireless internet is just as fast as having your cable from your high speed modem directly connected to your computer. You won’t have much fun moving around with too many cables, though it is doable. The wirelessness really shines when you go to different places and not just locations in your house, and you can connect to an open network (at school or friends’ for example).

And as I said earlier about macs being pricey, as shown by the edited link I posted a the top of this post, any good laptop you’ll get WILL be pricey.

For your purposes, a mac would do. The problem is getting some pieces of software you want on it, mainly what comes to mind is Photoshop. The rest should be fine.

Laptops are so expensive and touchy, you just want to be careful with your purchase, you want to make sure you’ll get something good that will last. Its not like a desktop you can just walk into Best Buy/Future Shop and get for the price of the windows copy that’s installed on it. If you look at what I said about those 2 links you posted, you’re definetly in the same price range as an iBook if not almost the low end of the higher end mac laptops. That’s why I made that addendum that said “yeah macs are pricey, but so’s anything else worth buying”. If you want to try a mac, I guarantee it’ll be weird since Macs’d be worthelss if they were the same as PCs. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Those issues would be better addressed discussing with a mac rep or owner and if anything, I’ve yet to see a Mac owner talk shit about Macs. And I do think you’d be eligible for the student iPod discount. You’d have to talk to Apple for the details apparently its open to everyone in at least North America from some browsing I did. Also , you get a slight discount from Apple being a student, so you might save 100 bucks on the laptop (so it’d cost closer to 1300 than 1400 - not sure what’s up with your word processing though , you’d have to talk to em about that).

Finally, I’m sorry to say, I doubt you’ll make much money off your desktop and as I said earlier, I’d keep it to be safe. Its nice to know that if one computer goes to shit, you aren’t in the hole.

Would you want one stick even when it’s dual channel?
If you plan to get an iBook, you’ll want to wait a little bit. They’re supposed to release some new models pretty soon.

I would reccomend this. It’s both durable and powerful and relatively cheap. It’s also an Acer. Dell doesn’t make PCs, they make Dells ( meaning they use proprietary hardware and not standard. )

Wow Nulani, that’s a good laptop o_O. It ends up fitting in the price range we’ve been discussing which is the 13-1500 CAN.

I just want to make 1 note; since they’re in the UK she’ll have to pay Canadian customs when it arrives, that’ll be pricey (100 bucks or more).

Acer Canada.