Laptop purchase advice
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Laptop purchase advice
I was wondering what kind of laptop people use for their amusement and keeping in contact with home while away down route. Any thoughts or ideas? For instance, I've been looking at a 15.6" Dell Studio, but it weighs in at over 2.5kgs.
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Assuming you use gmail or similar and your life is in general web-based, then the cheapest netbook you can find. Check the keyboard works for you: much more important than screen size, battery life etc.
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Bought my lad a Samsung N110 netbook for A level work which is a great piece of kit - still comes in at No 3 in the PC Advisor chart at around £250 and weighs in at 1.3kgs with a batt life of 595 mins! - and that is borne out by my lad's experience.
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I bought a MSI U-100 netbook. A mistake. It works well enough ---
BUT, the touch-pad "mouse" simulates a left click if you momentarily lift your finger and put it back on the pad again. I often do this went moving the cursor long distances on the screen. You never know what you will have unintentionally selected. I'm adapting, but WHY? MSI says that there is no way to disable this feature. Of course one can use an external mouse, but the whole idea of a netbook is small and portable without extra bits and pieces.
Apparently one can download a touchpad driver from somewhere, but MSI used two different touchpads so I don't dare.
The U-100 has two disk partitions, as is common. The operating system "restore" is partition "C:" and the user's partition is "D:", exactly opposite to any other machine I have seen.
Why did they have to be so "creative"?
BUT, the touch-pad "mouse" simulates a left click if you momentarily lift your finger and put it back on the pad again. I often do this went moving the cursor long distances on the screen. You never know what you will have unintentionally selected. I'm adapting, but WHY? MSI says that there is no way to disable this feature. Of course one can use an external mouse, but the whole idea of a netbook is small and portable without extra bits and pieces.
Apparently one can download a touchpad driver from somewhere, but MSI used two different touchpads so I don't dare.
The U-100 has two disk partitions, as is common. The operating system "restore" is partition "C:" and the user's partition is "D:", exactly opposite to any other machine I have seen.
Why did they have to be so "creative"?
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I bought an Acer Aspire one in Walmart. $270 and more than adequate for e-mails and occasional web surfing. (came installed with XP instead of Vista which was an added bonus.
Add a 6 cell battery for £34 and it gives 6 1/2 hours use on the internet and e-mailing.
Add a 6 cell battery for £34 and it gives 6 1/2 hours use on the internet and e-mailing.
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I've had IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads for something approaching 20 years. The early ones were bought by the august employer, but lately I've had to buy my own.
This one's a T43, with a titanium case that means even I can't break it. It's been excellent: came with Win XP Pro, been upgraded to Win 7, and I've fitted more memory in it (it has 1GB now).
It's light in weight, very reliable, and will do all those clever things one expects of a laptop.
The great plus is that it was absurdly cheap - I bought it "used", about six months old. I prefer to buy last year's wizzo model at a low price rather than pay serious money for something that's a few months more recent.
This one's a T43, with a titanium case that means even I can't break it. It's been excellent: came with Win XP Pro, been upgraded to Win 7, and I've fitted more memory in it (it has 1GB now).
It's light in weight, very reliable, and will do all those clever things one expects of a laptop.
The great plus is that it was absurdly cheap - I bought it "used", about six months old. I prefer to buy last year's wizzo model at a low price rather than pay serious money for something that's a few months more recent.
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After buying a Toshiba Satellite L300, I am more than satisfied with it. With laptops, you need to balance features against weight. Figure out what's important to you in a laptop. Some people want large screens, others want computing power, others want all the fruit. I settled on 15.4" screen as a good useful size compromise - and I like computing speed, so I run 2.0GB dual core CPU. The L300 is borderline on weight at 2.7kg, but lighter means less features, and more likely, a chassis that fractures if abused. 2.7kg is O.K., as long as you don't have to lug it for extended periods and distances. Toshiba support is good.
I recently purchased a Sager NP8690. It is slightly out of the ordinary and although I know Harry was looking for something more lightweight, some may be interested.
This laptop has Core I7 XMExtreme processor with nVidia GeForce GTX 280M 1,024MB graphics card. 6,144MB DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory and a 500Gb 7200rpm hard drive.
It does fly and at 3.3kg I don't have any trouble carrying it!
The screen is beautiful - 15.6” FHD 16:9 LED Backlit Wide screen (1920x1080) Super Clear Glare Type Screen/HDMI with Blu-ray combo drive.
Info is just in case anyone has been/is looking for something not available off the shelf.
This laptop has Core I7 XMExtreme processor with nVidia GeForce GTX 280M 1,024MB graphics card. 6,144MB DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory and a 500Gb 7200rpm hard drive.
It does fly and at 3.3kg I don't have any trouble carrying it!
The screen is beautiful - 15.6” FHD 16:9 LED Backlit Wide screen (1920x1080) Super Clear Glare Type Screen/HDMI with Blu-ray combo drive.
Info is just in case anyone has been/is looking for something not available off the shelf.
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Thank you for the replies so far. 
I had considered a netbook but I'm not sure about a netbook's ability to run stuff such as CBT packages without making you go cross eyed. I will checkout the Samsung though.
Possible good suggestion too about last year's model.
Aside from weight the ability to use a full keyboard with numeric keypad goes against the Dell studio 15.6.
Any other thoughts welcome.
HS
I had considered a netbook but I'm not sure about a netbook's ability to run stuff such as CBT packages without making you go cross eyed. I will checkout the Samsung though.
Possible good suggestion too about last year's model.
Aside from weight the ability to use a full keyboard with numeric keypad goes against the Dell studio 15.6.
Any other thoughts welcome.
HS
