Who can school me on laptop computers???

[TRNDRVR]

Mainly wanting to know about the different processors and the wireless options. I posted in the wanted section I was looking for a used laptop, but now I'm looking at new. Mostly at the Dell stuff. Does anyboby have the knowledge to help me out? Does anybody here sell laptops?

Thanks,
Dan.
801-389-4398

 

[NoTrax]

Mainly wanting to know about the different processors and the wireless options. I posted in the wanted section I was looking for a used laptop, but now I'm looking at new. Mostly at the Dell stuff. Does anyboby have the knowledge to help me out? Does anybody here sell laptops?

Thanks,
Dan.
801-389-4398

Depends on what you want to do with it, most laptops come with a wireless card installed. But, normaly those cards are limited in range.

You *have* to get at least 512 ram, I would reccomend at least 1024.

I am an athlon processor guy, but i dont know about the new mobile processors for them, the old ones used to get realy onery about power consumption and heat.

I would ask you one question, whats your budget? Give me a accurate figure you are looking to spend and I will do what I can to help you out on that.
BTW Im Mattvw65's brother, I met you at his house awhile back for soe parts you had him take to moab

 

[JoeT]

HP's make for great shotgun bait. I've had 3 HP laptops at work go down: Hard drive, motherboard and a screen on a 6 month old unit.

 

[way2nosty]

It really depends on what you really want do you want a show stopping workohorse, or do you want a nice light portable wireless machine,

I highly recommend the Centrino, The single most performance enhansing upgrade to a machine is update, next is disk spindle speed, but the latter you trade reliability and power consumption for speed, so it is better to be conservative there. The Centrino is the most power conservative Processor there is on the marked bar none, the AMD 64s are cool and fast, but they are power hogs and we're really not *AT* 64 yet, in another year 64 will be the rage but it really is waiting for acceptance,

I really recommend the Toshiba line the M1 and M2 are runing machines and their tablets are the best in the industry, if you want something lighter check out the Sony VAIOs, there is a new one out that is less then 3 pounds 4 hr battery life 1.7 centrino(with the higher bus will run like ~2.8 plenty fast) 1 GB of memory and 100 GB disk DVD burner wireless nic IEE1394 USB2... all the bells and whistles. for ~1600 retail I played with it today, and it was SWEEEET.

check out this post, it's got some good content.
http://www.rockymountainextreme.com/showthread.php?t=28121

 

[waynehartwig]

I'll tell you the same thing I told Shawn when he was looking....

I do on site service for Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, etc. Everything, laptops, servers, desktops, plasma TV's, printers, etc..

In a nut shell, I feel the best made laptop is IBM. However, their customer service and support is the worst in the business. Toshiba makes a good one, too...Unsure on their service and support (mine never broke). HP, Compaq, Gateway all have junk and their service and support is almost as bad as IBM's. Dell makes a great laptop, low cost and, in my opinion, has the best service and support in the industry. If something breaks, you call them and the next morning someone is at your house replacing the part. You can't beat that. Dell offers a service contract called complete care (I think) that is a no questions asked service plan. Basically if you spill a coke in your laptop and fry it, I'm there the next day replacing it. If you drive over it in your truck, I'm there the next day replacing it. If you simply don't like the scratches on the screen or case or the lettering on the keyboard is worn, I'm there the next day replacing it.

This is literal to.. I got a call from a guy that forgot his laptop on top of his Suburban. When he pulled out to go to work, he saw it fall on the ground. Rather than stopping, getting out and picking it up, he drove back into the garage - all the while running it over. He called Dell that morning and the next morning I was out with several boxes to fix it. When I arrived on site, he had it hooked up to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse and was using it. I literally replaced everything on his computer except screws and hard drive. No questions asked, nothing for him to sign and at absolutely no charge.

The Intel Pentium M processors are sweet! A 2GHz P4-M will benchmark at the same speed as a 3GHz P4! The newer processors (Centrino and Pentium M) are also load sensitive. Meaning that when your computer is doing easy stuff, like surfing the web, the speed on the processor is at 600 Mhz. Doing so keeps the heat down and uses less battery. Since the heat is down, the heatsink will take the heat out of the processor without ever turning the fan on, which increases battery life even more. But when you are doing something more intensive, the processor will automatically kick into high gear and operate at full speed. Then after you are done, it will throttle back down to 600 Mhz.

Wireless... Dell has pretty much used the same wireless card for the past 4? years or so. They are made by Intel. They've gotten better with the antennaes. Used to be they had one or two and it was in the base of the computer. Range was fairly limited to the same side of the house. Now they have the antennaes up in the top of the screen, making their range much much better.

 

[waynehartwig]

It really depends on what you really want do you want a show stopping workohorse, or do you want a nice light portable wireless machine,

I highly recommend the Centrino, The single most performance enhansing upgrade to a machine is update, next is disk spindle speed, but the latter you trade reliability and power consumption for speed, so it is better to be conservative there. The Centrino is the most power conservative Processor there is on the marked bar none, the AMD 64s are cool and fast, but they are power hogs and we're really not *AT* 64 yet, in another year 64 will be the rage but it really is waiting for acceptance,

I really recommend the Toshiba line the M1 and M2 are runing machines and their tablets are the best in the industry, if you want something lighter check out the Sony VAIOs, there is a new one out that is less then 3 pounds 4 hr battery life 1.7 centrino(with the higher bus will run like ~2.8 plenty fast) 1 GB of memory and 100 GB disk DVD burner wireless nic IEE1394 USB2... all the bells and whistles. for ~1600 retail I played with it today, and it was SWEEEET.

check out this post, it's got some good content.
http://www.rockymountainextreme.com/showthread.php?t=28121

Sony makes a great box and their service and support used to be really good. Now it's so so and their boxes are still one of the most expensive on the market.

HDD spindle speed is irrelivant for the most part. A 5400 RPM drive is just as fast as a 7200 RPM, but A LOT cheaper. IDE can only move so much data... The amount of cache will pay off more than rotational speed will.

Centrino or Mobile processor, you'll be happy with both.

 

[TRNDRVR]

Here's what I want to do. My job is changing at work and I'm going to start going to Grand Junction. I will be there for 30+ hours when I'm there. All I want is a nice laptop that I can surf the web, and watch an occasional DVD. Don't need to burn any CD/DVDs, don't need lots of storage, just need wireless capability and DVD capability.

Do I need a Pentium processor, or will a Celeron work? What about the AMD stuff? Sempron? Turion 64?

Like I said, wireless internet and DVD.

Also, the stuff I was looking at at Dell was between 499.00 - 699.00 + shipping and handling.

Thanks,
Dan.

<edit> PS Battery life is not important. It will only be used when plugged in.

 

[waynehartwig]

The Latitude X1 sounds like a perfect laptop for you... Wireless and bluetooth is built in, you can get any hard drive you want, as much memory as you'll need, a fast enough processor to play DVD's, surf the web and do basic computing. It's very light, long battery life, etc..etc...

Check out Dell's refurbished boxes, too. They come with all the warranty as a brand new box, but at a smaller cost. They have been refurbished well enough that you can't even tell it was previously owned. Only problem with them is they aren't customizeable. What you see is what you get.

 

[TRNDRVR]

The Latitude X1 sounds like a perfect laptop for you... Wireless and bluetooth is built in, you can get any hard drive you want, as much memory as you'll need, a fast enough processor to play DVD's, surf the web and do basic computing. It's very light, long battery life, etc..etc...

Check out Dell's refurbished boxes, too. They come with all the warranty as a brand new box, but at a smaller cost. They have been refurbished well enough that you can't even tell it was previously owned. Only problem with them is they aren't customizeable. What you see is what you get.

You sound knowledgeable on Dell's stuff. I was looking at the Dell B130 with the Pentium M and 512 upgrade. ??? That'd run me about 699.00 + S/H

 

[way2nosty]

Sony makes a great box and their service and support used to be really good. Now it's so so and their boxes are still one of the most expensive on the market.

HDD spindle speed is irrelivant for the most part. A 5400 RPM drive is just as fast as a 7200 RPM, but A LOT cheaper. IDE can only move so much data... The amount of cache will pay off more than rotational speed will.

Centrino or Mobile processor, you'll be happy with both.

Well that depends on How fast the bus is, if you have a 2.5" ff SATA drive, at 1.5 Gb/s then the spindle speed is important, It has been my experience that memory and disk speed are the most important parts of a system.

 

[way2nosty]

You sound knowledgeable on Dell's stuff. I was looking at the Dell B130 with the Pentium M and 512 upgrade. ??? That'd run me about 699.00 + S/H

I'de do the Gig upgrade, it's worth the 100.00

For the record I agree that Sony's are over priced, but they make a tight little machine, as far as Dells go, they are the same thing as an ACER, they are both stamped by Texas Instruments. I don't care much for the plastics but if you;re going to be gentle on it, it'll probabbly be fine.

 

[TRNDRVR]

as far as Dells go, they are the same thing as an ACER, they are both stamped by Texas Instruments.

Really?

 

[way2nosty]

Really?

Really, go to Sams club and look at the Machines on Display, they look exactly like the plastics on the d505 or d550 machines. TI makes half of the Toshiba and Panisonic Boards too.

 

[waynehartwig]

You sound knowledgeable on Dell's stuff. I was looking at the Dell B130 with the Pentium M and 512 upgrade. ??? That'd run me about 699.00 + S/H

Most of the systems I work on are Dell. I had 17 service calls today just in Utah county, all Dell except for one Gateway. I can do a motherboard swap on any Dell laptop in the same amount of time it would take someone to replace one in a desktop PC. That also includes testing. I'm very familiar with them.

That looks like a good box for what you want. The 15.4" screen is really nice for DVD's, too!

The memory you can probably get cheaper at www.crucial.com than by buying the upgrade through Dell. But it looks like it's only $100 more to go to 1 gig from 256. I'd do that if it was me. RAM can make or break computer performance. Especially on laptops.

I would also get XP Pro with it, and not the Home edition. XP Pro and Centrino/Mobile processors work very well together. It enables some of the features in the processor that Home won't. Saving you precious battery life. It also offers more security with your wireless devices.

If you have a way to purchase it through BYU, I would look into that. I believe they include the complete care service agreement in the cost (free basically) and discount the cost of the laptop. There are probably literally 30,000+ Dell computers on the BYU campus, between students, school and faculty. In other words, they have a lot of buying power. Plus the CEO? of Dell is a BYU graduate.

 

[waynehartwig]

Well that depends on How fast the bus is, if you have a 2.5" ff SATA drive, at 1.5 Gb/s then the spindle speed is important, It has been my experience that memory and disk speed are the most important parts of a system.

Name one laptop that has SATA drives? I've never seen it.... Desktops and servers are completely different where, yes, spindle speed is very important.

What is the fastest bus speed you have seen on a laptop? 400? maybe 533 mhz now? At those speeds 4200 is plenty and 5400 is over kill. Again, the amount of RAM and cache are much more important.

 

[waynehartwig]

I'de do the Gig upgrade, it's worth the 100.00

For the record I agree that Sony's are over priced, but they make a tight little machine, as far as Dells go, they are the same thing as an ACER, they are both stamped by Texas Instruments. I don't care much for the plastics but if you;re going to be gentle on it, it'll probabbly be fine.

Dell's aren't made by Texas Instruments. If this was a funny poke, sorry, I didn't get it. Dell's major components are made by Intel, ATI, NVIDIA, Samsung, Hitachi, IBM, Sharp, etc. Big names in the computer industry....

I will admit their plastics aren't the best... The newer ones are getting more solid with the same amount of plastic. More strategically placed screws and braces. But it's a trade off... IBM's are VERY solid. But take a comparibly equiped Dell and put it next to an IBM. The Dell will weigh a lot less. Besides, plastics are cheap. Even if you buy them out of warranty.

 

[waynehartwig]

Really, go to Sams club and look at the Machines on Display, they look exactly like the plastics on the d505 or d550 machines. TI makes half of the Toshiba and Panisonic Boards too.

Just because the plastic looks alike, doesn't mean the internals are.

 

[way2nosty]

back to the point disk speed is more important then cache. one laptop that has a SATA disk -MINE- http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c...famoid=-26374&coid=-30275&seg=HHO&poid=307765

I bet you do a lot of C-800 and C-810 Motherboards and Fans. and the New D Series come apart pretty slick.

Ever fixed a Toshiba Satellite P85 --- my last laptop there must have been 400 screws - looked like a HP.

 

[way2nosty]

Just because the plastic looks alike, doesn't mean the internals are.

I realize that, but for the Lay-person, it demonstrates the point. I've been in the IT industry for a long time, there are only 3 laptop vendors TI-SONY-HP, thats it. next time you look at a Dell MB look at the TSOP between the nic and the Video Card - You'll find it there. The TSOP will be labled with TI - true they make a ton of chips, but this one is special

 

[waynehartwig]

Just for the record, if you buy a Dell, I don't get a cent. I could honestly care less which computer you do buy. But from someone in the industry, working on the leaders and having to deal with their corporate BS, Dell is by far the best to work with.