Laptops

[Joe Ross]

I'm going to follow up a lot on what Ryan said.

You left off the most important specs when evaluating laptops: weight, battery life and warranty.

Plan on getting a warranty for as long as you plan to keep the laptop, since you can't fix anything that breaks yourself. Get the manufacturers warranty, not an extended warranty from best buy, circuit city, etc.

I'm pretty sure #1 and #2 have the ultra reflective screen, based on the names. I haven't liked it when I've seen it, but others I know have.

Don't plan on running 64bit windows on the athlon64 laptops unless it comes preloaded. Very likely the driver support won't be available. It's hard enough to upgrade the OS on a normal laptop, let alone going to a completely new architecture.

[GateRunner]

Speaking as one who owns a DV1000 series with the brightview screen, that really does make a difference. Ive sat with my dad and compared the screens between mine and his slightly older HP model.
Everything else has been said :-p

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

Plan on getting a warranty for as long as you plan to keep the laptop, since you can't fix anything that breaks yourself. Get the manufacturers warranty, not an extended warranty from best buy, circuit city, etc.

Not long after I typed that, I broke the power connector on my thinkpad. That's one of the few things I probably could fix, but it's nice to know it's going to be taken care of.

[Cory]

Joe is right. The first two are going to have the glossy coating on the screen. It makes an incredible difference in image quality, and in viewing angles. Everything appears much more vividly.

Those are all going to have pretty bad battery life. I'd be surprised if you got more than 1.5-2 hours. By comparison, I have a laptop with a 2.0 ghz Dothan processor, 7200 RPM hd, and a much more power hungry graphics card, and I can get up to 5 hours with a few tricks.

The 4200 RPM hard drives are incredibly slow. Get at least a 5400 if you can.

None of your graphics cards are very good. They aren't even at the same level as many of the graphics cards before PCI-E came out. It doesn't sound like that's a big problem though.

[Ashley Weed]

I currently have an HP zd7000 17" widescreen, and it was the best decision I have ever made. As for the choices, like what has been said, between #1 and #3 - the BrightView will win out by far. The screen is amazing, if you are using it for any CAD or drawing at all (or even image or graphic design) the detail is unbelievable. All I can describe it as is looking through a jolly rancher. As for the power connectors on HP, they have been known to be weak, but that all depends on the user, and also it could happen to any brand of laptop since it is an integrated piece of plastic. Solutions - if you aren't a business person who carries the computer day after day, and the laptop will sit in a given location for any length of time - HP has a nice expansion base available that gives you ports that aren't on the laptop, and with one connection, everything is on.

Ohh, and on a side note.... I really enjoy the Harman/Kardon speakers on HP.

[Conor Ryan]

Ok, Funny thing here. I'm also in the market for Laptops and i'm looking at if not the same but similar ones. My choice is the HP zv6000 for several reasons:
-Cheapest
-Fastest RAM (the sony is slower)
-Most Up to date Video Card
-All the Reviews I have read really like it
-A person in my Architecture class has it already, and I got to use it, its an amazing laptop everything about it is pretty good. She said her average battery life is around 3 hours, and she can get 3.5 if she turns the Brightness on the display down.

Mike, have you also considered buying a cheaper laptop and then add more RAM in yourself? It may work out to save you a few bucks, plus you can probably find a 80 gig 7200 rpm HDD which will signifigantly increase your performance.

Also I went on to the HP/Compaq site to compare the laptops, the R4000 and the ZV6000 are exactly the same if you don't count the case they are in. I heard something online that I find to possibly be true, HP is the Flagship line and the Compaq is the "Budget" line. But from my research they are exactly the same.

[Mike]

Thanks for the help guys.

As far as the DVD drive, I'd like to keep that. I would hate (in the event I have to reformat) to have to make backups on 10 CDR's, I'd much rather use DVD's. Plus, I'll probably watch some movies on it too. It's more convenience than priority, so I'll look into getting just a CD-RW drive and a faster HDD.

Battery life isn't too much of a concern for me, most of the work i'm going to be doing on it will be at school, home, or competitions. 2 hours is more than enough battery life for me.

Weight is also a minimal issue for me, I won't be traveling much with it... it's mostly a desktop replacement.

Originally, I was questioning how good a 4200 RPM would be... but on some sites I found they were saying 4200 RPM is normal for laptops to keep down heat/noise. I'll look into a 5400 RPM.

Thanks again for the help guys


EDIT: Starting to lean towards the Pavilion, from your guys requests. I toned down the DVD drive, and upped the HDD. Here's what I came out with:
Pavilion ZV6000
Processor: AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3200+ (2.0GHz/512KB L2 Cache)
Screen: 15.4" WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x800)
Graphics Card: 128MB ATI RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M
RAM: 1.0GB DDR SDRAM
HDD: 80 GB 5400 RPM
Optical Drive: DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
Price: $1,253
HP has a 1 year parts/labor warranty on their Pavilions.

[MrToast]

If there's any way you can get an extended warranty for it, GET IT!

There are two things in life you should absolutely without question buy extended warranties for: cars and laptops.

My iBook doesn't have an extended warranty, and I greatly regret not having one.

I can't stress enough how useful they are.

Dave

[Ashley Weed]

Originally Posted by MrToast

If there's any way you can get an extended warranty for it, GET IT!

There are two things in life you should absolutely without question buy extended warranties for: cars and laptops.

My iBook doesn't have an extended warranty, and I greatly regret not having one.

I can't stress enough how useful they are.

Dave

Actually, for the price of extended warranties, they just aren't worth it and the hassle and what they cover. I have mine covered under my homeowners insurance. So, if ANYTHING EVER happens to it, as long as I am paying insurance on it, I get the full purchase price back - no questions asked. This includes things like theft, spills, me getting angry and throwing it, or running over it with my Jeep.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Ashley Weed

Actually, for the price of extended warranties, they just aren't worth it and the hassle and what they cover. I have mine covered under my homeowners insurance. So, if ANYTHING EVER happens to it, as long as I am paying insurance on it, I get the full purchase price back - no questions asked. This includes things like theft, spills, me getting angry and throwing it, or running over it with my Jeep.

I'd be very interested in reading the terms of your homeowners policy and riders, as well as knowing how much it costs to insure against intentional damage. Does it cover manufacturers defects as well?

[team222badbrad]

How about a Dell?

I personally have a Inspiron 8600 series, which I got in January.

The 8600 is no longer being produced, but 6000 might be in your price range, depending on how you build it.

I have not had any major problems with it so far, besides some keyboard keys popping off, which I simply popped back on. It's no wonder that all of them are not off from all of this CD forum stuff!

[Conor Ryan]

Originally Posted by team222badbrad

How about a Dell?

I personally have a Inspiron 8600 series, which I got in January.

The 8600 is no longer being produced, but 6000 might be in your price range, depending on how you build it.

I have not had any major problems with it so far, besides some keyboard keys popping off, which I simply popped back on. It's no wonder that all of them are not off from all of this CD forum stuff!

I looked heavily into dell, since my dad gets an discount from work there. But the problems I found with them were, 1. more expensive processor upgrades and 2. hardly any Video power, very few models had dedicated memory for the video and even those that did got pretty expensive

If I had the money I'd look into Toshiba and Fujitsu, they have great notebooks that start around 1200. Also Acer usually has some hidden deals in its notebooks too. Gateway is also a worthy mention too.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by cdr1122334455

plus you can probably find a 80 gig 7200 rpm HDD which will signifigantly increase your performance.

Those 80 gb 7200 drives are ultra expensive. They just started appearing in laptops, and even the 60 gb 7200's are a lot more expensive than their 5400 counterparts.

Originally Posted by Ashley Weed

As for the power connectors on HP, they have been known to be weak, but that all depends on the user

I know this happened to Bill Gold recently, as well.

Dell really rips you off on RAM upgrades. When I was looking at laptops, it was like $800 for 1 gig of ram, vs $200something on the laptop I eventually got.

Dells which are actually meant for multimedia/gaming use have plenty of graphics card options. They're going to have a lot more than any other mainstream brand.

[gobeavs]

Yeah, the upgrade to 5400 RPM will be helpful, that is pretty much now the standard for laptop HDD's. Although it has already been decided...the A64 is the better processor. Even w/o a 64-bit advantage, the on-die memory controller makes it a winner (and it really comes through in games compared to the Pentium 4). The one concern is the vid card - if you are going to do gaming, but for that price I doubt you could get much more.

[Mike]

Just came back from Best Buy and got a good deal on a Pavilion.
- Windows XP Home SP2
- DVD-ROM/CD-RW
- WXGA 15.4" w/ BrightView
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz, 1MB L2 Cache)
- 512MB DDR SDRAM (Single stick)
- 80GB 4200 RPM HDD
- NVIDIA GeForce 440 (64MB Dedicated)
Got it for $1,150...

I don't have that much to spend, so I ended up lowering down the RAM/HDD. When I do get the money, I'll probably end up upgrading those.

PS: Anybody know how to get it so when you tap the touchpad it's the same as clicking the mouse button? Thanks =)