I want to purchase a laptop. It will be a PC, but other than that I don’t really care where it’s from. I’ll do some price comparisons once I figure out what I need, but I don’t know what I need yet. I would like to purchase only as much performance as I will notice. This is not going to be for super3Dfragfesting; I have a box in my bedroom for that.
I will use the laptop at work and at home for the following:
[ul]
[li]Lots of journal reading. I will often have a bunch of fairly large PDFs open. I will become aggitated if switching pages/windows/programs is slow.[/li][li]Powerpoint presentations, both making them and presenting them. The files for these can be big. I will also have other programs open while constructing the presentations.[/li][li]Various chemistry-related activities, such as Chemdraw, Scifinder, etc. I don’t think any of these need to be on real powerhouse machines.[/li][li]The occasional DVD watching. This might be nice for the long plane/train trip. (Is this a battery issue?)[/li][li]Instant messaging/email/word processing/etc.[/li][/ul]
The biggest unknown for me is what sort of processor and how much memory I need. I see Intel Celeron M and Pentium M chips (I haven’t seen any mainstreem laptops w/AMD chips yet) of various speeds, but I don’t know how much increased price will correlate to noticeable performance. I’m not sure how much RAM I’ll want either. I’m assuming I can fill that in from other sources if it’s cheaper.
I see different wireless cards (802.11x). Will the extra $15 give me fast internet in many places yet?
Other than that, the plan is:
Small screen
Windows XP Professional (I’m assuming I need this)
40GB hard drive
DVD drive (not a writer)
1-2year warranty
That’s all I can think of. Is there anything else I should consider?
Damn the hamseters to the deepest depths of rodent hell for eating my first attempt at this post!
Do you need long battery life and light weight? That will narrow your choices.
My laptop, for example, is heavy and has a short battery life. It’s fast, widescreen, with a DVD drive, plenty of memory, and a 60 gb hard drive. I bought it to use in the house in various rooms, not to use out of the house, so the weight and battery weren’t important.
I’m not sure what a “long batter life” entails. I’ve never owned a laptop before. I think that I’ll usually be able to plug it in somewhere. The only times when I wouldn’t are these possible DVD-watching trips, which I can survive without.
I don’t think that weight is a huge issue either. I’ll mostly just take it back and forth from work, which is not a long walk.
A low end notebook for around $ 600 or so will do everyting you need. Look for Toshibas, HPs or Compaqs on sale @ Circuit City & Best Buy for best deal after rebates.
You don’t need much laptop for the requirements you listed. That is just basic laptop specs and $800 or less should do it but I would advise seeing and holding it in person before you buy one. You probably don’t need Windows XP Pro. XP Home should be fine and save you $100 or so. A wirless 802.11b or g card is well worth it. There are hundreds of thousands of private and public hotspots nationwide with more around the world. You can buy a wireless router for $60 or so that lets you set up your own hotspot at home or work. Very, very handy.
jrfranchi, price is irrelevant. What will I get for added price? That is what is important. I need a minimum performance to get the job done. I’m willing to spend up to $3000, but if I can get what I need (and I don’t know what I need, hence this post) for $800, then the extra goodies I get with the extra $2200 probably have less value than if spent the money on other things, saved, or invested.
Shagnasty, I’m not exactly clear on what the difference is between the two XPs. I will need to VPN into University networks occasionally. I may also set up some sort of home network between this and my other computers. Can I do this with Home?
It looks like I can go with a pretty low-end model. Any thoughts on memory? This will govern how much crap I can have open, right? I’m assuming I can just get the cheapest processor available.
How can I determine how long a battery will last? I looked at a few sites and they listed things like “#-cell [chemical] battery, #WHr”, but they didn’t list any life estimates.
Windows XP Home is a slightly disabled version of XP that most people use on their home computers. Windows XP Pro has some additional features that appeal to corporate users and costs about $100 more. Unfortunately, establishing a VPN is much easier to do under Windows XP Pro so you will probably want Pro in your case. Just FYI, Windows XP home looks and feels almost exactly like Pro and you can do things like networking and VPN’s through XP Home too if you really insist. MS makes it just hard enough that companies usually pony up for the 2x cost version (Pro).
Get at least 512mb of RAM. That is the best upgrade you can do. If you see a good deal on 1 gb of memory that is good too but not all that necessary.
I would recommend strongly the wireless G, I would also recommend getting a process over 2 Gigahertz. I would say 512MB is the minimum Ram, should be plenty. VPN should work fine on XP Home, though I personnally prefer Pro.
What Office software do you want with it?
Based on what you described, I swear that you don’t need a $3000 laptop or even close to it. Even if price isn’t a big issue, you should still be looking in the sub-$1300 range and that is being generous. You described plain vanilla laptop. The only additional expenses would be for XP Pro and maybe a little extra for 512mb RAM. I would suggest that you get some type of optical writer even though you said you didn’t want it. CD-R/RW +DVD ROM drives (writes CD’s, plays DVD’s) are extremely useful and almost standard. You definitely want an 802.11x card too although many laptops have that built in as well.
There are tons of laptops in that price-range available with those features.
I’d go with more than 512MB of RAM. It’s usually a cheap upgrade but it can really boost performance with a small hit to battery life. I recently added a 256MB to my 512MB and it just feels so much more responsive.
No one has mentioned screen resolution yet. I think this is fairly important because it’s one of the harder and more expensive upgrades should you choose to want it in the future. Unfortunately it’s harder to get a better resolution with the smaller screened laptops. Usually there is a small upgrade and I’d recommend it. You can fit very little on a 1024 screen.
Final suggestion: widescreen laptop. Even if you don’t plan on watching alot of movies the form factor is nicer in my opinion. It allows for a longer keyboard which will more closely resemble a full sized keyboard. I hate when the Home and End keys are in some weird locations. Also, I find a thinner and longer laptop to be more space saving than a squarer one.
I have an HP laptop and I am really pleased with it. I spent about 2000 dollars for it about 2 years ago and it definitely has lost some value but it’s still a great laptop. The build quality is pretty amazing and I haven’t had any problems with it. Last summer in Costa Rica I dropped steaming hot coffee all over it and it shorted it out. I had no tools to take it apart in Costa Rica so I let the coffee stay inside, but it worked the next day. When I got home I found a service manual, took it apart piece by piece and cleaned it all out. I even changed the CPU fan just in case and it feels like a brand new machine again. My experiences with Dell are the opposite. I don’t own one but the rest of the world seems to like them and they seem really flimsy and cheaply made. I’ve also heard many horror stories of hard drives and motherboards going dead, but I’m sure that’s the case for most manufacturers.
What if I want to hook up a monitor to my laptop while I’m at work? 2 screens can be nice. Does that require any extra hardware (other than a monitor)?
I’ll address that other replies in a bit. Thanks again to everyone.
You need either a VGA out port or Svideo out port. VGA is very standard. I have yet to see a laptop without one. I think most, if not all, of the time they can output to a higher resolution than the actual laptop screen can handle.
Svideo ports are becoming more rare in the smaller laptops. With the Intel Integrated graphics common in the smaller laptops I think it depends on the version of the card. I believe there is a Pentium and Celeron version of the graphics card. The price difference is usually something like 50 dollars and I believe the Pentium version has the Svideo out. I don’t know if there are any other benefits to it, and you don’t necessarily need a Pentium CPU in order to upgrade to the Pentium graphics.
If you end up getting a laptop with a third party graphics card like ATI or Nvidia, I’m pretty sure they will all have Svideo (as well as the VGA of course). Also, they are many times better than the integrated graphics and have their own memory so they do not suck up your system memory (another reason to get more memory if you choose the Intel integrated). Unfortunately they use up more power and might even add more weight.
Even the least expensive notebooks usually have VGA video out to connect to external PC monitors, and some more advanced models also have S video out for use with TV sets & projectors for multimedia presentations. If the main issue for you is reading you need to visit the store and see if the text size and clarity of a specific size screen is acceptable for you as you will staring at them for hours.
People who are reading intensive and not going to be shuttling the unit back and forth constantly (you’d be surprised how often notebooks get plunked down on desktops and never move again) often go with the newer 17 inch wide screens for maximum viewing size and flexibility. I have a 14 inch, a 15 inch, and a 17 inch and each has their strengths and weaknesses visually.
You might want to look into a tablet instead of a laptop. Do you take a lot of handwritten notes? Tablet’s are getting very good at handwriting recognition and very useful for formula’s.
You mentioned you read a lot of pdf files. Do you need to annote these files and share them with others? In a tablet, you can print pdf files to the Journal program. In Journal, you can then make notes, highlights, underlines, etc and then share it with other people, print, and/or save.
Do you get a lot of ppt presentations, and would find it useful to take notes on the ppt? Again a tablet might fit the bill.
Unless you will use some of the tablet functionality a lot, then go for a regular laptop. But if you would use tablet specific functionality, then I would definately check one out to see if it fits your work style.
I’ll think about the Home vs Pro issue for a bit. Can you do that Virtual Desktop thing with Home? I saw a site that said no when I was digging around last night.
2 GHz is only available on the very high-end machines. I think I’ll skip that.
I can get Office very cheap. I forget the version, but it has what I need.
Good . That’s what I’d hoped, but I wasn’t sure.
It looks like I ought to hike out to a store to actually see some models. I don’t think I want a tablet. If the paper is important enough I’ll just print it out.
I can’t think of any more questions. Thanks all for your replies.
If you are going to be interfacing with a network at work I’d make sure you get XP Pro onboard (or you can order it separately if needed). Many NT server based networks require XP Pro on any attached workstrations for security reasons and will not work with XP home. Your IT person should be able to confirm the requirements.
Best Buy is having a pretty good deal on an HP laptop–regular price $999, sale price $699 with rebate. It’s an HP Celeron 370 with 512 MB memory, 1.5 GHz processor, XP Home, and an 80-gig hard drive. Not a smokin’ machine, but for the price it’s not a bad deal. I bought one today–mostly I wanted a newer laptop that would let me deal with Word files and other light-duty computing. If you think you might be interested, though, check fast–they only had a couple left at the second BB I went to, and the first one was all out of them. I think the sale ends 1/7.
I’m looking at Intel® Celeron® M Processor 360 (1.40 GHz/1MB Cache/400MHz FSB) vs Intel® Pentium® M Processor 740 (1.73GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB), which is +$150. Do you all think I’ll see much difference in performance for what I’ll be doing on this laptop?
. That’s what I’d hoped, but I wasn’t sure.