The boss has put me in charge of finding a laptop to use for off-site backup of some of our programs and program files, and I really don’t know thing one about this (shockingly similar to my MS Word question last week, eh?), so I turn to the Millions for advice. And as long as laptop suggestions are being thrown out, I could use a computer myself, so let’s kill two birds with one stone.
Computer #1 (Work) Requirements:
Windows XP, 800+MHz, 512+MB RAM, 5+GB hard drive, ethernet capabilities.
Supposedly this one will be used only for backing up Intuit’s QuickBooks and PC Synergy’s PostalMate programs, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the boss wants a laptop for herself. She’s given me an upper limit of $2000, which seems considerably higher than necessary.
Computer #2 (Mine) Requirements:
Nothing as specific as the work machine. All I really need is word processing and internet access. I want more than that though: wireless internet; DVD playing and possibly burning capabilities; CD burning capabilities; enough hard drive space that my 10+ GB of music won’t make it impossible to install anything else (speaking of which, decent speakers are useful as well) and enough processor power, RAM and a good enough graphics card that I can run games with decent performance.
I guess I don’t understand why you’d use a laptop for backup (unless you need a platform you can run from if things really go pear shaped at the office?)
It seems like an external hard drive would be a vastly cheaper and possibly more robust solution.
Anyway, you’d have to look pretty hard to find a modern laptop that * wouldn’t * exceed your requirements for machine 1. Pretty much any laptop sold will have a 1+ Ghz Celeron (or equivalent), ethernet and so on. 60-80 Gig hard drives are pretty standard as well. The only thing that you might have to upgrade is the memory, and even then, 512MB is pretty standard. If you’re seriously using this for backup purposes, then I’d opt for one of the lighter versions (say 4-5 lbs as opposed to a desktop equivalent machine that tend to run bigger and heavier). You can go to the Dell laptop page to get an idea of what’s offered – I have no good information on their current quality, but my five year old Inspiron is still working well. (Note, Dell runs various sales on a regular basis, so you can usually get a few dollars off your purchase if you time it right.)
For your second machine – you don’t give a price range and don’t say what games you’ll be playing so it’s hard to give detailed advice. But if you are playing games on in, the video card becomes increasingly important, so pay attention to how much memory it has and read some reviews on the card that’s included in your target machine.
I agree that an external hard drive would work better for some things. I also agree that it is going to be hard to find a new laptop that won’t meet your requirements. Things have gotten drastically mpre powerful since #1 was built.
Take a look at the laptops at Newegg.com and see if anything interests you. Let us know if you want an opinion. Good laptops can be had for less than $800 but if you have more to spend, you can get more. It is hard for me to judge your cost/performance line from your OP.
Sorry about the vagueness in the OP. That’s what I get for trying to work, type and talk to the GF at the same time.
As for why we want a laptop…uhh…the boss said we should. We already have an external HD, so I think she wants to be able to claim that the laptop is a business expense. I was thinking that pretty much any laptop would work for this and was leaning towards Dell, mainly because the rest of the office is already on Dell machines, so why bother changing. Good to see that I was right about that.
As for my machine, lets just use Doom3 as the game-play benchmark, since that’s the most demanding game we’ve got in the house. Price wise, let’s try to keep it under a grand.
Doom 3? less then a grand? Not gonna happen. Not unless you wait for the absolutely KILLER deals Dell has every other month or so, or buy a used gaming laptop. Check fatwallet.com regularly. My friend got a 700m for less then 800.
The important question is, how portable do you need/want it to be? There are ultra-portable laptops in the sub-4lb range, which would be ideal for someone who travels by air often, or commutes by subway and takes the laptop home every day. You’d sacrifice screen size, performance and possibly keyboard size for this portability. On the other hand there are 9-lb monsters with 17-inch screens. These are great if it’s going to sit on your office desk 99% of the time, or only transport it by car.
Portability isn’t an issue at all for the work machine; on my machine, it’s a very minor factor, as I would only be taking it to school a couple of times a week and transporting it via car.
The sub-$1000 limit isn’t completly set in stone, I can afford to go a little higher than that, maybe $1200. Also, if we buy both machines from the same company at the same time, is there any chance of getting a discount of some kind?
And, mods, sorry about putting this in the wrong forum. I really should know these things by now.