So, I’m in the market for a laptop in the next few months, basically something to use while traveling and while away from my dorm (where I have a very nice 2.4GHz quad-core system running XPSP2)
I only have a few requirements:
Price: Preferably below $500 or as close to it as reasonably possible
OS: Not Windows Vista. Beyond this, I’m pretty flexible
Multimedia: I want to be able to use it to watch movies, though these could be on something external like an iPod if necessary. Also, I’d like to be able to do some basic photo-editing stuff with a digital camera.
Battery: Preferably, it should never ever die, if possible, but I’d probably plug it in whenever possible anyways.
I’ve noticed the eeePCs, and they sound like they might fit the bill nicely, though I’m wondering how much laptop I could get for $500 for a more conventional machine (would all the laptops in this range pretty much exclusively be Vista now? I don’t mind working in Linux for the purposes I’d use this for).
i’m typing this on my ASUS pceee. It’s a phenomenal machine. I’m running linux and despite my being an idiot, it’s not a barrier in most situations. I would still wait for the next gen machine. I hear that there will be a 10 inch display model arriving shortly. Certainly consider waiting for the 1GB memory version.
The problems I have with it are the fucking right shift key which is half sized and is preceded by the up arrow key. The other problem is a lot of websites are not designed for the screen size. Google Maps is offscreen and very annoying. Netflix instant play movies only run under Internet Explorer which doesn’t appear to be supported by linux. The screen is small, and many movies appear to be larger than the available screen area.
It is however, a solid state unbelievably light machine that can be easily carried around in a daypack. It boots in about 20 seconds. If you can tolerate its shortcomings, I recommend it highly. You can run GIMP for basic Photoshop type applications.
120GB hard drive, 1GB Ram, Windows XP (just say NO to Vista…) and 15.4" widescreen LCD display.
I absolutely love it. My wife, who paid over $800 for her Acer 17" last year, has been sneaking time on my Vostro. It’s seriously a good machine.
Only regret: I should have sprung for the large battery. The standard battery will give you about 45 minutes - while the large battery, according to a friend, gives 5-6 hours of use.
The Vostro is the new business class machine from Dell. Very nicely engineered and put together.
Hmm… any chance of it going off the market in the near future? I need to pay off some of my credit card in the short term, but I’d rather not looe the option entirely if I wait too long (the timeline is to buy this laptop some time in late April or early May to make sure I have it before July 4)
I just bought a Dell Vostro 1500, and like it very much. It’s from Dell’s small business line and the nice thing about it is that it comes with very little crapware that Dell puts on their consumer line. Actually, the only crapware that came on mine was Google Desktop but that was easy to uninstall. There are also some Dell system tool programs on it, but they are unobtrusive. I didn’t get the Dell PC Tuneup option, that seemed unnecessary to me.
Of course, the best thing about the small business line it that they are available with XP (that’s what mine has). As for how long XP will be available, I’d be worried that Dell would not be allowed to sell machines with it when Microsoft stops selling XP. Isn’t that coming soon?
BTW, mine has the Core 2 Duo 1.4 GHz processor, 2GB RAM, and 250 GB hard drive. $590. You may want a faster processor, the 1.4 is fine but I don’t edit photos. The trade off seems to be weight. I have not weighed mine, but it’s no lightweight.
Whenever I go through the “Customize your laptop” thing, I always end up with a $710 pricetag, the only particular things I can think of splurging on are a 9 cell battery and some extra RAM, starting from a $400 price tag. I should probably pay more attention to what I’m clicking on.
EDIT: Oh, it’s probably the fact that I keep clicking on “XP Pro”. I guess if I want a cheap laptop, I should do without.
OK, avoiding the XP Pro upgrade, the price gets kicked down to about $550 for me, not bad. And it looks like I’ll have some time (until June) before I’d be stuck with Vista, so I can pay for some other stuff first in the mean time.
Any idea if the Vostro is compatible with Ubuntu Linux?
A quick google implies that Ubuntu is indeed compatible with the Dell Vostro line. I bought a Vostro 1000 running Windows XP Home for my cousin and it seemed like a fine machine. I’ve always preferred Dells and will probably get another one to replace my recently fried Inspiron notebook. I bought this eeePC so that I’d have a notebook, but I really need a Windows machine for application compatibility. I will be buying a Dell of some kind.
Good to know about the June deadline; I’d rather run with XP Pro.
Cool, I should be ordering this laptop well before the June deadline (how long does Dell normally take to ship laptops?) since I want it before I go on vacation in July, but if for some inconceivable reason I get stuck with Vista, I can always just wipe it and put Ubuntu on it.
I dunno about the particular model you’re looking at, but upgrade (or downgrade) all possible chipsets - eg, graphics and wireless - to Intel, and everything should Just Work. Intel has of late been very good at working with the Open Source community on driver development.
That’s not to say that the Nvidia or Dell-branded stuff won’t work, but you may need to do some tweaking.
Oh, an update, I ended up buying a Toshiba Satelite something-or-other off of one of the guys in my class. His wife got it on some Christmas special, and they realized they weren’t actually using it for anything, so I got it for $300 and a song (the song, incidentally, was the Goldfishes snack commercial jingle, translated into Chinese)
From glancing at their website, it seems to be more a case of marketing than purchasing requirements. They figure that Joe Q Consumer wants the latest gidgets, which means Vista, while Joe Q Businessman wants proven and reliable, which means being able to choose XP. Various other stuff probably gets involved in this, making it all a tad more complicated than I would have liked it to be.
