computer question

[aemsee]

I'm in the need to get a laptop. New job has me on the road several days a month, and company supplied laptop has restricted internet (ie. DaimlerChrysler company sites only). All the hotels I'll be at have wireless. I just need something to do the internet thing, e-mail, pay some bills etc.

Looking for suggestions (with reasons) pro and con on what to look for. Don't mind sticking with XP for operating system either as both home computers have that. Will also need to go wireless at home I suppose. Thanks

[Eagle]

The local Wal-Marts around here are selling a couple of models of Toshiba. I haven't bought a new one for awhile but I have always had good luck with Toshibas and lousy luck with Dells. I just had a visit from a Greek friend who is an IT guy -- his new notebook was a Toshiba that looked suspiciously like the ones I saw in Wal-Mart. He said the only difference was hard drive capacity (his was the next increment larger).

[aemsee]

I have heard mostly good things about Toshiba as well. I have had very poor experiences with Dell, especialy customer service. I will look at the local Wally world to see what they have. I'm kinda hoping that Vista will be a big seller so places with XP models willl dump them :D . Thanks

[Mitch]

honestly if you are going to buy a laptop, I would buy one with vista on it.

 

The hardware will be up-to-date and your OS will be supported probably longer than the laptop's life expectancy. (critical updates and what-not.)

 

I am a vista beta tester and I really do like it as an operating system.

 

Good luck with your purchase!

[87manche]

acer, best bang for the buck, American tech support.

[Kenosha Warrior]

acer, best bang for the buck, American tech support.

 

seconded, get one with XP. PLEASE!

 

Ive got a vista laptop at home and its going back to Future Shop. Pisspoor waste of $2200 (its a toshiba, nice laptop but Vista ruined it.)

 

Get one with XP, its now quite stable, SP2 has its bugs worked out and its a good OS still. Wait for the Vista pileup. Trust me. Wait.

[jared]

both my parents have toshiba laptops, i like the one my dad has its smaller and a lot lighter than my moms which has the huge screen and stuff, it drains the battery in about 2 hours.

[skimore11]

Most top of the line laptops will be crippled by Vista. Do not put Vista on a budget computer. I am not a Windows hater I have been looking at laptops and am in the computer industry.

[87manche]

vista WILL be good, but right now I'd go XP.

There's a frightening lack of drivers for peripherals, and most software needs to be upgraded/patched to work properly.

I can honestly say that about %50 of the software we've loaded onto Vista doesn't work.

quickbooks

most antivirus/anti spyware software

I'd give Vista another 6 months until the marketplace catches up, then it will be just fine.

[CEThomas]

Watch walmart.com. My daughter just got a new Toshiba 2 weeks ago off wall-mart.com has XP but Vista ready less then a Dell with 2x the RAM and hard drive and came with a bag and all. I like it better then my Dell and cost her under $700 shipped.

 

Charles

[87manche]

don't forget that anything coming with XP will come with a reduced price upgrade voucher to vista.

[speed_racer]

ACER.

 

I got an ACER with XP , 2 GB ram (expandable to 4 gb), 1.66 GhZ Duo Proc, 120 GB HD, opted for the 14.1" screen, for $999... amazing machine... blows every new highly built desktop Ive used away, speed for speed.

 

Caught it on sale from circuit city, 2 weeks later, black friday, it was 799...

[DirtyComanche]

Hmm... For what you want I'd suggest the laptop I use... It's a hitachi, circa 1993-4~. We used it to test windows 95, then 98 (then 98+) on systems that had very little power to see how efficent the microsoft OSs were at resource management. The short answer is that they suck. Did I ever mention I hate microsoft?

 

 

Anyways, it's only got a 166MHz proc, 128MB of RAM, a 1.1GB hard drive, a 12.5" display and those rockin' transistorized speakers. And it is PCMICA capable (and it actually works, along with the USB 1.1 ports). But, no problems after however many years of use it has on it now. Best of all you could get one for as little as well, free. And tech support is great! Only because there's nothing to go wrong with it... Unfortunatly, win98 no longer has security updates (that I know of) - but it doesn't seem to matter since it is no longer a mainstream product.

 

 

And yeah, it is still used to surf the net/email/etc as that's all it is good for. It doesn't really like the highly complicated flash/java $#!&, but I don't like that either.

 

 

 

But, that's how I look at computers after seeing the money that can easily be wasted on them. And wasting the money on them.

[87manche]

I'm with you, my everyday machine is a duron 800 with 256 MB of ram and windows XP stripped to the bone.

[aemsee]

To me computers are tools, much like a vacuum cleaner. I'm not a gamer etc, so I just want one that will cause me the least amount of grief and do what it is supposed to do. I'm comfortable with XP and hopefully will find one on the cheap.

[aemsee]

Well, I went totally the other direction and got a loaded MacBook. I had never even looked at a Mac before today. Now just have to wait until it arrives.