SG Broadband Community

I've been looking at laptops for over a month now and I'm as lost now as I was when I started..
I've tried to narrow the field down and although I don't want to spend this much I'm looking at a Toshiba laptop....

Newegg's version of it..

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834114631

I'll be using it mostly for surfing the net and getting on here and occasionally getting on to second life for the live music events....

Your thoughts as I've been terrible about following tech nowadays..

That laptop there is perfect for those tasks.. Even some mid-range to high gaming could be done.. PERECT CHOICE IMO!!!


MAKE A MOVE!

A couple of points to ponder as I state my opinion on laptops.

Brands, IBM/Lenovo is my first choice. Built like Ford F350 or GMC3500 trucks, meant to last, solid, dependable. The Thinkpad T series I'm talking about.

Dells Latitude series, my second choice. It's their business lineup of laptops.

Acers laptops, their business series.

Business grade models are built with better components than the home grade 1 year warranty at best models.

I'm honestly not too fond of Toshis or Sonys. In my experience across just about all brands of laptops out there over many years, those two are some of the more difficult brands to service if an issue comes up.

Hard drives....seek a model with a 7,200 rpm drive. You'll be glad you did, the performance difference is nice, feels more like a desktop computer performance wise. Ultra portables, and super budget models will come with slower 4,200rpm drives, try to keep away from those.

Seek a model with a 3 year warranty. Starting with business level models almost always guarantees this.

Do you want good portability? If so, consider at 14.1" screen, or 15.1 or maybe at the most a 15.4. Many models now come with a W screen..extra wide. For me, portability is important, so I prefer the 14.1". The W screen models start to get a bit more cumbersome.

The tradeoff with trying to stick with 14.1" screens is having to run at a slightly lower resolution...depending on the model. I run mine (that I'm typing from right now as I enjoy a ferry ride to an island to work at a summer camp) at 1400x1050...IMO that's way more than plenty of res.

Shoot for 2 gigs of RAM....4 gigs is even better...esp with Vista.

How much do you expect to run on batteries? Bigger laptops with huge screens will suck those reservoirs dry real quick. Another perk of a 14" model.

There's generally 3x categories with laptops.

*Ultra Portables....11-12" screens, no optical drive bays, 2-3 lbs
*Mid-sized...14-15" screens, 1x optical drive bay, 4-5 lbs
*Desktop replacement...16-17" screens, at least 1x optical drive bay, 6-9 lbs, good speakers, sort of all the bells 'n whistles of a desktop computer.

Trying to keep on a budget? Seek the Factory Outlets of most brands. Such as the ones at Lenovo or Dell. You can get factory refurbs or off-lease or canceled order laptops for approx 2/3 or less of the retail price, usually still plenty of warranty left on the unit. I've gotten my past several Thinkpads by that route...the one I'm typing on now I got it, it was not used...returned with a lease return, it was nearly 2 thousand dollars brand new, I got it for 680 bucks....a model that was only 9 months old.

Added note....I'm not against AMD CPUs/chipsets, I've run a few on home PCs. But on laptops, I've noticed those tend to have more "issues".
For wireless, give me Intel Centrino or give me nothing!

A few months back.. some people warned me about Toshiba's..

I think the best laptops out there are Dell, Lenovo and Acer.
I would shop around man, and compare specs, to get the best deal.

It's really nice to have a laptop to surf the internet and to remote into your LAN at home.

http://www.techbargains.com

watch this page..watch the deals mostly from Dell

I pulled the trigger on a new Toshiba P305D last month. So far, a solid performer. While I would have preferred better video capability, I can't fault the price.

Specs:

Processor AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60, 2000 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
ATI Radeon X1250
4 Gig Ram
250 GB HD
Windows Vista Home Premium
17" Display

Price: $499

Got it at Wally World.

Currently running Windows 7 RC on it. Runs WoW and LOTRO as well (although due to video capabilities, you have to turn the game down a bit). I'm on the road a LOT, so I needed an affordable notebook that allows me to run all the apps I need to run, as well as a bit of gaming on the side. While it's not a screamer for gaming, for the price, I can't complain.

Don't settle for a 6 cell battery. Dell.com offers upgrades to 9 cells, and HP.com offers upgrades to 12 cells.

You can find deals for both at times from Sava's link.