What laptop to buy?

[Godgrave]

Yes I'll be scouting around for one VERY soon. What make to buy which is reasonably good with wifi n lots of RAM n space n dvd writer ... I'm sitting on my pals DELL which cost him 800 ... my colleague got a 900 buck SONY VA10 on sale price.... I'm confused. Help!

[Sledgstone]

Dell's official website has been having some good deals lately, most with free shipping too. You could always check a best buy or circuit city store. Both will probably be having after christmas and new years sales.

[Godgrave]

Is 1GB internal memory+wifi+80GB hard-drive+video card+15inch screen good enough for 800-850 bucks off DELL ?

[Eppy]

yes that is good for a laptop that would be mainly used for net and watching videos and such

[Godgrave]

Oh and it'll come with that Intel Duo Processor thingie, not AMD. Eppy, what's better than the deal I just posted? What's the next good thing I'm missing out on? I'm buying a laptop for good. I saw an HP deal for 850 odd bucks which came with a free printer n digital HP camera, good or HP isn't reliable? Apple's just going to be too expy, and the VA10 too. Know of any website I could check?

[Eppy]

i have had my HP pavillion fo rmaybe 3 years now...they are a solid company...but the Dell is a good deal cause intel is beating out AMD these days in performance...but also with the HP is the good deal of the printer and digi cam...its all your choice...jsut htink what would you want more :-p

[Sledgstone]

My recommendation is to buy the local Sunday paper. Sunday papers come with a huge ads section which shows all the week long sales at pretty much every store. Also, check for some online specials, like Dell and some other direct stores.. compaq, hp, etc. Dell had an intel 1.60ghz, 1gb ram, 60gb hard drive, wifi, dvd/cd r/w, 15.4 inch for $500 during the day after thanksgiving specials. Keep checking around until you see something on sale for a good amount ($100 or more off).

btw, heres an example of bestbuy's current sales for this week. these expire on saturday because the new specials start on sundays.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=category&id=pcmcat28700050014

[Godgrave]

I was on this website yesterday too, and some items have gone 'Sold Out' in just 1 day! But yeah, Lady too was telling me about checking out the Sunday newspaper to look for better discounts, and that's some good advice - will check out next weeks sales. By then I'll have time to encash 3-4 travellers checks to back my newly opened checkers account a bit.

[Sledgstone]

oh shit! look at this deal:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8177297&type=product&id=1162594467103

$200 off! its a gateway with a 15.4 inch screen, Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2050, wifi, 120gb hard drive, 1gb ram, dvd r/w / cd r/w drive for $650. because its an online special it also comes with a free usb 2.0 hub and free shipping. O_O That looks like a pretty damn good deal to me. You should look up some reviews for this one and think about getting it. Also, if bestbuy is having one on sale like this, check their competitors too! O_O they're probably having good sales this week because of christmas right around the corner.

[Godgrave]

That's an awesome find! A Sony VA10 for the same specifics went out for 700 bucks, but it's sold out. Is Gateway a sound brand though? I've never heard of it to be honest, good after sales service? This model, does it have a Dvd writer with it and the ports that maybe an external hard-drive cna be used for, like the ones you have?

[Sledgstone]

Gateway is a pretty solid company, I never heard any bad press about them and they even used to have multiple stores open all over the country until they decided to just sell their products in electronics stores/online/over phone only. They always used to ship their computers in boxes with a cow pattern. O_o

yep, it comes with a DVD and CD writer 2 in 1 drive:

Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support records up to 8.5GB of data or 4 hours of video using compatible DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL mediayep, it comes with USB ports for an external harddrive:

IEEE 1394 (FireWire) interface and 4 high-speed USB 2.0 ports for fast digital video, audio and data transferI don't know anything about their support because I've never owned one of their systems. but they have a website with reviews about them. they're probably only the good reviews seeing as it is their own website of course. :p

http://www.gateway.com/about/news_info/awards.asp

if you do end up ordering this one thru bestbuy, don't forget to click their little links for freebies and follow the directions to get the free usb thing and shipping.


(Edit)

I dunno if its just for the free shipping, but this deal might be a two day only sale. O_o; Sunday-Monday.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=category&id=pcmcat28700050014

[Godgrave]

Gateway is basically a brand that started off when Dell started off. Like Dell which doesn't have any retail outlets and just the internet to order/buy from, I'm guessing Gateway works the same way. However Dell is the more powerful brand I'm guessing ... ?

Check this out - http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/cto_inspn_e1505?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

I'm thinking about either the plan to the extreme left or the middle one. I figure spending that extra 2-300 bucks for something I'm going to look at, use, come to adore for everyday of my life better be in that one piece sexy plunging neckline of a dress, rather than an ordinary black U neck short dress with stilletoes (still hot, but ....) ^_^

EDIT: Why I'm strongly considering that Dell offer is because I can get away with paying the fee monthly. Eeeeeee and ofcourse the first year is interest free! So I'll try and wind up payment within a year, am I falling into a trap?!!! X'D Goddarn!!! Wish I could just pick up the phone and call you up hahaha ... it's late and you might be snoozing *pokes his stomach and hears him mumble something in his sleep*

[Sledgstone]

Financing is a good selling point. ^_^ I suggest you check Dell's website next week or even the week after for a really good deal. Many stores will have a christmas eve, christmas day, or day after christmas sale. I'd suggest checking all the different websites your interested in buying from on all three of those days for possible day only sales. Also, new years sales the following week are also popular.

[DeathscytheX]

do NOT get a gateway... trust me. They are complete crap. There customer service is so good because their stuff continually breaks. I've known 3 different people that had gateway laptops and they all were just a real POS.

Stick with Dell or customize your own at ibuypower.com and that way it wont come loaded with all the BS shareware and other promotional crap. I bought my PC from there and its the best one I've ever owned. I also have a Dell laptop that has lived its life (its about 5 years old), and its still going strong.

[Sledgstone]

do NOT get a gateway... trust me. They are complete crap. There customer service is so good because their stuff continually breaks. I've known 3 different people that had gateway laptops and they all were just a real POS.

Stick with Dell or customize your own at ibuypower.com and that way it wont come loaded with all the BS shareware and other promotional crap. I bought my PC from there and its the best one I've ever owned. I also have a Dell laptop that has lived its life (its about 5 years old), and its still going strong.

ah, good advice. After hearing that, I'm leaning more towards Dell alright.
*goes to check out ibuypower* ^_^

[Eppy]

well DX is jsut say from some people's POV's...i owned a gateway at one point for almost...7 years...never once had a problem with it...never one crash and never even reformatted it...and all teh parts were original cept for extra ram and an additional HD...the only reason it can be called crap is cause morons that dont knwo how to use a computer owns them :-p

[Godgrave]

Ibuypower is really really cool, but equally expensive as the coolness factor rises >_> ... man, I'd love to have Sesshomaru or Vegeta be on the body work for sure!

[DeathscytheX]

well DX is jsut say from some people's POV's...i owned a gateway at one point for almost...7 years...never once had a problem with it...never one crash and never even reformatted it...and all teh parts were original cept for extra ram and an additional HD...the only reason it can be called crap is cause morons that dont knwo how to use a computer owns them :-p

I dunno, what did you use it for? All three of these people are engineers or programmers and used their laptop pretty heavily. I guess its just one of those things, like when people say a game console's live is only about 3-5 years before it breaks, yet I have owned all of mine for far longer than that and they still work perfectly.

Godgrave: Yeah i know... you can get carried away with added all the cool stuff you really dont need. X'D Their PCs are more price friendly than their laptops, but I just thought I would suggest it.

[Sledgstone]

Looks like dell is having a financing sale through tomorrow, pay in full within 12 months and have no financing charges.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/cto_inspn_1501?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

[Godgrave]

The problem with that is that I don't qualify to get under that scheme and nobody at work is helpful enough to vouch for it, and I pay them instead, ya know that sorta stuff. My SSN card hasn't come through yet, without which I cannot get myself a Credit Card and it all boils down to those two thingies <IMG class=inlineimg title=">_!!

But I made my own setup for the laptop on Dell (INSPIRON 6400), and it's close to 1300 bucks, somewhat similar to this (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8001404&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat103700050014&id=1155072369385) but only with 2GB built in memory and some nittiebitties.

[Sledgstone]

Nice. :tup: If it has a 120gb+ hard drive with it then you could easily have enough space for a couple season torrent downloads going at once. you probably wouldn't even need an external hard drive to go with it either. and with that much memory you could play some good games and run programs like photoshop easily.

[Godgrave]

Okay, this's what I've chosen as far as specifications are concerned from Dell's website and what's good is that I get the leverage of paying 50-60 bucks per month, on an amount which's interest free, so yeah that helps. Let me see what final price they get back with considering I'll be using our office's corporate 'Small Business' account.
And Chris, I'm not too good at leaving voice mail X'D.

[Godgrave]

Sorry for the double post ^_^

UPDATE -> Okay booked and ordered! It's expensive >_< but it's now got decent specs ...

Inspiron 6400, Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7200 (4MB/2.00GHz/667MHz)
15.4 Inch TrueLife Wide-screenWXGA,
2GB, DDR2, 533MHz 2 Dimm
256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 HyperMemory
100GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Home Service Pack 2, English
Dell Owners Manual installed on your system
Windows Media Player 10
Dell Support
Dell Direct Download
Internet Search and Portal
Backup media for XP Home
Integrated 10/100 Network Cardand Modem
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0
8X DVD+/-RW Drive
Sonic Digital Media, v7.0, My DVD
SoundBlaster Advanced Audio for XPS M1710
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11b/g Mini Card (54Mbps)
Norton Internet Security 2006 90 Day Trial,OEM
Yahoo Music Jukebox 2.0, Basic1 Month,Trial
85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
AOL BSD/SMB, Earthlink , AOL Offers
Corel Snapfire Plus Starter Edition
MS Worksuite 2006
1 Year Economy Warranty Plan
Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Home Basic, $45 plus S and H payable at redemption
Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module (2.0 + EDR)
Media Direct 3.0
Sonic Digital Media Deluxe v7.0/MyDVD Deluxe v6.11
Purchase is NOT intended for resell https://img.dell.com/images/global/general/spacer.gif... all this for 1500$ inclusive of taxes, and I get a 2 month interest free credit, thank god X'D. I'm scared in a way because this's the most expensive thing I've ever purchased, alone *sniff*

[Sledgstone]

Thats one helluva nice laptop! :D:tup:

[Godgrave]

Thankies Sledge :happy: ... I'm glad you didn't charge me a phone-call consulting fee X'D

[Eppy]

bah its not like you are calling from another country anymore :-P

[Godgrave]

I know ^_^ ... Eppy, come kidnap me please hahaha X'D

Is it true that a person can tap into another person's wireless account? How could I secure mine, solely for my use? Does multiple tapping reduce bandwidth/speed? That last question's really dumb, but someone has to take the heat and ask that X'D

[Sledgstone]

Whenever you log on to a wireless network connection make sure you use a secure connection that requires a wireless network key (a 20+ alphanumeric number that the wireless router uses to encrypt your connection). If you jump on any random hotspot connection, like a mcdonalds or some other random hotspot near an office, etc., assume that anything you do through your browser or any other program that makes a connection to the internet is completely viewable to someone with the right programs.

If you have a wireless router at your place soley for your own internet connection, then you'll have to reference your wireless router's instruction manual about setting up security. Usually you have to login to your router and click a couple tabs to enable the security key. Then you have to type in that security key into your laptop's wireless connection panel and you're done.

If you do not have a secure wireless router, than anyone can see your wireless network as a hotspot and jump on and start browsing the internet, sucking up your bandwidth and that would slow down your overall connection. Btw, if you plan on downloading torrents with your laptop, take the blue network cable and plug your laptop directly into your router for the fastest possible connection. Wireless connections run usually around 54 mbps at max, but if you directly connect to the router you'll get about 100 mbps which will make your torrent downloads about twice as fast.

[Godgrave]

Wow, that's exactly what I needed to know, on the same lines. Because right now the laptop I'm sitting on, my roomies', well he's connected to our neighbors router thingie and well, the service isn't bad (but it is free at this moment), but then again it could be better/faster. I didn't buy a router when I picked up the laptop, shucks >_> ... what service provider's got good deals? I think my roomie has ComCast as his television service provider.

[Eppy]

comcast is the best cause its cable...dsl is teh suck :p and they arent that expensive if you eventually get your own service i guess

[Godgrave]

Thanks for the recco! I'll only have to wait a while cos my Social Security will take another 2 weeks or so, then I apply for a Credit Card, and THEN I'll apply for it independantly cos being a new customer I've heard I'll get good/better deals than existing customers. Right now though, lemmi ask my roomie if he wants to split the fare ... ofcourse, I hope he has a router :p

[Godgrave]

BUMP.

So I waited a week from getting it just because I've never worked on a laptop before and was just ... scared to be honest :happy:. Seeing the many cds that came in the box I felt intimidated that I'd have to install stuff on it, thank god everything was pre-installed!

Question - I have no partitions to the hard-disk, it's just one C drive with 78 usable GB space. I've never been comfy working on just one drive, how do you guys do it? Any recommendations?

[Sledgstone]

just don't mess with the windows or program files folders and you'll be fine. :p One partition works out ok and you'll be able to utilize the full size of your harddrive. You could always make a folder in your c drive and organize everything in it like it was another drive. btw, did you get the larger capacity battery? We didn't think much about it, but Lady's laptop battery runs out pretty fast. If we'd have known it would run down so quick we'd have bought the larger battery. I think we'll pick another one up someday. Maybe our batteries' plus store has a good one cheaper than dell. *shrugs*

oh, and go through and uninstall all their trial software they installed. It'll clear up more hard drive space. Stuff like snapfire, their microsoft office trial (unless you actually bought office thru them, its probably a trial version on your laptop, you should double check.) Theres other software too, just browse around and look at what they put on there. Also, I recommend you uninstall the mcaffee anti-virus/firewall combo they put on there and install the free antivirus avast, google it to find it, it works better, more efficient and takes up much less memory/harddrive space. oh, and install zone alarm for a fire wall. And don't forget your spamware, download and install adaware and spybot. and you should probably uninstall their games package that uses 'wildtangent', adaware constantly states that wildtangent is spyware. also, most of those games in that package are also trials.

[Godgrave]

Lady, get your Saturn fixed and come kidnap me with my laptop, I'm freaking out here with all these weird programs on my computer, pre-installed ... dunno what to do!Like right now every 5 minutes there's a pop-up saying Windows Security downloaded some new updates and your computer will re-start, I keep clicking 'Not now' ... I think this's their automatic update feature. Easy way out would be to meet Eppy or you and clear up my system ^_^

Good advice on the drive-part. Uhmmm I actually don't know if I chose the best capacity for the battery ... it says "85 Whr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery" on my invoice. Good/bad? Ohhh I'm going to get Avant for sure, right now I've always unclicked on the Norton installation whenever my computer starts.

Also, I feel the laptop getting hot after a while, what's a solution? Should I put a fan or something nearby X'D just a thought.