whats a good laptop?

[rferoni]

I'm thinking of getting a laptop. I have never owned one. It would be used
for mostly school work, (i.e...microsoft word, works) May decide in the
future to hook up to internet only for email and browsing internet for
research purposes. I would probably want wireless hookup for
internet.....I know I don't need anything overkill, but I also want it to
last a long time. Things like battery life and such for laptops I know
NOTHING about. Can anyone shoot me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Ron

 

[JAD]

Huge question of the decade...so many....the new centrino based are very nice....This is where a trip to gateway or Compaq just to
see what features are what..... I almost gag on these next few words but c o mpa q makes a couple nice ones..

 

[BigJIm]

Well, Dell, Gateway, IBM, Toshiba, all have what you need. The prices vary
but if you want wireless add 100.00 or so to the base price. You don't need
a separate video card but it will speed the system up, that's more money.
If your going to run xp then 512 meg of ram is the ticket. Now go shopping
and have fun.

 

[Wooducoodu]

http://www.pro-star.com/
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.html

 

[William W. Plummer]

Battery life and weight are important if you travel a lot, but get a base
station and large monitor for your desk. Reliability is the most important
to me. I suggest you get comments from sysadmins in large companies that
provide employees with PCs. Our guy will tell you that the new ones from
Dell are full-featured and have a large screen but are very heavy and 4 out
of 10 had to be returned in the first week. I toted around an IBM T23 for
years and even dropped it a few times and it always worked and I know they
were very good at sending repair parts -- next day FedEx, based only on your
phone call. However, IBMs are not pure PCs and you can't just run old DOS
6.22 utilities (FDISK, FORMAT, etc) directly. Nobody seemed to like the old
Toshibas that we had before that. In particular the one I had would not
boot after it had cooled down in the trunk of a car, and sometimes I had to
rap it to get it going. --Bill

 

[D. Rogers]

I've had Compaq, Toshiba, and Dell and the Dell is my laptop of choice.
I've had 4 of them and never a complaint. My wife is using an old CPi 266
that is still running on the original battery for 5 years now and the screen
still looks like new. I use a Latitude C610 that runs 24/7 and has not
locked up once in 1-1/2 years.

The thing I like best about the Dell is the way power management works with
Windows. I just close the lid and stick the laptop in my case and carry it
to the next job. Then my laptop is ready to use just by simply flipping the
lid open and I start working right away. It works every time. Toshiba
was never that reliable and always locked up. Compaqs were ok, but mine was
too heavy and had a poor screen. YMMV.

 

[Peter Harrington]

I have 2 Gateway Solo's that have 256 MB and 1 GHz. I amhappy with Gateway,
eventhough at the beginning of a presentation,
I had one of the laptops die on me. It was the first 30 days and they
replaced it for me.

I also have a Compaq Presario that I bought cheap. This system kept locking
up due to overheating. After a google search, I found out, the BIOS had a
bug in it. I flashed the BIOS with a newer version and the problem
disappeared.

It is always useful to check out the service policy and warranties on
laptops. Also, some searches may reveal common problems with specific
brands and models.

Good luck,

Pete