Seeking advice on new buy

[Steve]

Hi folks,

Just got back to work after a shoulder injury and I'm gonna be on the road for the forseeable future. I want to bring a computer with me. I'll be staying in various places...motels, friends apartments, campgrounds, etc. and would like to stay online. So I'm looking for advice. I really don't know much about laptops, and I'm starting my research tonight.

I'm not a state of the art kinda guy. Sort of middle of the road. I'm looking for the tried and true. Is there a middle of the road, not state of the art, not soon to be obsolete, laptop that anyone can recommend?

TIA

PS: I'm talkin' middle of the road in price, too. :)

[gwallen4]

Steve,

How can you be a f***ing "Master Geek" and not know the answer to this question? You guys are like the gods of PC's. LOL.

If you are just going to use it to stay online, any old laptop will do. Read the want ads in your paper, or look on E-bay for a used laptop - probably a 300 MHz or greater with a modem. Also some of the hand-helds would work and be easier to carry, like the HP Jornada. These are also sold used on Ebay.

Probably you can get by for less than $300-500.

[Steve]

How can you be a f***ing "Master Geek" and not know the answer to this question?

Heh heh...ummm...Master Geek is a...well...relative term. :rolleyes: It has something to do with how many questions I've asked, not really a measure of how much I know. :o

I guess you're right. Any laptop with a modem will keep me online, but if I'm gonna spend my money I'd like to have a "good" computer. Seeing that I really DON'T know anything about laptops, (I've never used one, never worked on one) I thought I would ask the advice of those with more experience than myself.

Thanks for the reply though. $300-$500 sounds real good. :)

[jabarnutcase]

Hi Steve-
All "kidding" aside, I don't know if you have ever played around with eBay, but you really can get some very good deals there. I have both bought and sold on eBay and haven't been burned yet. (Yea, I know- I've probably been lucky).
There is a huge selection in many different price ranges. Sometimes you can get a deal by bidding, or just search for the "Buy it now" options to end it quickly. The important thing is to check the sellers "feedback". If it's all "positive" and they have made a lot of transactions, you are usually all set.
I actually still have an old Compaq LTE5400 (only 150mhz) that works amazingly well on the web. Of course, the cable modem helps- But my daughter loves it.:)
Even if you're not into the eBay thing, something I would do is to look up the "Top 10 notebooks" list in an older issue of a magazine like PCWorld, (even a year ago would probably work), pick out a "top rated" model from yesteryear, and go on a search for one from there. You can probably find something in your price range, that not so long ago, was "top rated".
Friends of mine that have them like DELL, Gateway, and Toshiba to name a few.
Even if none of the nonsense I just typed helps, best of luck to you! :D

[Steve]

Hi, ya ole' 'Nutcase...:)

I'm gonna be spendin' the next 8 or so weeks south of the notches. Got some work that I just can't refuse at Loon Mountain, in Lincoln. I love the area. It happens to be one of the highest concentrations of black bears in the country. My kind of area! :eek:

I'm not familiar with e-bay. Never even been to the site. What I was hoping for, was some advice on PARTICULAR laptops. You know..."gee, I've had real good luck with my Toshiba P111 yadie yada da"... "man...stay away from the yadie yaaa." "Such and such a site has a real good deal on such and such a machine."

I know there's some folks out there with some opinions. :rolleyes:

BTW. Up to a grand isn't out of the question. :)

[saphalline]

Originally posted by Steve
I love the area. It happens to be one of the highest concentrations of black bears in the country. My kind of area! :eek:

Is that how you injured your shoulder? Making friends with the bears? Haha. :D

If you want a specific website, try Dell's refurbished systems, like here (http://outlet.us.dell.com/Dispatcher?target=InventoryPage&action=filter&lob=LAT&model_search_and_display=ALL&unique=1027559413050&sessionID=SLE2PUH5CAPRDR23JXFBKEI&tgtSeg=I) and take a look at the models under $1000. Not the greatest (only 24x CD drives), but not too bad (256MB RAM). The deals on Ebay are much better, especially if you shop for a model that has many auctions at once (ie, if there happens to be 40 Toshiba yada yada models on sale this week).

You really can't go too wrong with a Dell, Gateway, or Toshiba laptop, as long as the specs are what you want and the seller is reputable. New laptops under $1000 are rarely worth the money, so a used one is the only way to get a middle-of-the-road model under a grand. I would recommend anything with a Pentium III, Celeron, or Duron processor - 128MB to 256MB RAM - 10GB to 30GB hard drive - integrated modem and/or LAN would be nice - 14.1" LCD screen if you can.

[jabarnutcase]

Yea Steve, kinda figured you were looking for "particulars" after I wrote all that stuff- I'm sure opinions will be along shortly. Still might be fun to check out PCWorld (http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,101772,00.asp) . That link is the newest issue, but they have the "Top 15 list" every month and you can go back quite a ways just to get an idea what's out there and what options are available.

Anyway- Very familiar with Loon (and the bears-:) ) Really nice area!
As you can see, I'm somewhat familiar with NH too. HeHe

PS- No need to reply to this post- I'll just sit back and watch with interest who swears by their ol' trusty laptop. :D

(Edit) Woops- Saphalline snuck that in there just before me- Hi :)

[kenja]

Stay away from IBM Thinkpads that use the ALi chipset, unless you're content to stick with Win98. I forget which model I owned, but I had two motherboards and two DC-to-DC converters replaced after trying to run Win2k on it (this was a common experience).

"Blew" again shortly after warranty expired (while running Sandra CPU Multimedia benchmark). Still works, but is throttled down to half speed if running Win2k, and there is a high-pitched whine. Used a 733MHz Celeron, as I recall.

My dad can't hear the whine and is content with Win98, so I sold it to him for a reasonable price.

Loved the 14.1" TFT LCD, and the ergonomics of the mouse "joystick" (I forget the correct term for it). I never did like touchpads.

If you're planning to run on battery power very much, get a Li-ion model in preference to Ni-Mh.

My two favorite sites for deals: anandtech hot deals forum (http://forums.anandtech.com/categories.cfm?catid=40) and techbargains.com (http://www.techbargains.com) .

[Steve]

OK. I'm startin' to get a feel for this. From my research I'd say, "WOW, these things are expensive!" Thanks Saphalline. I'm startin' to see what you mean. And by the way...

Is that how you injured your shoulder? Making friends with the bears? Haha.

You don't know how close you are!! :eek:

I know that proprietary is a dirty word in desktops, but it seems to be the rule in laptops. Is this OK? Should I expect this? Or am I just not hitting the right sites yet?

Thanks for the heads up kenja, I'll keep that in mind. Although Win 98 is ok with me. I'm really not interested in XP. Something that will handle 98se/w2k is all I need. :)

[kenja]

Re: proprietary
Uh, yeah, you aren't going to be able to buy an empty case and build it like you would a home computer.

One reason I bought the Thinkpad was that the maintenance manual was downloadable, and IBM hosted a user forum that had a lot of good information. It was easy for me to add memory and upgrade the hard drive. Some notebooks have upgradable video boards.

If I were to buy today, I'd lean towards Dell. Recently read about their cases cracking, though. Toshiba seems to have a good reputation for sturdiness. That's just anecdotal scuttlebutt, so I dunno...

For a thousand bucks worth of features, the HP at the top of today's techbargains home page looks tempting.

[Steve]

Dell, Toshiba, maybe HP. OK. Any links greatly appreciated.

Thanks saphalline, that Dell site is the kind of thing I'm looking for. :)

kenja...maybe Dell? Seems to be a consensus?

[jabarnutcase]

OK Steve-
I know I said I would stay out of this after my last post. (Promise- I'm going to bed after this). :)
I think I would go with a DELL if I were to buy one now. And, if you haven't yet, you really owe it to yourself to check out eBay (http://listings.ebay.com/aw/plistings/ending/all/category3713/index.html?ssPageName=CompHubLptpDell) once. It's quite an experience. (As you can see, you'll want to narrow it down a bit, since there are almost 3000 DELL'S alone!)
It's not as scary as it looks, especially if you go with a "Power Seller" with a good reputation and some sort of a gaurantee.

One last thing- The "mouse" on a laptop, be it be a touch pad, track ball, whatever- used to drive me nuts. I always ended up adding a plain ol' familiar external mouse.
Thats it- I'm outta here...and i'll bet your glad! Nite all.
:D

[kenja]

I've been very satisfied buying textbooks from eBay's half.com site.

From personal experience, I can say: DON'T DEAL WITH Ubid.com!

[john5211]

Hi Steve,

If you are uncomfortable with ebay and don't want to pay OEM refurbished costs, you might try looking at a local used computer shop, if you have any around. There are a couple where I live, and it looks like most the laptops they sell are slightly older computers that corporations have gotten rid of.

Anyway, the main thing is that they carry used brand name laptops (IBM, Dell, etc.) but the price is usually better than you would find at the manufactures site. Not as good a price as you can find on ebay, but maybe better piece of mind and (at least the ones I looked at) a warrantee (important for laptops, IMO).

Good Luck,

John

[kenja]

The manufacturing process for LCDs hasn't been perfected. This is an excellent reason for buying in person: inspect for dead/ always on pixels. It's kinda amazing what the industry considers "A grade".

If there is a BestBuy near you, you might look at the 1GHz Duron Presario for $850 after two rebates, plus tax. Bestbuy.com won't be back in stock for a few days, and one of the rebates expires on the 27th.

BestBuy (http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11168046&m=488&cat=494&scat=495)

[Steve]

Thanks for the advice and links folks. I'm well on my way. :)

[kenja]

So, whadya get? :)

Their offerings look to be out of your range, but PowerNotebooks.com (http://www.powernotebooks.com/Name_Brand.php3) has a perfect 10.0 score at resellerratings with 274 votes.

Anyway, the page I linked to made me think of your inquiry about "proprietary".

[Steve]

Hi kenja,

Well, taking into consideration everyones suggestions, I decided to go with a Dell. I've looked around and I've decided on a Dell Latitude CPx.

It has a PIII 650mhz processor, 256mb RAM, 20.0Gb Hard Drive, swappable floppy and cd drives, one USB Port, TouchPad, A/C power adapter, 14.1 inch Active Matrix Display.

The guy wants $700. I can pick it up this weekend. Whadda ya think?
:)

[kenja]

Sounds good to me. I've never owned a Dell notebook, but I've had a warm place in my heart for Dell ever since buying a 200MHz MMX Pentium Dimension in early 1997.

[saphalline]

Looks good to me! Especially the RAM, hard to find 256MB for a decent price. And 650MHz PIII is also nice for a used laptop. Can't really complain anyway since you followed my advice almost exactly! :p :D

[jabarnutcase]

Hey Steve-
It's me the nut again. ( I know, you're thinkin' Oh- Noooo) :)
I think Dell is a great choice. People I know that own em' love em'. Dell also has top notch support if needed.

Sounds like a pretty good deal providing it's in good condition.
I just looked on ebay for similar models... ("There he goes with that darn ebay thing again"), and the going price seems to be in that same range but with much smaller hard drives and less Ram. So, I say...Not bad at all :D
Not to worry though..Someone will be along soon to say..."Well, look at the deal on THIS one"!
Take care and watch out for bears;)

[Steve]

Well alrighty then. I guess it's a deal. :)

It looks to be in good shape. Nice and clean. One scratch on the back cover. The guy is gonna format it before I buy it. It has win98 on it right now. Is there anything to indicate a problem putting w2k on it?

:)

[jabarnutcase]

Seems to me it would run W2k just fine. :)
I think M$ recommends 256MB Ram for W2k, and your processor and hard drive are no problem. Might just want to go to their home page and check to be sure, I've never installed W2k, just used it. :)
Good luck!

[Steve]

Yeah. I think the specs are fine. I was just wondering if there was something about a laptop that might not work. Sounds good. Thanks for all the help, folks. I appreciate it. :)

[kenja]

When I owned my ThinkPad, it was issued with Win98SE. Then Win2k came out, and there were issues with the extra buttons on the keyboard not working, but IBM eventually released Win2k drivers for that and couple other things I don't remember right now. The bundled DVD player software never did work on Win2k, but PowerDVD worked great.

With 256MB and 20GB, I'd say go for Win2k, unless there are driver problems with part of the hardware.

Oh, there were ACPI problems, but I think that was mainly the fault of the ALi chipset.

[Steve]

Well, I'll try w2k first. I've got SP1, 2 + 3 so if there are any problems I'm as up to date as I can get. Some things just don't work with 2k. I have win98se just sitting around if I need to fall back on it. This is my first experience with a laptop. Kind of exciting! :)

[jabarnutcase]

Hey Steve! How do you like your laptop? Did you get it???
(Just checking and being nosey) :D

[Steve]

Hi ya ole' nutcase,

Nope, haven't got it yet. The guy said today would be good but he's not answering the phone or e-mail. Oh well. If I can't find him by tonight, I may just bite the bullet and buy new. :eek: I saw a nice Toshiba on sale at Best Buy today that I could probably convince myself I could afford. I'll see how it goes. :)

[Steve]

Well, I got tired of waiting. Sooo...I headed down to Best Buy to pick up the Toshiba Satellite 2400/2405. It has a 1.6Ghz P4, 30gig HDD, 256MB ram, DVD/CD-RW combo, 14in screen, etc., running XP Home edition. They were out. Had no idea when they would be getting more.

Sooo...I decided to upgrade to the next largest screen size. They were sold out. Sooo...I decided to go with the same model but with a Celeron processor instead. They had one but it was $200 more than the P4 model and had no rebate.

Sooo...I went to Curcuit City. They had the 2400/2405. Same price. Same rebate. So I bought it. :)

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Sheesh! Steve,

After all that hooplah on where to find deals and not being able to afford anything but second hand... What did you go and do?

C,mon over here, a little north and east of jabbarnut. It's bear season and I've got some jelly filled doughnuts you can have. No paper towels though so you'll have to wipe your hands (smear jelly all over yourself) on your shirt. :D All you need to do is hang out with me and we'll get the other shoulder just like the one in the sling... :eek:


But as far as:
Steve,
I may just bite the bullet
I won't wait till he gets that close so we need to worry about that, I promise...

Just kidding, I hope you like your lap, lick, CHOMP! (Oops, thinking doughnuts again...) err, 'Porta PC' and it give you many years of reliability.

Soooo, what happened to the shoulder anyway? How many teethmarks was that???

[jabarnutcase]

HeHE You know, I was just thinking the same thing FTT
I'm not a state of the art kinda guy. Sort of middle of the road. I'm looking for the tried and true. Is there a middle of the road, not state of the art, not soon to be obsolete, laptop that anyone can recommend?
PS: I'm talkin' middle of the road in price, too
Aint it somethin' when you get the fever Steve? :D
Believe me, I know. When I decide I want something bad enough, the same thing usually happens to me to!
Anyway, I think I mentioned at some point...Toshiba's are pretty cool too. They also are generally rated pretty high in the reviews I see around.
Sounds really nice. Enjoy!!! (And try to fight the urge for the jelly doughnuts!):D

[Steve]

After all that hooplah on where to find deals and not being able to afford anything but second hand... What did you go and do?

I know, I know. My patience ran out. What can I say? It was only a few hundred more than my budget, and I'm back on the road tomorrow. So I went ahead and did it.

I guess my timing wasn't so good. Right now I was in competition with thousands of college students getting ready to go back to school. At least that's what everyone keeps telling me.

And Toshiba was recommended.

You really can't go too wrong with a Dell, Gateway, or Toshiba laptop, as long as the specs are what you want and the seller is reputable.

So I didn't stray to far. :)

And it ain't the bears ya gotta worry about. They're alright. It's the HUMANS ya gotta watch out for!

[Steve]

jabernutcase,

Just saw your post. Yup. Once the decision is made, it's hard to stop!
And ya know....just look around at the available laptops and this one is definatly "middle of the road"!

I've spent a few hours trying to get XP to look and act like w2k. Just to make me feel better! :D

[jabarnutcase]

Pretty darn nice "middle of the road" laptop Steve! (Yea, I know what your'e saying, but still pretty cool!)
Now, you'll want to research all the XP "Tweaks and tips". What fun would it be if you didn't try to mess it up???
Again, good luck and have fun! :D
BTW-I have XP and really like it a lot now that I'm familiar with it. I think it's their best OS yet. (Gee, I hate it when I accidently give M$ a compliment) :rolleyes:

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Dang!!!

Just as he was getting close too! :(


:D ;)

[Steve]

What hunt? :confused: Bears or laptops? :p