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I need a laptop for school

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B'z-chan

Banned
Between everyday i'm at college more and more time has me sitting in a line waiting for a damn computer station to use. Its annoying and i've just had it. I recently found out i can get a grant for around $1000 for use on a laptop. Its a perk and i wouldnt want to be using it too early. As i've got 8 more years of college (4year, master/graduate) Thing is i've heard that the grant wont be around come next symester. So i applied and go accepted. But in order to get the money i must purchase a laptop.

What i need: Wireless connectivity, Photoshop capabilities, and more of a personal want is a nice high resolution screen. No crappy 1024x840 please. Also a nice long battery would be nice. I'm looking at 4 hours of use a day or so. I need something light and small. I'm not looking for a laphog.

What i want: A nice audio package, i'm used to 24bit sound out of my pc at home. I would love something just as good if not better. Processing power is negotiable, i need some power but not much. I need more torque if you will. So high speed ram is a necessity, but can be 512. I would love 1gb though. Graphics card, none of that bullshit integrated crap.

I will have around 300bucks to spend immediatly if its around 1300 bucks. but if i can get somekind of one year payment plan or no interest for a 6 months i can pay up too 1800.

Thanks for any help. And yes i'm open to apples as well as oranges.
 

koam

Member
Get an Averatec 3250, it's what i have. It's small, powerful, cheap and i have no problems with it at all.
 

Tarazet

Member
B'z-chan said:
Between everyday i'm at college more and more time has me sitting in a line waiting for a damn computer station to use. Its annoying and i've just had it. I recently found out i can get a grant for around $1000 for use on a laptop. Its a perk and i wouldnt want to be using it too early. As i've got 8 more years of college (4year, master/graduate) Thing is i've heard that the grant wont be around come next symester. So i applied and go accepted. But in order to get the money i must purchase a laptop.

What i need: Wireless connectivity, Photoshop capabilities, and more of a personal want is a nice high resolution screen. No crappy 1024x840 please. Also a nice long battery would be nice. I'm looking at 4 hours of use a day or so. I need something light and small. I'm not looking for a laphog.

What i want: A nice audio package, i'm used to 24bit sound out of my pc at home. I would love something just as good if not better. Processing power is negotiable, i need some power but not much. I need more torque if you will. So high speed ram is a necessity, but can be 512. I would love 1gb though. Graphics card, none of that bullshit integrated crap.

I will have around 300bucks to spend immediatly if its around 1300 bucks. but if i can get somekind of one year payment plan or no interest for a 6 months i can pay up too 1800.

Thanks for any help. And yes i'm open to apples as well as oranges.

For battery life, go for an Intel Centrino or Pentium M powered machine. Those are more efficient than anything with a Pentium IV, for example.

Anything with a 15-inch screen or bigger should be able to run bigger than 1024 x 840, at the expense of weight, of course. Any laptop of this size will weigh 8 pounds or more with a battery good enough to run for 4 hours. My advice would be to accept a slightly higher weight to get what you want, although you may feel differently.

To give you some idea of what a typical compromise is, I have a laptop that weighs 5 pounds. It's an Asus S5200N. It has a 12-inch screen which runs in 1024 x 768, 256K slimline RAM (upgradeable), and a 9-hour battery life with a lithium-ion battery. There is no internal CD-ROM drive; it's external and connects through a USB port. Total cost: about $1700.

It's going to be hard to find a laptop for you that fits your needs for less than about $2000, but I'll do some fishing around for you...
 

B'z-chan

Banned
Matlock said:
Question: what is this grant?

Its for federal employee's i dont think its a grant but you have to apply for it. Go through a process and be accepted. Its not from the union either. It has in it a loophole that allows for this. You have to be a dependent and taking at least 16 units and keep a 3.2 GPA. I would scan the papers and what not. But its blasted with all my person info.

Plus Matlock its only for black people =P jk jk jk no seriously they give 20-30 of these grants out a year. I'm just glad i was able to fake the system to get accepted.

But back on topic i need to get this laptop within the month. And its driving me nuts, cause i dont know who makes good laptops anymore.

EDIT: i should also add that i really do need to have a DVD-Rom drive on it. CD-RW is not really needed. And please none of those two part Laptops that you can like have a "base" where the CD drives are. I dont need floppy at all. Just the DVD-Rom.

I guess light and weight are a problem. I dont mind something with a little meat. I'm carrying around 45 pounds of books each day, so another 10 is no problem. Especially if i can get rid of two books just by getting a laptop.
 

Tortfeasor

Member
New powerbook models are going to be announced any day, perhaps as early as Saturday although speculation is that they will be announced on Tuesday. While powerbooks are expensive, the older (current) models will be reduced in price and should fit under your budget.
 

B'z-chan

Banned
Tortfeasor said:
New powerbook models are going to be announced any day, perhaps as early as Saturday although speculation is that they will be announced on Tuesday. While powerbooks are expensive, the older (current) models will be reduced in price and should fit under your budget.

I've never had a mac. I've always been under the impression that they had low res screens. Mind explaining to me what the difference are hardware wise? Cause i just sow a powerbook g4 for 2200 that i can get 800 bucks off of the 17inch. Which is in my budget. I'm guessing its the one up on apple.com for 2700 bucks. But i would have to wait 5-8 weeks for delivery.

Anyone know anything about the ACER ferrari edition? I saw one up on ebay for 1grand or so and it looked pretty smoking.

Sonarrat: Thanks for the links. I'm gonna look into those. They are right up my alley. A little low on the res side. But other than that they have more than i was looking for.
 
B'z-chan said:
I've never had a mac. I've always been under the impression that they had low res screens.

Apple are known for their extremely high quality, crisp screens; that's why they're the platform of choice for most design industries..
 

marko

Member
I would throw a vote in for the IBM thinkpad T series, no laptop discussion can be complete with out at least contemplating purchasing one. IMHO, best mixture of performance/portability out there. But it does come at a price.

Best possibility I see out there is this one (listed below). My guess is if you can get in on an the IBM employee discount program, you could probably get it $300 cheaper. I know $1700 is a lot, but that is a quality laptop.

And you are right, I think you do want one with greater than 1024x768 resolution. The one I have now has that as max, and when I see someone elses laptop that has higher, it is frustrating.


ThinkPad T42 (IBM Think Express Program)
2379DXU

IBM Web Price
$1,999.00*
In stock**
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
512 MB
60 GB
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 735 1.70GHz
15.0"
1400x1050
64MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600
5.4-5.4
UltraNav
Ultrabay Slim
CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo
None
Three years parts and labor (system battery: one year)
Integrated Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
56K V.92 designed modem
Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG, Bluetooth
IBM Embedded Security Subsystem 2.0
 
12" Powerbook

endofthread.gif
 

fart

Savant
the t series (and the x series of course) is indeed great; better than anything mentioned so far (except for the powerbooks, debatably), but if you can, you should wait a few months to see what the former ibm pc business settles into. also, you're not going to get a t42 for any thousand bucks.
 
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