Help me decide, please!

[kirei_na_me]

Ok, I am planning on purchasing a notebook computer and want some suggestions. I want someone other than my husband to give me advice, for obvious reasons.

Do I want a Celeron processor or a Pentium or an AMD? Which brand do I want?

I really don't know where to begin, so I was hoping that you all could offer some quality advice.

Please?

Oh, and I want to keep it at $1500 or less. I don't need anything fancy.

 

[RockLee]

Well , whatever you do, don't take the celeron ! either the new AMD 64bit proc or Pentium 4 motherboard ones are better
Did u have a brand in mind ? Dell, Toshiba,Acer ?

 

[Apollo]

Well , whatever you do, don't take the celeron ! either the new AMD 64bit proc or Pentium 4 motherboard ones are better
Did u have a brand in mind ? Dell, Toshiba,Acer ?

I agree with Rocklee, I won't pick the celeron....I want pentium.
Personally, I am quite fond of Sony (however, the SONY laptop "vaio" is quite expensive).
My workplace has given me a HP laptop, which is great too.....

Karsten, my "better half", he has a Dell, which works more than OK. Dell is an effective computer, not that expensive, "just-in-time" production system, good service....well, he could go on and on.....

 

[Mal]

I recommend visiting this website:

http://products.consumerguide.com/reviews/category.epub?section=Laptops+and+Notebooks

Pretty good reviews there and a lot of variety. You can also figure out your price range and then view units that are around that spot. As far as moderately priced laptops go I like the Dell Inspirion series alot, pretty decent specifications with a low price.

Honestly, whatever you want to do with the laptop is going to have a lot more bearing on what type you should get than anything else

For instance, I have - 3ghz CPU, 80gb HD, 512mb ram, 128mb video card, internal wireless and dvd-rom/dvd burner. It's a monster, weighs about 9 pounds. Way more than I'd ever need to do stuff like web surf or run MS office applications (I actually compile software on it...)

So like, what do you want to do with it? There are a lot of really nice laptops out there that you can get brand new for under 1000 bucks and there are high end ones that will cost you as much as a brand new top of the line desktop system.

PS: I wouldn't worry about CPU brand so much unless you are going to be doing stuff like extensive floating point calculations. It's more important to get one thats just powerful enough to run the applications you want with minimal fuss

 

[jamosaka]

Celerons are cheap but they're no good for games or other 3d stuff.

If you don't want to play games Celeron is your best bet.

If you do want to play games then get a Pentium or AMD.

 

[Nuala]

I'm going to have to tell you to get a PowerPC based Notebook from Apple computers. For what you'll probably use it for, it'll be perfect for you.
Apple
Get a Powerbook G4 or a iBook G4. Also, if you're a student go for the discount!

 

[bossel]

I think, Mal got it perfectly right. It all depends on what you need & want. Don't let yourself be talked into buying some expensive high end stuff if you only need it for office applications & internet.

Important points for your decision:

- office, multimedia or gaming
- at home or often on travel (energy consumption)
- need bundled software?
- terms & conditions (repair service, insurance, etc.)

 

[RockLee]

I got a celeron, and for office stuff and things like that it sucks HARD !

I forgot to mention centrino processors !! if u can get one of those, u won't be stuck with high power absorbtion ! those thing can last up to 3 hours..whereas a normal laptop 1,5 h ~ It depends ..

 

[Mal]

I got a celeron, and for office stuff and things like that it sucks HARD !

My assistant has one that I got for her refurbished and it seems to run word/exchange and I.E. pretty well. That's basically all she needs to do with it. Honestly, for that kind of stuff CPU isn't a big bottleneck, its all RAM and HD access speeds.

I forgot to mention centrino processors !! if u can get one of those, u won't be stuck with high power absorbtion ! those thing can last up to 3 hours..whereas a normal laptop 1,5 h ~ It depends ..

If you go mobile a lot, then you probably need to invest in a battery upgrade. This will have overall more effect on your power supply than the CPU type (not saying it doesn't matter, just not quite as much). You can usually get battery upgrades right from the manufacturer for like 50 to 80 bucks I think?

Anyway, you can calculate how long your laptop will last on a battery by finding out first what its power consumption is and then doing a calculation of :

(Volts * Amperes) / Wattage Consumption

For instance lets say your laptop runs at 20.5 wats (pretty standard atleast a year or two ago). Then you had a good lithium-ion battery with 14.4 Volts, 4000mAh (4000mAh = 4.0 Amperes)

(14.4 * 4.0 ) / 20.5 = about 2.8 hours battery life

If you were to use a standard NiMH battery (that alot of these things ship with) you'd be looking at somewhere around 1/3rd less battery life in general.

It's pretty variable, but good information to know anyway since the calculations are so easy.

Mal

 

[kirei_na_me]

Wow, thank you all for the nice responses. I appreciate it very much!

Ok, to answer some of the questions:

So like, what do you want to do with it?

It will just be for personal use, not for business or anything. I do a lot of...*coughdownloadingmusiccough*.

- office, multimedia or gaming

No, yes, and yes(but not that much gaming).

- at home or often on travel (energy consumption)

At home mostly. Will probably rarely take it out of the house.

- need bundled software?

Maybe some?

Anyway, I sincerely thank you all for your very in-depth advice. Please keep it coming, because I need it.

Miss Apollo, I was thinking of a Dell. I've heard good things about them. What is everyone else's opinion of Dell?

 

[Grandpa Frank]

Oh Come On !!!!

Sell or trade a couple children for a top of the line model!! Nothing like a 17 inch beautiful wide screen in front of you to watch DVD's on. For a mere 3 to 4 thousand bucks, you can go top of the line. My wife and I each sold 1 kidney(have2, only need 1) on EBAY so we could get our SONY VIO VGN-A190. You may need to go to the gym to work out a bit so you can carry it around, feels like about 50 pounds after a while lugging it. And don't forget the spare battries ($200 a pop) if you want it to run long enough to see a whole movie. And you need to attach a mouse & keyboard if you want it to resemble a desktop.

Frank

 

[Index]

I wouldn't worry about the brand name at all. Most companies use the same few manufacturers around the world; the only differences are cosmetic and of course the brand label(=price). Dell is one of the few that make their own stuff, but not as much recently because they can't keep up with demand.

 

[Apollo]

I hope you found a good one Kirei!
If not, I can still recommend Dell...they have a great service.

 

[Ma Cherie]

Well, I would recommend you get a laptop that will suite your needs. And I would personally recommend that you get either get a Sony brand or Toshiba. I have a Toshiba Sattelite and I'm not disappointed.

 

[Davey]

I have a Dell pentium 4 and im really happy with it... Good luck with finding one.. take your time, ask around, go to some store's.

im sure you will get some nice advice from people like here...

GANBATTE

greetings Baka dutch

 

[dreamer]

I'd recommend an intel centrino in this case...
They eat up less energy, and they have quite high performances

Celeron are :
slower than normal processors due to the fact that they have less cache memory than most processors (making it slower)
harder to cool down due to their particular architecture, they generate more heat, increasing the overall temperature, and making calculations go slower as time goes on.

As for why not an amd 64? Well...do you really need a processor with a 64bits architecture? ^^
Unless you are using linux with customized drivers or unless you have the last windows XP 64 I don't think you are gonna get the best of it
Beside if it's only for errr what you said it'd even seem like a waste XD

As for the AMD Sempron I am not sure since I couldn't get any valuable information on it, and although it looks like the old AMD XP although it has a lower energy consumption...

The performances of the AMD 64 and the intel centrino are quite similar for the moment, although the first one is more expensive (at least in France and in the UK, but maybe not int the US) so you should decide based on the price

Otherwise you should chose something with at least 512 MB de RAM if not more since windows and the new applications eat more and more ram. If you are not playing any game the graphic chipset is not that important (something with 64mb would still be good)

Well that's about everything I have to say...
(sigh what's happening this month? You're the 6th person I know who wanna buy a laptop )

 

[Doc]

AMD > Intel

Doc:ramen: