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OH, and did you guys catch that AMAZING dell coupon a few days ago? $750 DOLLARS OFF!!!! Jeeez. You can get a pretty damn good $1500 laptop for HALF PRICE which that coupon. It was meant to boost their sales before the end of the quarter so the coupon wasnt a typo/bug. I tried to order one of their XPS systems but found out that it was US only. Bah.

And Dells arnt bad.

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I just (on Tuesday) ordered a Dimension (not the laptop, I figured maybe I should clarify) XPS for C$1000 off from the Dell Canada website. This was in addition to a plethora of other "special offers". Now I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The offer ends soon (like maybe a few hours) so if anyone is interested and has money to spend (and is Canadian) they should head here.
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If all you want to do is watch the occasional movie and do some work then why not just buy a portable DVD player and a really low-end laptop or even a higher end PDA? I don't actually know what this work is, of course, so that suggestion may just be stupid.

Edited by - Codename on 10/27/2004 9:59:24 PM

The work aspect, is placing orders on line to suppliers, inventory control program, and e-mailing the Boss. A padd is not in the running. I would need a CD writer to do back ups. The need is to replace one that was stolen last year. Had it 30 days before it was stolen.

@Fd....

When you say lower end and just for writing, still need to know a little more. Would this be carried around from place to place during the day? E.g.: Would you be using it while sipping a latte at Starbucks?

Because you need to look at these things from two perspectives, performance and durability.

Yes, it would be mobil. As in taking to work, the park, ect to sit and write. That way I won't be tied down to a desktop. Low end also meaning, under $1000. Weight is not a factor of it to me. Would need an expantion slot or what ever the name for swapping items like an extra battery and a writeable CD. Do most these days come with an infared port?

Nooo! Hijack! Hijack!

Thanks a lot, this is exactly the kind of input I need. I didn't realize IBMs were that good, I'd assumed they were in the same range as HPs and such. I've never really had good experiences with IBMs - our work desktops are IBM and they break a lot.

This laptop isn't a desktop replacement, though I have considered it. As I said in the first post, it's just a cheaper low-end machine -around 600mhz and $650-$700 CDN - for word, office and storing things. Maybe the occasional Red Alert, Sim City 2000 or Roller Coaster Tycoon hehe.

I understand the concerns about heat, that's why I'm keeping it low-end. Dad's P10 gets amazingly hot, but the old Satelite is actually pretty good. The hard drives in the machines I'm looking at are all 4200-5400 RPM and in the neighborhood of 10 gigs.

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I would be wanting to up ram to 1gb and running Work Perfect 12 mainly.

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I doubt you'd be able to find a low-end laptop that would hold that much RAM. The old 2800 has 128MB integrated, and only a single expansion slot for RAM, and the most you can stick in there is one 256MB stick.

Edited by - [MC Random Task on 10/28/2004 12:45:05 PM

although I have no experience of the new Centrinos, I can tell that (and as an Intel man it pains me to say it) the AMD Mobile processors are excellent. They have far superior cores, because they're for laptops they have to handle the heat better. actually they make dam fine PC cpus as well. if anyone's going down the AMD XP route for a PC, get the MObile chips. they're exactly the same but cope with heat better!

*Looks up at the sky to see if he is still on Earth. Turns on tv news to confirm day date and year. Pinches self. Slaps self ... twice.... to make sure he isn't dreaming*

A M D Did Taw say AMD makes good cpus

Oh yeah. It's his new job.

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@MC - IBM laptops.... love them or leave them, really. You'll have to consider a mouse to go with it unless you like those stupid little nubby eraser head pointing devices.

Oh. I should say that I use an IBM for work. It is a T23. It is pretty good but it's somewhat heavy. Also, my 5400 rpm 30gig HDD went up in smoke last year (I'd had the laptop for about 18 months at that point) so I am on my second one already. Anyway it is approaching 3 years of use and there is a small bright spot in the center of my LCD screen.

I cannot use it on my lap because it gets too warm, at least not without putting it on a tray or large hard cover (coffee table ) book.

Edited by - Indy11 on 10/28/2004 7:47:33 PM

i think Arania has a good laptop except for win xp home i will not touch that os i wasted $700 on a desktop with that system i had to repair that thing daily it always crashed xp pro is a lot better *curses xp home and steps out*
edit (mods) if this is to much of a rant delete/edit it.

I poked into the local surplus-PC store today inquiring about the Thinkpad A22Ms they had listed on their website. Apparently they were used once in a board meeting or somesuch, sent back to IBM for a reformat, reinstallation of 2000 Pro and sold surplus. In other words, brand-spanking new. They'd even knocked down the price from $950 to $825.

But they were all gone. Damned out-of-date website. I can't BELIEVE I missed out on that, but the 40 or so they had in stock apparently went like *THAT*.

I think I'm gonna start going in there weekly on my way home. I'm going to be kicking myself for a week.

Edited by - [MC Random Task on 10/28/2004 10:13:08 PM

oh you cynical man. I always give credit where credit is due. You know as well as I do that Intel have soem serious problems at the moment and that AMD have pulled ahead. I wouldn't recommend anyone to go for anything Intel above the 3.4 Northwoods at the moment. An AMD64 on an nForce chipset is the fastest bang for your buck at the moment.

However I'm staying with Intel and my 3.0 Northwood on an 865 chipset for the foreseeable furture, it gives me excellent performance and rock-solid stability.

@MC A22Ms? Could have been a nice pick up but if they were standard configuration, they woud only be CD ROM equipped, minimal RAM and, I think maybe very limited in video capability.... Not really a gaming capable setup.

But at that price I suppose you could buy aftermarket to mod it up but you'd pop over to about $1,200 by the time you were done and I don't think you would be able to upgrade the video. So maybe you were able to avoid spending the $800?

On the other hand, it would have been the perfect pickup for Finalday.

Wait for Dual cores....

Laptops, I love AMD, however the Intel's do have the advantage of HT as well as a 2MB L2 cache on the newer mobile chips. If anyone trys to say a 2MB l2 cache doesn't make a difference, they need to not talk about things they have no Idea what they are talking about.

Now, the next laptop I am going to buy will be an amd. Just cause of the 64 bit procs. I am looking at the ACER Ferrari models, especially the yet to be released 3400. It has a mobile 64 3000+, along with some other goodies.

If you are playing games on your laptops, it depends 85-90% on the video card. Make sure you have a good vid card in there (Radeon 9700 128MB is one of the best right now. But when the Radeon 9800 comes out, it will kick some serious butt).

However, the common Joe (computer geek wantabe) Smith, would only really need an Intel.

How many times do I have to say THIS IS NOT A GAMING MACHINE?

THIS IS NOT A GAMING MACHINE!
THIS IS NOT A GAMING MACHINE!
THIS IS NOT A GAMING MACHINE!

Does everyone here only read the first two lines of my posts or something? It gets very annoying. I don't need information on high-end super-expensive machines!

Anyways, it comes with 128MB, expandable to 512MB, a floppy, CD-ROM, ATI MACH64 (probably crap, but it's enough) and two PCMCIA slots, among other things.

Edited by - [MC Random Task on 10/29/2004 10:28:37 AM

Yebbut.... no DVD MC.