my mom is in the market for a new laptop and is unsure on what to look for..
she does some gaming..
regular internet browsing
email
work documents
all the usual stuff
What processors are available? What speed should we look at>?
hDD size? accessories?
Whats good....whats not good...$2000 tax-in or less is the budget..
any help please
I'd say check with dell and see what they have on sale now... some people here will stay far away from dell. I deal with them everyday and yes some are crap out of the box but the customer service is top notch and they give you lots of free upgrades.
I say grab a Dell when they have a nice deal happening.
512MB RAM is a minimum, especially with the lower Dell models that still use integrated video and a portion of the system RAM.
Celeron-Ms are great for basic users who don't need a lot of horsepower, and the battery life is great! Speed... anything over 1.1GHz for a Pentium-M / Celeron-M is fine. These things don't need a lot of clockspeed to do good work.
Nothing smaller than a 40GB drive is technically available these days, but you don't need anything bigger than a 60GB for her either.
What kind of gaming does she do? Anything 3D-accelerated on a laptop requires, in my books, 1GB RAM and a dedicated Nvidia / ATi video card - PERIOD. I can game quite well on my latest work laptop:
Pentium-M 1.73GHz
1GB DDR2-533 RAM (dual-channel)
ATi Mobility Radeon X600 128MB
80GB 7200RPM laptop HDD
Also, a decent way to save a few bucks is to NOT get a widescreen laptop. Widescreen can be cool, but for most computing tasks it's completely unnecessary.
Also, Compaq and Emachines have Athlon64-based laptops. I'm an AMD guy, so I always consider those for home users. Dells have superior warranties by far, however, and are always worth one last look.
AMD"s Turino processor is like a Centrino but on the AMD side of things, my sister got one with Turino and shes happy with it, its actually faster than the Centrino she had before, and theyre roughlyu the same spec..
Turions are great, but they're more performance-oriented... more of a Pentium-M fighter. A Sempron S754 laptop with a dedicated video card would be a good choice as well... Athlon64 performance, budget-minded pricing.
NOS2Go4Me,Jan 27 2006, 10:06 AM Wrote:512MB RAM is a minimum, especially with the lower Dell models that still use integrated video and a portion of the system RAM.
Celeron-Ms are great for basic users who don't need a lot of horsepower, and the battery life is great! Speed... anything over 1.1GHz for a Pentium-M / Celeron-M is fine. These things don't need a lot of clockspeed to do good work.
Nothing smaller than a 40GB drive is technically available these days, but you don't need anything bigger than a 60GB for her either.
What kind of gaming does she do? Anything 3D-accelerated on a laptop requires, in my books, 1GB RAM and a dedicated Nvidia / ATi video card - PERIOD. I can game quite well on my latest work laptop:
Pentium-M 1.73GHz
1GB DDR2-533 RAM (dual-channel)
ATi Mobility Radeon X600 128MB
80GB 7200RPM laptop HDD
Also, a decent way to save a few bucks is to NOT get a widescreen laptop. Widescreen can be cool, but for most computing tasks it's completely unnecessary.
Also, Compaq and Emachines have Athlon64-based laptops. I'm an AMD guy, so I always consider those for home users. Dells have superior warranties by far, however, and are always worth one last look.
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How come you get an x600 on your laptop and I get stuck with an x300.
Oscar The Grouch,Jan 27 2006, 09:44 AM Wrote:How come you get an x600 on your laptop and I get screwed.
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Oversight? This was Shawn's old laptop :rolleyes:
I just upgraded the HDD.
My last lappy had a Mobility Radeon 9000 64MB.
thanks adam!
excellent assistance!
No problem Paul, happy to help.