Notebooks?

[higa27]

What's the best overall for its price?

[Chickie]

Depends on what you're looking for, I suppose and how important price is to you.

I've got myself a refurbished Dell that I picked up from DellAuctions for $325 that I'm very content with ( me = cheapo ) but some people want those new ultra-light ones with a battery that lasts a while or some notebooks that are media creation studios.

CNET (http://reviews.cnet.com/Notebooks/2001-3121_7-0.html?tag=cnetfd.dir) has some guides regarding categories, but if you head over to some price comparison websites you can usually find a better price than what they say the laptop goes for.

Personally, I like Dells and avoid Sony VAIO's if you can...

[hui4o]

I LIKE DELL TOO.I HAVE OWNED 2 NOTEBOOKS AND THEY USED TO WORK PRITTY GOOD.

[Ralon]

usually multimedia notebooks from small companies are cheap but good :)

[bnjiman80]

Yes, I think Dell have cut their prices recently so they are a good bet. Plus people trust them, so you will get a good resale value.

I'm using a Dell PII350 which is still going strong!

In a way, I'd like to have a new laptop..certainly a bit more ram! But I'm reluctant to shell out for a 2GhZ when the performance is always worse than a desktop...especially when it comes to graphics, and obviously, sound...having said that you can get some decent plug ins in the PCMCIA slot for recording these days...anyway, I'm off on a tangent now :rolleyes:

I suppose it depends what you are using it for. If its just the basics you will be fine with a slower processor...graphics can't really be that important 'cos they're not gaming machines...RAM, cd writer and HD space is always important I guess.

[bnjiman80]

...looking at the Dell website, all the latops have 256mb ram! I would say that, given this, your performance diff between the Inspiron 1100 ($699, Celeron 2.3Ghz) and the next up in the line ($949-1299) isn't going to be all that. (512mb in the standard for desktop pcs.) I'd go for that, plus CD re-writer. If I had more money, maybe add a DVD. I'm not sure that the dedicated graphics cards will be all that useful - they still suck compared to full desktop versions! You're paying $250 for the better rated processor, and graphics - but its an expense expensive compared to what you'd get on a desktop. Do you need it? If so, will a laptop be up to the job?

Really benchmarking for non-gaming purposes at this level won't be all the significant. For other applications, it takes 2mins more to write a cd, 15 seconds more to restart...who's counting!

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/notebooks?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

[NeGe0]

Yes but I would rather go with the Centrino and the wireless internet. Centrino is one marvelous processor and they should have replaced the P4 with them. The 1.6 outperfoms the 2.5ghz P4. They don't run hot so that mean a lot quieter fans and more chance to overclock. If you just want a cheap but good laptop then I might say go with the 2.3 celeron. $700...you can't beat that.

[saxmidiman]

Prefer Toshiba. They take a real beating and keep working. Their support is pretty good too. Only had 1 problem in 3 years, and it was fixed through a quick call.

[dawmclem]

Yep. get a Dell