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Need suggestions on buying a laptop
RoboG2:
You might want to try eMachines. They supposedly have great customer support and rock solid laptops. I don't know about their battery life, but they seem fairly cheap. They are 999.99 on the website, but I think tigerdirect has them for 829.99. Good luck.
MrBond:
Just to bring this to a close, I got my laptop last week! I bought a Dell Inspiron 8600 from the Dell Outlet website. It was originally $1,584.00, with $475.00 off, and then I put in a coupon for an additional 10% ($110.90) off which I found on xpbargains.com. $49 Shipping was free (it took 5 days).
Total before tax: $998.10
The specs:
-Mobile Pentium M Processor, 710 (1.4GHz)
-512 MB SDRAM 333MHz (2 DIMMs)
-80 GB EIDE Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
-32MB NVIDIA,GEFORCE,FX GO5200 Video Card
-15.4 inch WXGA Notebook Screen
-Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 Internal Wireless
-8x DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability (which is removable, and can be replaced by a second 'modular' battery)
-firewire, s-vid, 2xusb, built in mic, mic + headphone jack, pci slot
-Microsoft Windows XP Home
-9 cell Battery/adaptor/1yr support...and a bunch of software
So far, it is PERFECT for me. I love the thing, and I hardly use my desktop anymore. The battery lasts around 4.5 hours, but if I turn the brightness down and turn the wireless off, I'm sure I could squeeze out a 1 or 2 hours. It is amazing how clear the monitor looks. I'm really glad I went with the 15.4 widescreen: DVD's are awesome! I never realized how crappy my 17" CRT is! The wireless internet is sweet (I can connect to the university's T3 sitting in the parking lot..for someone on dial up, this rocks), and the DVD burner is an added bonus. The 3-d card plays mario64, so I'm happy with that. The 80gigs and 512RAM is exactly what I wanted. And it weighs around 6 pounds.
I picked it for the battery life, the specs + price combination. That, and no rebates to deal with (like @ circuit city)! Dell has good reviews on customer support, and the brand new 2005 Consumer Reports rank the Insipron 8600 second in the "workhorse" category.
PLUS, my aunt is going to pay HALF of it for my college graduation present!!!!! (I'm currently in my 8th semester, student teaching in math) I'll continue to use this while I'm a teacher, so it really is an excellent grad gift.
Woohoo!
MrBond:
Also, it is extremely quiet, with only the DVD burner making any really noticable noise. And the resume from hibernate time is anywhere between 12-16 seconds. I love hibernation! Why did I ever shut down my desktop? Just hibernate: your RAM gets stored on the HD, and the next time you boot up, it resumes exactly where you left off (in my case, I have word docs open a lot). Anti-virus/firewall and other background processes are all in memory and don't waste time booting up. I just shut my screen, and press the power button the next time I need to work.
Another neat little thing is the play/pause, stop, next track, prev track, volume up, volume down, and mute hotkeys on the keyboard. Great for DVD's.