Can someone suggest an inexpensive laptop?

[dewi1219]

Or this one? Seems like a great deal also, with similar specs as the Toshiba. The Toshiba does have Labelflash which I like, but not sure it's worth the $50 difference. The Toshiba also has a much larger hard drive also...

[Alex Franke]

We prefer Dell at work. I'd definitely look into used/refurbished if that's all you use it for. Even if it does end up with a couple of problems, you probably won't notice them while browsing the 'net. Plus if you're going to use it in an office, you can just keep it plugged in and use the battery only infrequently.

I see a Dell Latitude on ebay now for $200 with about a hour left in the auction.

[dewi1219]

I'm having trouble making up my mind. Here's my dilemma:

1) Since I don't like buying computers often, I don't want to get something marginal that will need replacing in a year or two.
2) Also, it will replace my desktop at some point, probably fairly soon as I think I will convert the desktop to a dedicated home theater PC if it's feasible. I would like something decent/new for this reason too.
3) Since it will be a Christmas gift for my wife, I prefer to stay away from used. Also, many times "refurbished" units do not look new. A warranty would be nice too.

However,
3) We are not gamers or techies, so I would like to keep the cost as low as possible.
4) I would really like to get something with XP since I haven't heard a lot of good things about Vista and wouldn't have to learn something new. But staying with XP would rule out just about every new model out there.

Right now I'm leaning towards one of the two models I linked to and accepting the fact that we will have to learn Vista. But I'm still open to suggestions.

[Alex Franke]

Right now I'm leaning towards one of the two models I linked to and accepting the fact that we will have to learn Vista. But I'm still open to suggestions.

Vista isn't so bad... It's just different.. I use it at home. But it's here to stay, so you mind as well bite the bullet and learn it. (I'm still kicking and screaming along the way!)

[BobSch]

Vista isn't so bad... It's just different.. I use it at home. But it's here to stay, so you mind as well bite the bullet and learn it. (I'm still kicking and screaming along the way!)

Not for long. Looks like MS is pushing for a quick release of Windows 7; mainly because not may large businesses are adopting Vista.

[dewi1219]

Not for long. Looks like MS is pushing for a quick release of Windows 7; mainly because not may large businesses are adopting Vista.

The words "Windows" and "quick release" in the same sentence don't inspire much confidence

I went to my local Best Buy at lunch today, and they had a Dell Inspiron 1525 identical to the one linked above except with 2GB or RAM instead of 3GB. Price was $439 - seems like a good deal to me. They're having some kind of "private" reward zone sale on Sunday so I think I'll go then and see if I can get it any cheaper. I played around with Vista a little, and for our use I think the interface is ok. It's similar enough to XP that we should be able to find our way around. My only remaining concern is the compatibility issues with Vista that I've heard about.

[Alex Franke]

Not for long. Looks like MS is pushing for a quick release of Windows 7; mainly because not may large businesses are adopting Vista.

True -- what I meant to say was that much of the new user interface and usability features introduced with Vista -- how you use and get around in the operating system -- are here to stay. Or probably more correctly, they are still evolving. So I think that if you "learn" Vista, you'll probably have a much easier time learning Windows 7 than if you jumped right to it from XP.

I don't know for sure, because I haven't seen it, but I'd guess that Windows 7 will look and feel a lot more like Vista than XP. Windows 7 is just the next version of the operating system, so they'll continue evolving their UI and hopefully fix mistakes. (Vista is Windows 6, Win2k/XP is Windows 5, Windows 95/98 was Windows 4.)

[gordons]

FWIW, I have a Compaq (HP) Presario 2200 that must be around four years old now. Has a Celeron processor, 512MB RAM and had a 40GB HDD. One fine day over a year ago, I was installing a security camera system in a warehouse and needed to use this laptop to complete the install. Did I tell you that I had to do this standing on top of an 8 foot stepladder?? Needless to say, I dropped it........ Managed to somewhat "break the fall" with my foot at about the 6' level. Needless to say, all this succeeded in doing was slamming the laptop into the adjacent brick wall before it careened down to the concrete floor where it struck a pointed blow followed by a bouncing tumble and final belly flop crash.

Sadly, I picked up all the pieces and took them home to give them an honorable burial. But my curiosity got the better of me and after some searching in the HP site, I found a maintenance manual that described the dismantling process in full detail. I stripped the machine, straightened the frame, reattached all the bits that had become detached, glued the plastic case together, sanded a bit, put back the keys that had fallen off and spent $60 on a new 60GB HDD. Rebuilt the whole thing and fired it up.... Reinstalled the factory supplied XP O/S. Works like a new machine. The one part that I did not replace due to cost was the screen which has a vertical stripe of dead pixels about 1/4" wide down the right hand side. Just reduced the size of all my screens to compensate for this.

I set up the new drive to run Ubuntu Linux as well as XP in a dual boot configuration. Have had no problems with either setup (other than Ubuntu not being happy with the Broadcom wireless adapter).

As a matter of fact, I am using this machine now, and have been for the past two months, since my desktop died and I have not yet replaced it. Connected the Compaq to the 19" monitor, keyboard and mouse from the desktop and some 7 USB ports hanging around powering two printers, a scanner and other bits. Now have a workable desktop replacement machine. I might add that I don't do games, or intensive graphics.

Don't think that I could give more of a glowing report than this. I would look for a relatively cheap Linux based machine that will meet all your requirements and require almost no learning curve for these if you are used to the Windows environment. I'm staying away from Vista. It's like the Windows Millenium edition of a previous O/S that MS messed up.

PS. I paid about $500 brand new for this laptop.

[dewi1219]

Gordon,
That's an impressive story My luck with electronics has never been that good.

I ended up buying the Dell Inspiron 1525 that I referenced earlier in this thread. It has a Pentium dual-core processor, 15" screen, 2GB ram, and a 160GB hard drive. It was regularly $650 but marked down to $439. When I went to pay for it, it rang up $380. I was pretty happy. It has Vista which almost caused me to pass on it. But I think for what my wife will use it for it should be ok. If not, I'll put XP or Linux on it.

[germdoc]

Anybody have an Asus EEE or one of those Dell sub-notebooks?

[gordons]

Dewi,
Great buy for $380. You shouldn't go too far wrong with this Dell. As Vista is a real memory hog and you probably have some 32bit variation, you can really only go up to 3GB anyway. Best thing to do is get rid of all the "junk" programs that are installed on the machine and keep it lean and mean with anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. Get a program like Ccleaner (www.ccleaner.com) and keep the junk from accumulating like temp files and cookies. DON'T mess with the Registry though!!! They also have a good defragger which will help keep things moving along and a recovery program that can help get back files you accidentally delete.

Good luck.
Gordon

[dewi1219]

Thanks for the tip - I'll definitely try the ccleaner.