Laptop advice....

TroyD

Ok, when I go to Korea...I want to take a laptop for my own personal use.

Ok, I'm looking for a BASIC laptop that I can surf the internet and keep in touch with you phucknuts, store pictures, perhaps watch a movie. Nothing elaborate.

What I'm looking for are recommendations as to what is decent and what is not at the low end of the spectrum.

For you computer nerds, speak english....dumb it down for me.

BDT

hoosier21

I went to Best Buys, at the time they were having a different laptop every week on special for 500.00, I waited till the low end Toshiba was 500.00 and got it. My needs were just like yours, just something to surf the net, save pictures and such.

BaggedLancer

I'm a big fan of IBM laptops, they are built like tanks but lightweight. I never had a problem with me and I abuse the crap out of it. Goes back and forth to school with me on the train. It is a little thicker than a 1 subject notebook and weighes 3.6 pounds.

IBM x31 is the model and probably can be had on ebay pretty cheap.

Kex

I will only ever travel with an Ultra-Light (3lbs or less) that I can slip into standard carry-on baggage (not in a seperate case), but there is a compromise in performance (they frequently use slower drives and slower processors because of heat management issues in a cramped space) as well as a smaller screen size (but I find they are big enough and good enough to work comfortably). They are also more expensive.

For Ultra-Light I will only ever trust Toshiba (Port

Face

I believe Dell still sells Windows XP if you don't want to convert to Vista yet.

shawn474

I have a Dell E1505 laptop and love it. We got a special promotion at work for working for the government (I imagine you'd be eligible as well). Paid just under $1,000.00 (probably can get it for less now) and it has been really reliable for the last year. No problems whatsoever.

Good luck in your travels and thanks for your service.

bobman1235

Well, no bad advice, but some people don't seem to understand cheap.

If you are vigilant on some of the "deals" sites (slickdeals, fatwallet) you can usually find a lot of Dell laptop deals. I got an Inspiron 1501, with a slightly faster processor and the beefier battery for just over 500 bucks. And it came with XP. Love the laptop so far, and you can't beat that price.

TroyD

Roger that. I was looking on the Dell website and they have a couple in the 5-600 dollar range, which is what I'm looking at....but again, I'm not up on what's good and what's not.

BDT

BaggedLancer

TroyD,

Basically anything over $300 will suite your "needs" as you posted in your first post. Just go for the most basic dell laptop, for options choose the biggest hard drive you can choose (reasonably priced) to store your pictures, and get it with the extra warranty if you plan on letting it see some abuse.

danger boy

I got a $600 Gateway laptop 14" screen with AMD Turion duo core processor w/2GIG's RAM. it's a speedy little devil. but I haven't loaded up a bunch of crap on it either. It's lightweight, and I use it when I travel and just to do basic stuff like email, AIM, watch DVD's.

Kex

There is nothing wrong with Dell (or HP/Compaq) value laptops. They work, and they work well. I would probably avoid Celeron (the cheapest Intel) processors and Vista if you can (too greedy for expensive memory modules).

Circuit City currently has this special offer on Acer (didn't they just buy Gateway?) for $480 with a Pentium Dual Core processor and DVD burner: http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/productDetail.do?oid=197082&linkid=j13459594k2164&affiliateid=k2164&mid=

RuSsMaN

You gonna' come see me in January? We can hook it up then.

TroyD

I'm going to try man, with me rolling out at the end of April....I'm not sure how that's affecting my travel plans.

This Korea gig is f**king a lot of **** up for me, actually.

BDT

Demiurge

TroyD wrote: »

Roger that. I was looking on the Dell website and they have a couple in the 5-600 dollar range, which is what I'm looking at....but again, I'm not up on what's good and what's not.

BDT

I have one of the $500-600 Dells used for just what you described. Works great, and this is coming from a guy with a MacBook Pro as well. The Dell lower end Laptops are great for their intended purpose. I bought 2 Dell computers in the last year and not a single issue...

SKsolutions

With those criteria, I'd grab an HP dv2000, or dv2500. 5 pounds Light, reliable, cheap, good battery time, and they look purdy. Go dual core. Intel gets better batter time, the 2500 has the Santa Rosa chipset, and stretches it even further. AMD dual chips have pretty good performance and are generally cheaper, but drain the battery a bit quicker. If it comes with Vista, and you spend time unplugged, install XP.

rskarvan

SKsolutions wrote: »

With those criteria, I'd grab an HP dv2000, or dv2500. 5 pounds Light, reliable, cheap, good battery time, and they look purdy. Go dual core. Intel gets better batter time, the 2500 has the Santa Rosa chipset, and stretches it even further. AMD dual chips have pretty good performance and are generally cheaper, but drain the battery a bit quicker. If it comes with Vista, and you spend time unplugged, install XP.

I agree. HP is the new king of cheap, good laptops. And, they look pretty. I've got one and am very happy with it.

RuSsMaN

TroyD wrote: »

I'm going to try man, with me rolling out at the end of April....I'm not sure how that's affecting my travel plans.

This Korea gig is f**king a lot of **** up for me, actually.

BDT

I hear ya brotha. Lot's of good advice here - if you are looking to be able to do the basics, with little hassle, Toshiba, Sony, and Dell I've had good luck with. Most will have wireless lan built in. For five to six Franklins make sure you get at least a 1.6GHZ, 1 gig of ram, 80 gig hd, and dvd burner. Any upgrades from there will be icing on the cake.

You'll have plenty of power to surf, photos, email - really do pretty much anything except play the latest hardcore games.

Cheers,
Russ

Kex

There are actually some cheap ultra portable models from Averatec. Their pricing is unbeatable AFIK, but I have never tried one. They even sell refurbished models for $500 or less! http://www.averatec.com/products/portable/

ND13

When she's doing the lapdance, remember not to touch or else you may not feel very well the next day when released from the ER.

TroyD

Eff that man. I've already got one Korea trip under my belt. I did not buy ONE single juicy while I was over there.

For those that don't know...in the bars over there they have girls (at the time Fillipino...now many are Russian) who will swarm over you wanting you to by them a drink (known as a juicy because it's just pinapple juice with grenadine and that's how they pronounce it)....so for 5 bucks or so a whack, they will sit on your lap and so forth and will continue to do so until you run out of money and contrary to any stories you might hear, there is no sex involved. Those girls are there to separate you from your wampum. Nothing more. IF someone says that they had sex with a juicy, he is either lying OR it cost him BIG BUCKS. If there was prostitution going on, that bar would be off-limits and the bar owners know this so it's in thier best interests not to pander to that. Juicy girls are just an excise tax on stupidity.

Hear this: EFF THAT ****.

BDT

cmy330go

As far as regular store bought brands are concerned, Toshiba is the only brand I recommend without hesitation.

Ultimately I recommend Dell for just about anything. From my experience over the past 10 years I've seen the least number of hardware failures, and the best customer support from Dell. At one job I replace 90 workstations (70 desktops and 20 laptops) out of all these I only had one bad cd-rom drive which was promptly replaced. That's pretty hard to beat.

tonyb

TroyD wrote: »

Eff that man. I've already got one Korea trip under my belt. I did not buy ONE single juicy while I was over there.

For those that don't know...in the bars over there they have girls (at the time Fillipino...now many are Russian) who will swarm over you wanting you to by them a drink (known as a juicy because it's just pinapple juice with grenadine and that's how they pronounce it)....so for 5 bucks or so a whack, they will sit on your lap and so forth and will continue to do so until you run out of money and contrary to any stories you might hear, there is no sex involved. Those girls are there to separate you from your wampum. Nothing more. IF someone says that they had sex with a juicy, he is either lying OR it cost him BIG BUCKS. If there was prostitution going on, that bar would be off-limits and the bar owners know this so it's in thier best interests not to pander to that. Juicy girls are just an excise tax on stupidity.

Hear this: EFF THAT ****.

BDT

Sounds like a regular bar over here."Juicy"...I like it.:)

BaggedLancer

I could just see one of those women going for a real job down the road...

Employer: "So, what did you do at your last job?"
Russian: "I was a juicy at a local bar"


Do they actually refer to themselves as a juicy or is that just the drink you buy them?

TroyD

These girls are indentured servants. The bar owners pay thier freight over from the Phillipines or Russia and they live in one room over the bar (usually) and are, basically, the property of the bar.

Other jobs? When you are essentially and indentured servant I'm thinking that a job title on your resume isn't one of your major concerns.

They usually have made up names....They say 'you buy me juicy?' It's the whole broken english thing that puts the 'E' sound at the end of juice.

BDT

shadowofnight

I have a pretty big 15% off coupon for the dell outlet ( Dell refurbs/new but never shipped/and scratch and dents ) ...I have bought many many from them and not a single one had any problems...even the scratch and dents I have picked up had such minor issues.
On half of them I couldnt find the scratch. Dell never sends the outlet coupons to the general public...just to frequent outlet purchasers. This one is good til the 5th of dec so if you would like it pm me....

( Good til the 5th of Dec or 400 redemptions so I would use it asap...sometimes I had waited till 2 days before expiration and 400 people had used the code already )

shadowofnight

15% off and FREE 3-5 day shipping & handling on
any refurbished Inspiron™, Dimension™ or
XPS™ system.
Enter Coupon² Code at Checkout:

Kex

TroyD wrote: »

...
For those that don't know...in the bars over there they have girls (at the time Fillipino...now many are Russian) who will swarm over you wanting you to by them a drink (known as a juicy because it's just pinapple juice with grenadine and that's how they pronounce it)....so for 5 bucks or so a whack, they will sit on your lap and so forth and will continue to do so until you run out of money and contrary to any stories you might hear, there is no sex involved. Those girls are there to separate you from your wampum. Nothing more. IF someone says that they had sex with a juicy, he is either lying OR it cost him BIG BUCKS. If there was prostitution going on, that bar would be off-limits and the bar owners know this so it's in thier best interests not to pander to that. Juicy girls are just an excise tax on stupidity.

Hear this: EFF THAT ****.

TroyD, you must be a clever man that knows how to avoid thinking with his d*ck! I was once subjected to this behavior in Japan (my host must have thought I might enjoy it). I was trying to figure out what was the whole point. In my case, they actually changed the girls every twenty or thirty minutes. I don't know if this was to keep them from getting too familiar or to keep the guest from getting too many ideas. I never saw the bill so I have no idea how much it cost. Drinks were mostly Cognac and Champagne, if I remember correctly. The wifey worked in the Ukraine for a while herself and saw the American gents doing this stuff all the time. For me, it was a very boring evening, so I'ld like to quote you: EFF THAT ****! Enjoy your trip (I've had some dealings with Koreans also, but never actually went there).

TroyD

The elder Koreans, I love 'em.

It's not that I'm clever really and if I'm not thinking with my dick, I act directly on it's behalf. That said however, I never saw the point of just flushing money down the toilet.

There is only one babe that I'm buying drinks for and our 12th anniversary is coming up on 30 Dec. That is if I can get her out the door past Ted and George.

BDT

BobMcG

I like this kind. A really good performer.

BobMcG

Oops!!! Wrong kinda laptop! I guess I shoulda read the posts better!

TroyD

I'd like to show her my 80gig hard drive.

BDT