geekology 101

[cellomusette]

i'm planning, in the somewhat near future, to get a new computer. my main objectives are these:

1. i want it to be a laptop, because i want something portable, and i'm tired of taking mine apart and setting it up all the time. i'm pretty nomadic and my comp should be too.

2. it needs to be suitable for use with a scanner, digital camera, and (at some point) an mp3 recorder. that is, it needs enough memory to store a sound file here and a JPG file there.

3. it shouldn't be archaically slow.

4. while a Mac would be really nice to have, i'm perfectly happy with a PC. i'm thinking Dell is a good way to go.

things i need to investigate (since i'm technologically illiterate):

* what's a good amount of memory to have on my computer for the purposes i mentioned above? (i don't want to spend a shitload on memory that i don't need)

* what features will give my comp decent speed (i don't have all day for things to load)?

*what things really separate a cheap comp from an expensive one?

that said, i'm leaning towards a Dell Inspiron 1100 Notebook. it's roughly $800. any thoughts?

Comments

Excellent Choice

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Hannah, Gina's Ryan here. Definitely go with the Inspirion 1100. We have about 1.5million worth of Dell equipment where I work and their laptops are very good. (Writing you from one right now). I was surprised the price has dropped that low for something new. It's definitely a great deal, especially with the free memory upgrade (256megs is perfect for what you want to do), and the free CD burner/DVD drive.

What separates expensive computers and cheap computers is length of warranty, graphics/audio hardware, and software.

2.0ghz is plenty fast also. I'm only running 1.46ghz and I'm a designer.

A couple side notes on that 1100 I noticed: When you go to the customize page, it stepped up a few items to raise the price over $900. To get it where you want to be, downgrade the hard drive size from 30 gigs to 20 gigs. It takes a long time to fill that up if you don't have high-speed internet access. The second thing they stepped up is the warranty. This all depends on how safe you feel spending money. To get the price down to around $800 you would need to downgrade the warranty from three years to one year. I haven't seem too many things go wrong with Dell's never laptops, but a few years ago a three year warranty would have been useful. I believe their warranties are extendable, so even if you went with a one year for now, you could probably afford to extend it when that one year was up.

The only thing I would suggest for you is choosing the USB floppy option, since you have information on your current system that you would want on your new one.

And for the anti-virus/security portion, I would strongly suggest Norton Antivirus over Dell's software. I don't know how many times that software has saved Gina and I.

All in all, I'd say go for it! Good luck!

.Ryan.

[dragonwolf-24.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty happy with my toshiba laptop. however, it's a 1998 and i am not up to date with whether or not toshibas are still good or not. [after all, i have a 1995 gateway i sing the praises of and i wouldn't recommend gateway to you now.]

my family has had several generations of dell wtihin the past few years and have been very happy with it. Sounds like a good choice on your part. :-)

[byydo.livejournal.com]

My current computer is a Sager NP8886 2.8GHz that I got from Powernotebooks.com. It was about a $3000 machine that only cost me $2200 because of their low overhead. I'd definitely check them out (PCTorque.com sells the same machines for a similar price, and has nice forums too). The only issue you'd have with a less expensive machine is the screen. The new Dells have the Dell Ultrasharp screen, which is pretty much made out of the softened skin of the holy Christ himself. I think that mainly their more expensive machines carry these screens, but I'm not certain. My Sager has a passable screen, but I'm not too fond of the contrast ratio (black doesn't quite look black and the viewing angle could be a little better). The new sagers have a much better screen, though.

For RAM, you need at least 256 megs to ensure that all your programs run smoothly. You should be able to multitask and run memory-heavy programs fairly well like that.



As I was writing this, I checked out the Dell specs. For $750, it's a pretty good setup. The XGA monitor will only go up to 1024x768, and I suspect the contrast won't be super and it might smear a little, but it shouldn't be too bad. The CDRW will be good if you get an mp3 player that uses CDR discs (like mine), otherwise a usb port should be fine. Likewise, it can connect to a scanner, but only a USB one--laptops like this don't have parallel connectors. I'm having a hard time finding the concrete specs on this machine, but it should be fast enough for most of the things you want to do (provided you don't want to play games on it or anything). Dell laptops aren't manufactured by Dell, but rather by a third party (actually two different OEMs design and build the Dell laptop line), so Dell's legendary shitty-quality hardware doesn't apply here--their notebooks are, surprisingly, pretty good. If you buy from Dell, *just* buy this cheap $750 dollar system. This is the best deal for your money. If you want to get extras that raise the price more than a hundred bucks or so, definitely consider one of the sites I mentioned above. Dell's pricing plan involves offering the bare-bones systems for a discounted price but utterly raping you on any upgrades.

More expensive laptops have larger screens, better screen quality, faster processors, faster video chips, more RAM, faster internal architecture, larger hard drives, built in floppies/CDRW-DVD or DVD-RW drives, internal bays for extra hard drives, extra optical drives, TV tuners, larger keyboards, more ports for USB devices, Firewire ports, super-fast USB 2.0 ports, wireless networking cards, more types of external connectors, built-in ports for digital camera memory cards, video- and tv- outputs, and a number of other enhancements. These, of course, are not necessarily features that you need or want to pay for.