looking At A New Laptop

wowzerzs....i never knew there were so many problems with notebooks, I've been looking at mac books, though there out of the equation, as i'm planning to purchase a mini


Since this laptop, is mainly for around the house use, and wont see sunshine so often, I'm not hugely concerned about wear and tear


Perhaps, I'll go to a few stores, and check them out

Ryan

 

When it comes to laptops you want to take into consideration:

Heat production (some get so hot that they become unstable after 3-4 hours)
Weight
Hard drive = Standard is 4200rpm in laptops, but 5400 is recommended
Video card: Upgradeable or not? Also, avoid Intel Xtreme cards like the plague
Battery life (AMD eats more power then Intel btw)
Vent location (if it's on the bottom you can't use it on your lap for long)
Ports: make sure it has the ones you want, cause you'll be stuck with them

On top of those you should know that different companies underclock the video cards for different ammounts (to fake better battery life). Toshiba for instance underclocks Radeon200m cards by 100mhz, but HP underclocks them by only 50mhz.

Things to know about different brands:
Toshiba = Significantly underclocks video cards.
HP = Most models weigh a lot
Vaio = Price is much higher then comparable laptops from other brands.
Alienware = Any model over 2 years old becomes unstable due to the heat after 2-4 hours.
Acer = Not designed for games.

 

Hehehehehehehe


I went for the one i originally posted...Since it wasnt much extra, i went for an extended 2 year warranty too...


I've only played around with it for a bit, but im quite impressed. The screen compared to a crt,is quite nice, it has a pretty good pare of speakers, that are quite loud. keyboard feels a little awkward at first, namely as im resting my palms on the unit itself, the only ports it lacks is a ps2 port for a mouse, but im not overly concerned about that, What i noticed the most, is that it has 3 removable panels underneath, presumably for ram, hdd, and possibly graphics...The screen feels a bit flimsy, but seeing as i've never owned a laptop, thats to be expected....Overall, damm, i like this thing

As for cooling issues, the vents are positioned on the rear side, and the bottom, though i plan to make a cradel, that will give it better ventalation and support...

Its kinda sad to think, that my main office computer, which was top specs when we purchased it 2 years ago, is now outclassed in most departments by a entry level notebook......


Cheers!!

Ryan

 

I'll throw in my supoprt of HP laptops. I've had two of them and never had any down time. That's with running my internet business on one for 3 years non-stop. Almost literally non-stop...heh.

All the new laptops get hot. It's probably something to do with the more powerful chips in them. Same with batterly life. You're lucky to get 90 minuets these days. I wouldn't let that affect your choice since you're going to find that as a common theme.

Will your laptop be mobile or just at your desk? They have laptops that are known as "desktop replacements" that are mobile but are mostly designed to stay in the home. They have the 17" screen and more multimedia functions.

You'll find that people will either love or hate brands. A friend of mine had a Dell and could never get it to work to his liking. I think PCs just are lemons sometimes. If you talk to someone who had a lemon he'll tell you to run screaming from that brand. Talk to enough people and you'll hit every major brand.

 

This is especially true with laptops, since in generally they have a much higher failure rate than desktops. Given the internal designs change so regularly for all brands, any recommendation based solely on brand should be taken with a pinch of salt.

 

The day after, and im still quite excited, although the battery seems to max out at 2.5 hours, which is average. The wireless was a breeze to setup.....and speaking of breeze, man, this thing gets warm. I notice it most, near the touch pad, and below the keyboard. I was wondering, if there are any good solutions out there to cool it down a bit, perhaps one of those cradle style things, with a built in extra fan?


Also, since i seem to be surely over looking it, does anyone know where i can adjust the settings for power consumption, ie screen brightness, etc?


Ryan

 

Those settings will be in the BIOS. Press delete at startup (or possibly F2; follow the instructions)

Most laptops also ship with some kind of software configuration editor for Windows.

 

Screen brightness should be pressing the FN key plus the brightness up and down key. Same for sound and things. Its like that on alot of laptops.

 

ahhhh...much better, thanks paulo, the manual never really went over all tgese littl tricks...


Ryan