Wanted: a working PC laptop

[DJ Jackalope]

Hi-
wasn't sure where to post this:

i am looking for a working PC laptop. Just something to do homework on, surf the web, run some music programs on (i dont know the exact specs I would need). Your basic basics pretty much.

Just wanted to ask what you peeps may have available and what you want for them.

PM me. Thanks.





(sorry mods, if this was inappropriately placed here!)

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

two questions would likely arise...

1. do you care if the laptop battery works? (i mean, works at all not simply holds a charge badly. there are some of us who likely have a few laptops sitting around that will not function for even a second if unplugged from AC power.)

2. do you have any price range? (those of us with access to purchaser accounts can often score systems in the $500 - $600 range brand new. used systems might run you closer to $400 or so. maybe you see even the $300 range or lower if we're talking zero battery life as mentioned in point #1)

[DJ Jackalope]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

I'm looking for about $450ish...
It's actually looking like I Am leaning towards getting a reburb of a new one and putting new parts in when i can afford them (bigger HD, etc).

So with that..
are there any cheap laptop brands I should RUN from? Emachine and what else? Gateway seems OK, but just on the edge. I just remember what kinds of machines came in when I worked at Geeksquad (most of them were just stupid people w/o virus protection, not hardware.)

[TheCotMan]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

I'm looking for about $450ish...
It's actually looking like I Am leaning towards getting a reburb of a new one and putting new parts in when i can afford them (bigger HD, etc).

So with that..
are there any cheap laptop brands I should RUN from? Emachine and what else? Gateway seems OK, but just on the edge. I just remember what kinds of machines came in when I worked at Geeksquad (most of them were just stupid people w/o virus protection, not hardware.)

So far, anything under the "Home" line for all laptop vendors I've used, sucks. Parts break easily, support means spending a great deal of time on hold, and they just don't last very long. Someone suggested HP Business-line notebooks, which I've not tried yet. (I know their Home line sucks donkey nuts.) However, people that have purchased HP Business line notebooks seem to like them.

The business lines for many vendors have been much better with reliability, support and value. Dell has slipped in this area. Recent experiences have caused me to feel their small business support has gone the way of the Home support of 8 years ago. And Home support with Dell now is even worse than it was 8 years ago.

Here is your mantra:
HomeLineSucks...
Meditate on this. :-)

[0x58]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

If you want a laptop that will stand up to a beating, get a ThinkPad. Also, if you say $450'ish, check with people that do have purchaser accounts, to see if you can get a brand new one for around that price, like Deviant mentioned.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

one brand that i've officially abandoned and actively discourage anyone from buying anymore is HP. my reasons have more to do with policy than with hardware, per se. allow me to explain...

1. HP has all but actively abandoned the corporate/business market. They are focusing more and more on designing and marketing products for home users that are big on flash and sizzle but have very little meat underneath. The included bundled software package is often so bloated and ugly that you need a machete to cut through it. Of course, don't think about wiping and doing your own install...

2. HP has entered into collusion with Microsoft to actively force users' choice of operating system and software. This is done primarily through the use of sneaky hardware tricks. Almost all HP laptops that i've encountered nowadays have the exact same chips and components used in the assembly of hardware for other PCs, but with tweaks to the ROM and firmware that cause the system to barf and fall apart if you don't use approved drivers. The ramifications of this are manifold...

* If an HP laptop comes with Vista, good luck getting any other win32 environment to run. The drivers for video cards, etc. are wired to detect vista on install and fail if it is not present. This is in spite of the fact that the exact same products appear in other systems supporting proper win32 systems like XP. downloading those other drivers will typically not work, however.

* HP laptops now typically come with high-end sound and graphics cards, but these are often intentionally crippled and/or support DRM. Ask any extreme gamer kid in your neighborhood if they've ever had the misfortune of buying HP gear. The video cards (like so many other components) have drivers that will tag the registry in ways preventing some products from running or some driver updates (like nVidia ForceWare) will fail to install properly. A whole sub-culture has popped up on the 'net of gamers who take laptop video drivers and hack the INF files so that they install but appear to windows not crippled as the "GeForce M" family.

For all these reasons and more, HP deserves inclusion in the fucktard hall of fame, in my opinion. They were among the vendors who first pioneered the "we won't ship you any software on disc anymore... it will all come on a hidden 'restore' partition instead" model and they have tried to rob more and more control from the end user ever since.

[xor]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

I'm looking for about $450ish...
It's actually looking like I Am leaning towards getting a reburb of a new one and putting new parts in when i can afford them (bigger HD, etc).

So with that..
are there any cheap laptop brands I should RUN from? Emachine and what else? Gateway seems OK, but just on the edge. I just remember what kinds of machines came in when I worked at Geeksquad (most of them were just stupid people w/o virus protection, not hardware.)

http://www.notebookreview.com/

Is the site you want to go to and get information on all kinds of laptops.

http://www.notebookforums.com

is also another great site.

xor

My personal fav's are Dells because they publish the service manuals and they are upgradeable within reason; memory, cpu, wireless cards, & video cards. ...etc. I've done them all.

[DaKahuna]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

one brand that i've officially abandoned and actively discourage anyone from buying anymore is HP. my reasons have more to do with policy than with hardware, per se. allow me to explain...

1. HP has all but actively abandoned the corporate/business market. They are focusing more and more on designing and marketing products for home users that are big on flash and sizzle but have very little meat underneath. The included bundled software package is often so bloated and ugly that you need a machete to cut through it. Of course, don't think about wiping and doing your own install...

At the risk of incurring your wrath I would like to point out that the corporation I work for just entered a supplier agreement with HP last year for all our workstations (desktop and laptop). I am currently carrying a HP-2510p (former Gateway model).

2. HP has entered into collusion with Microsoft to actively force users' choice of operating system and software. This is done primarily through the use of sneaky hardware tricks. Almost all HP laptops that i've encountered nowadays have the exact same chips and components used in the assembly of hardware for other PCs, but with tweaks to the ROM and firmware that cause the system to barf and fall apart if you don't use approved drivers. The ramifications of this are manifold...
[indent]* If an HP laptop comes with Vista, good luck getting any other win32 environment to run. The drivers for video cards, etc. are wired to detect vista on install and fail if it is not present. This is in spite of the fact that the exact same products appear in other systems supporting proper win32 systems like XP. downloading those other drivers will typically not work, however.

Our agreement with HP is to buy a base image from them and that image comes with Vista. The first thing that happens when they are received is that a new image, XP Pro SP2, is applied. One of our large business units even has an agreement for HP to do the re-imaging and ship to us with the XP image.

For all these reasons and more, HP deserves inclusion in the fucktard hall of fame, in my opinion. They were among the vendors who first pioneered the "we won't ship you any software on disc anymore... it will all come on a hidden 'restore' partition instead" model and they have tried to rob more and more control from the end user ever since.

I respect your opinion tremendously but this is one time where I can't help but hope that you are wrong.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

DaKahuna...

there is a likelihood that HP may be a little better to deal with if they are catering to specific business clients. nearly all of my experience with their products have not been fleet purchases but instead items that people bought as one-offs or in similar small quantities at local retail establishments (and then presented to me and asked to have them made to "work like the machines here at the school/office/etc")

while i do stand by my assertions about their driver foul play (on numerous occasions i've been in conversations with actual HP support staff and been told "we have specifically disabled XP support for that hardware and there are, to my knowledge, no drivers anywhere that you can find that will work properly on that laptop") perhaps they have models that still support business the O/S... or, perhaps the other party with whom you're contracting to XP-ify the systems has greater driver-fu than i do. after all... look what the gamer crowd has accomplished on the video cards of which i spoke... and they're mostly teenagers who stay up all night playing Gears of War and the like.

[DaKahuna]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

Deviant - Everything you said could very well be true and I don't believe for a minute that it is not. The systems that are converted to XP are done either by HP or by our internal IS groups. The interesting thing is that the XP conversion being done but different internal IS groups widely geographically separated and known for not talking to each other.

[Ridirich]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

Compaq is currently owned by HP, but the irony is that Compaq is still sold with the following:

OEM OS Disk
OEM Drivers Disk
OEM Applications Disk

I am running a Presario M2000 and it works great. Had a minor hardware problem, which is to say that the button to release the NIC card randomly one day stopped staying in, and I had to repair that, but the laptop has built-in wireless anyway and I have never needed to purchase the card to increase the range beyond what it already is.

I am picky about what hardware I use. I am AMD/ATI only and this model has a Sempron with an ATI Mobility Xpress 200.

It's built sturdy, and the customer service was pretty good too when I purchased it, so my experiences differ from D.O.'s. Then again this specific PC was in Staples as a demo model and I paid $310 for it.

Also, if I was in the middle of the desert with raging shits and the only paper around to whipe my ass was a Vista box....I'd leave it on the ground and keep walking. Vista sucks. Alot of Compaqs are still XP when you 'shop around', so try not to purchase online.

[DJ Jackalope]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

*does the Asus eeePC coming soon to a Lope near you dance*

Why not? Portable and fun and I think there might be a lot of entertaining possibilities with this laptop format. I got the 4G.

[DaKahuna]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

*does the Asus eeePC coming soon to a Lope near you dance*

Why not? Portable and fun and I think there might be a lot of entertaining possibilities with this laptop format. I got the 4G.

I think you will be happy with it. As long as you are not doing anything that is largely graphical in nature I think you will be very happy.

A recommendation - start shopping around now for some 8GB or 16GB SDHC cards. I use my EEE with an 8GB SDHC card and run the BackTrack3 beta on it, while leaving the default OS that ships with the EEE on the internal STHD Essentially any OS that can be installed on an disk of that small size can be installed on one of those cards and you can simply change cards to change OSs.

[DJ Jackalope]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

Newegg fails at having anything bigger than 4GB SD which sucks. I got an extra gig of ram for it (how many slots does it have?) Should be here on monday!

[bascule]

Re: Wanted: a working PC laptop

The 9" eeepc is the sexiest laptop alive:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/h...9-inch-eee-pc/