So, I am wanting to buy a notebook, and I do not know alot about computers...like, I know what processor speed is and such, just not how that reflects into the hardware...things like this.
I have been shopping around for about a week and found this one, it looks nice, I was wanting some opinions on it? I plan on running Linux on my notebook, Ubuntu-Thai/Eng distro. Will be going Dapper Drake when it is done in April!
So? Suggestions,Pointers, Idea?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1138085134598

My budget is about 700-850$
Love-mimi

Plan on doing anything special with it?

I work for Best Buy and we have these notebooks in my store. They're not a bad little piece of hardware.

Ya there is a Best Buy near my campus, and the worker boi was really friendly when I came in to look at some, I saw alot of things, sorry I did not reply to this thread earlier!

Kid Hendrix: Ka, I plan on...running linux, doing homework, and playing lusty, with the rare chance I might play Diablo 2:Expansion, or Dungeon Siege 2, but I really doubt it. Mostly just for Linux/homework/lusternia

Anyone have any more pointers or, better advice?
The people I work with told me Gateways suck (and they are owned by M$...scareh)
love-mimi

Gateway was bought out by EMachines recently. They're alright machines. I asked the Geek Squad guys in my store what machines they work on the most for hardware repairs and they told me they see Dells, EMachines and HP the most.

I've got a dell, but not a notebook, a desktop, it's nice, but of course with Dell's you need to AVOID their printers like a plague, as you can only buy dell printer ink from Dell, on their website, which is a major pain.

My sister had a gateway a bunch of years ago, and had some bad experiances with the gateway people, so no more gateways for us.

Diablo 2:Expansion, always great for mindless killing, I played a demo for dungeon siege 2 and it seemed pretty cool as well, I don't have it though... also Diablo MultiPlayer is annoying as they delete your charactors every 90 days, I lost a lvl 87ish Sorc that way.

Oh you can refill one of the ink syringes; you can get like a pack of them at tesco or any supermarket probably pretty cheap. Or just take it to somewhere like cartridge world for a refill for like a 1/3 of the price, so much cheaper than buying new cartridges.

and messing... it can get messy.

Right now I honestly don't care some much, I just want to make sure I am getting a nice deal on my notebook, cause it will have to last me, as this is basically a little more than a months wages from my future job with my bachelor's degree back home... erk...so hard to be spending so much but I hope it would be worth it.

How are the specs, are they decent?
love-mimi

The specs are pretty decent for a working laptop, if you do want it I suggest you upgrade to around 1gb ram (if you want to play games, use something like visual studio or in general want to use window xp at full graphics or the future windows vista at a decent speed.). However keep in mind that intel mobile videocards are not like a nvidea or radeon in your desktop, not all games will play nice with them and you'd probably have to check info on the game first. Also I don't see the battery life stats there.

So i'll list what I find dissapointing in this laptop

1. ram memory is low
2. doesn't have a DVD-writer

what could be a problem for your intended use:

Video card is one that sacrifices performance for powercost, I personally would prefer this one, but if you want to play newer games you might tend to a laptop with a radeon video card. (also a lot more expensive)

It's pretty solid. Big hard drive (for a laptop), good RAM and L2 Cache (Better than my desktop. I should've looked more into that), and a few extras if you wanted to use it for other things, like multimedia/storage card usage, etc. It's pretty light too so that's always a plus.

I think it'd be great for school stuff. It might slow down if you have too many applications up since you're only working with 256MB of RAM, but not too bad at all.

Edit:


Well, if that's really a problem she could always get one of the new ATI Radeon Xpress on-board graphics (I don't know if ATI made a chipset for mobile stuff yet, but worth a look.).

I don't think a DVD-writer is necessary. What's uh.. your major anyway, Simimi?

Visual studio kills my 1gb laptop too...it's the devil. <.<

my laptop runs the MSDN Visual studio 2005 just fine, though remember to frequently update, it had several memory leaks in the beginning.

/offtopic

What are the specs? My desktop is doing fine with it and I don't have 1GB ram.. yet. I plan on buying some dual channel soon though.

3.4 GHZ Pentium, 1024 ram, 100 GB harddrive, ATI radeon mobile something, HP model ( That means an unnatural big loading thing...thrice as big as those of my friends. ) Not sure which visual studio, but it's not beta anymore. Version ten a little something I guess.

2005 is only visual studio 7.0 and is the one that came out this year

My guess is accually that you have another program in the background that is eating up memory. (spyware, anti-virus, etc.)

Also don't dish HP, those are really good laptops *carreses her HP in a loving manner*. Although mine isn't a big loading thing.

Nah, I have two firewalls up and running. Norton and Zone Alarm, bwahaha.
And okay, 7.0 is the newest version, whatever...we had the beta and now we have a fullversion. I just program with it, I don't care about the number.
and yeah...my laptop is broadscreen or something, 17" and all that nifty things. I had the decision between a car and a laptop...

you realise those all take up memory right. I once had my Mcafee professional take up 800mb ram because it decided I was using my laptop to long. (it was running for 7 days without ever being turned off)

Get an HP. My family has had one for maybe 4 years now, and we love it! It's a desktop though...
And, my dad's work just gave him a realy sick Dell laptop. I love it, he loves it, so it's all good. Trouble is, it's for his work... Ohh well. I'm realy the only one in my house that uses the comp, and sometimes my little sister tries to sneak on when I'm not playing Lusty.
Anyhow, yeah, get an HP. For get what everyone else might have said, and get an HP.

EDIT: J'adore le Diablo 2: Expantion Set! My folks won't let me buy Diablo 2, however. They say being 14 is too young... to Nil with them and their Nazi ways... :mumble:

Don't listen to Ysuran, compaq/hp does have nice computers and laptops, however tochiba and acer has very nice laptops too and might accually be cheaper for the same stuff (though keep in mind Acer's keyboards suck big time)