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Old August 31st 06, 02:11 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
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Default Which Notebook to buy? Intel Centrino, Core DUO, Core Duo 2, AMD Turion, Single Core

Found a good deal. Was told Toshiba's may not hold up well so Compusa
is having a good sale this Labor Day weekend. I had them set aside a
Compaq Presario v5210us Notebook with AMD Turion ML-34.

http://f.chtah.com/i/45/143882431/365630901_NN.pdf

Take care
Patty

wrote:
Thank you all. You gave me some good ideas. I will however wait a few
weeks since my daughter is bugging the heck out of me. She needs to
learn a little patience as well.

Sincerely
Patty
Paul wrote:
In article om,
wrote:

My daughter is bugging me for a laptop. She has some money saved and I
will help with the rest. Basically all she needs it for is high school,
word processing, uploading pictures from her camera, listening to
music, play DVD,s..There will be minimal game playing and if there are
they will probably be web based or small java applets.

Budget is about $800 excluding taxes and warranty protection plan.

I may be wrong but I am urging her at the time of this posting to wait
a few weeks as perhaps prices of laptops will drop when Core Duo 2 hit
the shelves.....I may be wrong but I am trying to buy some more time.

My thoughts on a notebook processor are the following (assuming 512mb
of memory to start, 80gb hard drive, 14/15 inch screen):

Core Duo 2 - Probably not affordable for us at this time.

**Core Duo-would be a good choice I think if I can find the right price
point
**Centrino Single Core-probably a good choice
**AMD Turion 64 ML-3x series seem decent (cannot afford X2 model of
AMD)

-Pentium M, Centrino-No- there is a notebook price I should not pass on
-AMD-Sempron-no
-Celeron-No

Thanks for keeping me straight on this, any recommendations and if I am
sound in my judgment to wait a few weeks as stores get rid of
discontinued/obsolete equipment (as Best Buy told me)....hoping for
newer units and better prices. Of course I realize everything is
obsolete once purchased but I am not willing to wait for Santa Rosa to
come out.

Sincerely
Patty


Since a laptop includes the display, you are shopping for display
qualities as well as other capabilities. As Kony suggests, visiting
local big box stores and looking at the units, seeing how usable the
keyboard is, are important considerations. If the intention is to
take notes in a class with the unit, you might want something with
a quiet keyboard.

In terms of most demanding usage, you might also see if the laptop
in the store is connected to the Internet, so you can test browser
responsiveness on a graphics intensive web site. That will tell you
whether the processor is fast enough for non-gaming usage.

I've never really shopped for a laptop myself, but in poking at
a few units while waiting to find sales people, I was surprised
how expensive I had to go, to get a screen I could live with. I
spend a lot of time trying out displays before I buy one (spent
two weeks looking for an LCD monitor), as I hate squinting at
a cheap screen. To me, the user interface comes first.

Paul