a question before i buy a packard bell laptop

i really like the specs vs price for this notebook from packard bell

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/product...ber=P920400001

I've always preferred sony over anything else, i've bought two sony
vaios in the past and sorta considered packard bell a cheap brand, but
i guess with specs like this for this price i can be easily
persuaded... i would've thought such a machine would've cost over
£2000...

I use the machine as a desktop replacement... I hardly ever take it
out... so battery life, weight, and size are really ot that
important... as long as it's not a desktop...


has anyone used this notebook, or other notebooks from packard bell...
what's your experience with them please...

does anyone know of any alternative models from other manufacturers
that offer such good specs for a similar price...

"Mike Henley" wrote in message
om...
i really like the specs vs price for this notebook from packard bell

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/product...ber=P920400001

I've always preferred sony over anything else, i've bought two sony
vaios in the past and sorta considered packard bell a cheap brand, but
i guess with specs like this for this price i can be easily
persuaded... i would've thought such a machine would've cost over
£2000...

I use the machine as a desktop replacement... I hardly ever take it
out... so battery life, weight, and size are really ot that
important... as long as it's not a desktop...


has anyone used this notebook, or other notebooks from packard bell...
what's your experience with them please...

does anyone know of any alternative models from other manufacturers
that offer such good specs for a similar price...

Seeing as you're used to using Sony's you probably won't notice much
difference with Packard Hell as they're both on a par as regards quality and
customer service - ie ****e

Stick to the 4 major brands - IBM, Compaq, Tosh or Dell if you want a decent
laptop.

--

Apophis

I got a Packard Bell 3Ghz laptop from, of all places, PC World. Cost £2999,
but is a top spec machine. I can honestly say it's the best laptop I've
used. Only one criticism, there is only one memory slot, so to upgrade to
1G, I had to basically throw away a 512K chip

David McCallum

"Mike Henley" wrote in message
om...
i really like the specs vs price for this notebook from packard bell

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/product...ber=P920400001

I've always preferred sony over anything else, i've bought two sony
vaios in the past and sorta considered packard bell a cheap brand, but
i guess with specs like this for this price i can be easily
persuaded... i would've thought such a machine would've cost over
£2000...

I use the machine as a desktop replacement... I hardly ever take it
out... so battery life, weight, and size are really ot that
important... as long as it's not a desktop...


has anyone used this notebook, or other notebooks from packard bell...
what's your experience with them please...

does anyone know of any alternative models from other manufacturers
that offer such good specs for a similar price...

On 4 Dec 2003 19:52:50 -0800, (Mike Henley) wrote:

i really like the specs vs price for this notebook from packard bell

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/product...ber=P920400001

I've always preferred sony over anything else, i've bought two sony
vaios in the past and sorta considered packard bell a cheap brand, but
i guess with specs like this for this price i can be easily
persuaded... i would've thought such a machine would've cost over
£2000...

I use the machine as a desktop replacement... I hardly ever take it
out... so battery life, weight, and size are really ot that
important... as long as it's not a desktop...


has anyone used this notebook, or other notebooks from packard bell...
what's your experience with them please...

does anyone know of any alternative models from other manufacturers
that offer such good specs for a similar price...

From my experience of Packard Bell kit, if its cheap its for a good
reason. My mates desktop has the most horrendous front facica for the
case making it a reall effort to eject a disk (you have to drop down a
flap that touches the eject button but had to push the drive tray to
close it).

IMHO go for a Toshiba. OK they arn't cheap for their spec but they are
quite robust. We use them alot at work and its rare to get a defective
one other than the usualy battery replacements. I have one I bought
myself for home use a coulpe of years ago. OK its slow by today's
specs (PIII 1.1Ghz with 256Mb RAM) but it does the job and its only
really hampered by the slow hard drive, but then its not a games
machine and only cost £699 from PC World when the list price was
around £1300 for the same spec machine.

Apophis wrote:
//
Seeing as you're used to using Sony's you probably won't notice much
difference with Packard Hell as they're both on a par as regards quality
and customer service - ie ****e

My first CD-Writer (1997-ish) was a HP. When it died, I took it apart and
noticed it was full of Sony components. Is this common throughout HPs
range of products? It was a crap CD-Writer. Broke down after thirteen
months....one month after guarantee expiration.

--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com

In article , Lee J. Moore wrote:
My first CD-Writer (1997-ish) was a HP. When it died, I took
it apart and noticed it was full of Sony components. Is this
common throughout HPs range of products?

HP Laserjets (the early ones anyway) were built by Canon. AIUI
HP only provided the firmware.

--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk

"Mike Henley" wrote in message
om...
i really like the specs vs price for this notebook from packard bell

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/product...ber=P920400001

I've always preferred sony over anything else, i've bought two sony
vaios in the past and sorta considered packard bell a cheap brand, but
i guess with specs like this for this price i can be easily
persuaded... i would've thought such a machine would've cost over
£2000...


Well, if you are in the London area, you missed out here. When PCWorld
refurbished their Staples Corner branch in November, they offered this very
model for £599, for the first 30 who wanted it on both the Saturday and the
Sunday. It would have meant queueing for hours, but that's life.

I went inside to have a look. It is a lot of kit for the money, especially
for £600, but there is one major flaw. It uses a desktop chip and the fans
are permanently on. In fact, you could hear the fans droning like a small
vacuum cleaner from a distance before you got to the laptop, and this was in
a noisy crowded store. It is not something that I think any sane person
could live with, despite the attractive price. From a build quality,
distinctly average, with an average screen and outdated casing.

I would personally go for a Sony or a Toshiba at the budget end. You can get
VAIOs with DVD writers for under £1000 now, and the black onyx screens are
excellent if you pay a little more. Packard Bell and Compaqs are a false
economy and the noisiest laptops around.

"Apophis" wrote in message ...

Seeing as you're used to using Sony's you probably won't notice much
difference with Packard Hell as they're both on a par as regards quality and
customer service - ie ****e

Stick to the 4 major brands - IBM, Compaq, Tosh or Dell if you want a decent
laptop.

while my experience with sony laptops has not been all that
unblemished, usually something goes wrong with them within a 2 year
period, i don't see why that's the case when they've always been known
for build quality, at least for their other non-computer products.

As for IBM, i can easily imagine that they make wonderful machines,
though i'm a little suprised to hear that toshiba, compaq and even
dell make better laptops than sony. I mean, isn't dell known for
making cheap machines...

Mike Henley wrote:
i really like the specs vs price for this notebook from packard bell

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/product...ber=P920400001

I've always preferred sony over anything else, i've bought two sony
vaios in the past and sorta considered packard bell a cheap brand, but
i guess with specs like this for this price i can be easily
persuaded... i would've thought such a machine would've cost over
£2000...

I use the machine as a desktop replacement... I hardly ever take it
out... so battery life, weight, and size are really ot that
important... as long as it's not a desktop...


has anyone used this notebook, or other notebooks from packard bell...
what's your experience with them please...

does anyone know of any alternative models from other manufacturers
that offer such good specs for a similar price...

This Sony looks about right.
http://tinyurl.com/xxs2

Mike Henley wrote:
//
Stick to the 4 major brands - IBM, Compaq, Tosh or Dell if you want a
decent laptop.

while my experience with sony laptops has not been all that
unblemished, usually something goes wrong with them within a 2 year
period, i don't see why that's the case when they've always been known
for build quality, at least for their other non-computer products.

I seriously considered a Sony but avoided after hearing too many horror
stories about parts availability and questionable battery life. Not to
mention my own experience with their dodgy Atrac software.

As for IBM, i can easily imagine that they make wonderful machines,
though i'm a little suprised to hear that toshiba, compaq and even
dell make better laptops than sony. I mean, isn't dell known for
making cheap machines...

Why so down on Toshiba? They're a reputable company who make good quality
electronics. I didn't really start to take them seriously until about
three years ago. I still have the CD-Writer/DVD combo drive that everybody
back then said "wont last", even if the speed is a little antiquated by
todays standards. And a multi-region Tosh DVD player (SD-220) I purchased
last year is astonishing for its price (from an eye-candy as well as
technological POV). I'm only surprised at the mention of Dell. I'm not so
sure about Compaq since the merger with HP, but surely IBM & Toshiba
notebooks are the most recommended in this ng?

I think Sony quality has nose-dived in the past two/three years. I had a
Sony TV/VCR combo for a bedroom which was replaced three times before the
whole line was recalled and I had to fight for a refund. And two months
ago I bought a Sony Atrac walkman with the most appalling, short-sighted
piece of encoding software ever produced. Like *anybody* has the time to
encode 30 CDs in a single session because there's no 'save' feature; you'd
literally have to have the computer running for days to burn a single disc.
Not to mention the deceitful advertising. 64kbps Atrac files have nowhere
near the sound quality of a 128kbps MP3. I'd rate Toshiba above Sony
anyday...in the present day, anyway.
--
Lee J. Moore
http://cafe-society.com