Laptop Recomendations?

[luwigie]

I am looking into getting a laptop. I currently am a student, so battery life and price are the two main factors. I have put together a list of all of the laptops that I have been thinking about buying.

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I have a few questions:

1) Are there any manufacturers that I should be looking into that I left off of the list?

2) Which computer will provide me with the longest battery life?

3) Which computer in your opinions would be the best value?

4) Any other general suggestions?

I posted this on DSLR vith very limited response. Hopefully I can get more responses and useful information here.

Thanks!

[Swimmer]

This can be once of the hardest decisions you will make! I went through this just before I left to school and I was set on an HP but then thought about IBM then Toshiba, and finally i got a dell... I would say away from Gateway/Emachine... The quality has gone down hill since the merger and I have only heard of problems with those systems.. That doesnt mean that you will not enjoy one...

I personally looked at the HP 5000z & 7000 series, IBM T-42, Toshiba Terca M2, Dell 8600 & 600m... I was in love with each one but when it came down to it I found that the Dell 8600 was the best fit for me... It has a 15.4 inch WSXGA+ screen, 1.8 Dothlan, ATI 9600 Pro graphics, 60gig 7200rpm hard drive, wi-fi, dvd/cd-rw, and I get about 4.5-5 hours per charge.. That is doing something fairly basic.. not playing games.. there is no laptop out there that can play games and last for over maybe 2 hours.. The only down side is it is about 7.5 lbs fully loaded and is a little big... The main selling point was the Centrino platform!! No other platform for the notebook is better in my opinion.. AMD doent have the battery life or the proformance.. my 1.8 ranks around a 2.8-3.0 Intel P4..

The best idea is to go around to the local retailers play around and find what you like... I found that most of the wide screens at the retailers were limited to 1200x960.. that just want good enough for me.. I am currently running 1650x1080 native.... Also plan to spend some money in a good pair of speakers.. no matter what brand you buy, hp is the exception, have really crappy speakers..

notebookforum.com is a great place to start..

Looking at your specs.. I would say that the hp is your best bet! it is centrino based which is going to get you more battery life in the long run.. Also if you are going to be buying it through your school see if your school has a manufacture deal.. I know that Purdue give 15% off on top of current offers.. so I got a $2700 for about $1950 that came with 4 years of on site tech support and their protection program.. Just surf..

[luwigie]

The ze4900 series as configured isn't centrino based is it? It's a Celeron M.

I am, sadly, still a high schooler. I type everything, however. I previously have been using a Dell Axim X5 with an add on keyboard, but that was tedious to type on due to the size, and my Axim has since suffered a non-recoverable screen injury which would cost too much to fix I was thinking that instead of dumping another 200-500 dollars into a PDA, I may as well get a laptop. I'm sure that it will last me till' I get to college in two years, though I will probably have to replace the battery by then.

I guess school discounts are out for me, so I am looking at the straight retial price.

Thank you for the response swimmer. I will look into notebookforum.com, but I would still appreciate any feedback that the members here have to offer.

Thanks

[Swimmer]

Ahh... i see it now.. Intel has redone its naming standard again...

[Shug7272]

I have a Compaq LT that I got at best buy a few months back and have loved it. I have 2.6g, 512ddr, 40gig, 15inch monitor, cdrw/dvd, Radeon 340m64shared mem, guess how much I paid..... guess.... your gonna think Im lying, brand new I paid 599. No lie, they were on close out or something and I didnt really want compaq but have loved it. Runs great no probs at all. and the graphics card is pretty good it puts up nice stats on FF11 and Sims 2, neither require alot of power but great for a laptop. Good luck with the hunt.

[Cobra]

u should get one that fits your life best: If you're a gamer, get one with lots of ram and a good processor; if you're more of the type who is going to use you're computer mostly for school and surfing the web, get one with a good hard drive because you might be storing papers and files and stuff on it; if you're like me and do a lot of customizations to your desktop (like icons and themes and visual styles and stuff), then i suggest getting one with as much hard drive as possible because those files may be small individually, but neglect cleaning them out every once in awhile and they'll build up.

personally, i liked the Gateway M520CS Plus on your list because it offers a good amount of RAM, priced about the same as most others on the list, had a nice sized monitor, and i have a crappy gateway for home, so im constantly calling their support and generally problems are fixed quickly.

but thats just me, and i dont know all that much- all i really know is that my school provides me with a dell latitude d600 and it sucks. big time. its still better than my home computer, but thats not saying much.

[Cobra]

o yea, that is very smart considering battery life because you don't want to have to constantly recharge it- my dell has like no battery life- only like 3-4 hours. but that may or may not be that it has another battery slot and the school was either too cheap to pay for another battery, or they purposely didn't get it because they don't want us playing games and stuff... stupid school- i cant install games i bought legally but my friends get to install their illegal games...