Need you input on a laptop

[Surgeon General]

I was not sure if I should put this here or in the trding post forum but I figured since I am not selling anything I should put it here. I am sure a nice mod will move it for me if need be.

I have been thinking of purchasing a new laptop for my birthday.
Costco will have a toshiba laptop, with a celeron 1.13, 256 mb ram, 20 gig hd, dvd, nic, 14.1 screen for $899.99.

I am intrested in what anyone that uses a laptop on a regular basis thinks of the features on this one. Any input would be great.
I am also guessing that this little baby would put out what? maybe 4 or 5 wu a day maybe? :D

[dicki]

well i've used the 800mhz version of that with 128mb of ram (everything else was the same) and all in all i was quite impressed, it worked well... was pretty quiet, tv out was good... speakers left a bit to be desired but its a laptop so what do you expect! build quality was excellent as well. for $900 (£650???) it sounds an absolute bargin.

dicki

[lechumbl]

Hi Will,

I also migrate laptops at work, and the Toshiba is a fine system, for the money.
Yes, the speakers lack a little, but it is a laptop, and you will not get concert sound.

For the bucks, I say go for it.

Nice thing about Costco is, if ya don't like it, you can take it back, no questions asked.

Take care...........

[mdzcpa]

All I use at work is laptops, and, for the money, that laptop you're looking at appears to be a good deal. If you want affordable portable computing, that may be the ticket. I've been happy with our toshibas at work.

[Farabomb]

I think Hitaichi just released a watercooled laptop.

Linky (http://www.hitachi.co.jp/Prod/comp/OSD/pc/flora/prod/note/flora270wnw4/index.html)

Linky2 (http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1345/020718hitachi/)

You'd be the man with that toy.:D

[WesM63]

The products are equipped with a 1.8GHz mobile Intel 4 processor, 128M bytes of RAM, a 20G-byte hard disk drive and a 15-inch (37.5-centimeter) color TFT (thin film transistor) LCD (liquid crystal display), and are priced at ¥341,000 (US$2,941). The products can be customized to connect via Ethernet, a modem or an IEEE802.11b interface.

Thats a pretty hefty price tag.. but then again us o/c will pay anything.

[Surgeon General]

Thanks a lot for the input guys. I will be @ costco on Aug 26 with my check card in hand :D

[Surgeon General]

Originally posted by dicki
tv out was good...
dicki

So it has a vivo feature?

[4.6POWER]

hmmm.. I've had my eye on some laptops for a while. I don't know much about the celeron... but I know you could find a name brand laptop pIII 700-800mhz for under $1000. I would assume thats more power than the celeron, but then again... if your going to just be doing wu on it, maybe look into one of the new desknotes... their cheap and pack a LOT of power. P4 2.0Ghz or a nice XP... they are in the $1300 range from ecs also. Good luck man, & Happy Birthday!! :bday:

PS don't forget to check out ebay!! Dell pIII 500-700 range are about $500!! with 14.1 inch screen and all... 6g hard drive, some 64-256mg ram. anyway.. take care.

[Surgeon General]

Well it's just about a done deal. My bro just gave me $1,400.00 that he owed me. I was not expecting that money for a while. I will be at the costco door august 26 with $$$$ in hand :) (just 31 days away:D )

[Player0]

Hi surg,

I work for a company which orders a new laptop about every 1-2 months, so I've tried them all out :) Toshibas are some of the cheaper ones we have (we give them to the silly marketing people who don't know any better ;), but they do work okay. I beleive our two toshibas are 800mhz PIIIs. They seem fast enough. They just seem very heavy and 'plasticy'.

My absolute favorite is IBM. We have some T series and X series at work that are just amazing machines. The X series weighs like 3 pounds, its so comfortable. Small screen though.

Im currently sitting on my couch typing on an IBM 600E thinkpad. Its an older model I bought off of Ebay for christmas last year. I got it for $600. Came with 128m of ram, 13.3" screen, 6g hd, and a PII300. I installed an optimized version of Win98 on it, and it runs great. I have all my Snes, Genesis, Atari, Mame, NeoGeo, etc emulators on it, and I hook it to the TV and stereo, attatch a couple USB joysticks, and it makes a perfect Emulator Console :) I have a NIC on it, and I watch TV and type on the internet. It has a DVD player, so when I go on trips or long drives, I can watch movies or divx cds. Not bad for a 300mhz CPU! DVDs dont skip a beat, although they will if I install Windows98 without optimizing it and stripping it down.

The most important part is the screen I think. Get as big of a screen as you can. It makes life so much easier. Having the fastest CPU may not be as important. I wish mine was faster, but since its mostly an internet box, or the occasional office app or emulator game, anything over 500-600mhz would be overkill. Faster CPU also means your lap will get hotter faster, and thats not very comfortable after a while.

Dont be scared of buying outdated models. There are a couple sites online that sell older laptop models. They arent the fastest CPU. But the screens generally arent different. Save the extra money and invest it in something like more ram, or a second battery, carrying case, etc.

I lost my train of thought now...hehe :)

[dicki]

Originally posted by Surgeon General


So it has a vivo feature?

no video input just video out (composite) and that worked like a charm... used to watch dvd's off the laptop onto my 29" telly and it looked sweet

dicki