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Laptop for college....

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DaveSauce

Member
I'm in the market for a cheap laptop.....just something to do word processing on for the moment.......

who makes the best laptops? I'm thinking IBM......I would like to stay away from Dell.....my budget is in the 600-800 range. Yea, I know, I won't get much for that. I don't need a whole lot.....

All I really need is an ethernet card. I just want something to type up notes in class, or to type up a paper while i'm away from my main rig.

any ideas? brand suggestions, website suggestions, etc....any help is welcome, heh.
 
Actually u can get quite a lot in that price range.

U could get a brand new Toshiba (if u want just go look at them at ur closest office depot). Just go for the smaller screen size (screen X size = bigger price).

Or u could look for last years top of the line laptop at this years discounted price (go to manufacturer site and find last years models) if you like IBM, which are very good but pricey.

Most newer laptops already are LAN capable and a lot of them feature integrated Wi-Fi™ (802.11b) for wireless connectivity at home, school or office.

Whatever, stay away from used laptops. Because they are portable, they get bumped and dropped a lot, and once something goes south on one of these, theres no fixing it, everything is to tightly integrated. Get something with a manufacturers warranty still attached .

Anything with a processor better than 500 mhz will solve most of your problems. Forget about games unless u have an external monitor, and even then the best ones come with only 32 megs Nvidea or ATI which sometimes is not good enough for games or out of yuor price range.
 
Well then you don't need something thats brand new. A good 500-800MHz Mobile Intel PII/PIII on eBay runs $200-$700, :)
 
I'm in the same spot. All I need is something to write or take notes on while I'm in the student center or grabbing a cup of coffee. The smaller the better.

One option I'm looking at is buying a WinCE PDA (like an iPaq) and a folding keyboard.

Has anyone else used a PDA for something like this?





BHD
 
I got a nice gateway solo (400mhz cellery) for $300 on ebay (shipped). Might want to check that out. It runds winxp pro just fine, it even plays vcds fairly well.

Ive used one of the older wince pdas- a casio e-100. I actually wrote a 10 page paper on one. On whole, its alright- but you will be much happier with a cheap laptop.
 
What ever u get make shure it has Wi-Fi™ (802.11b). It is a real pain having to look for a network plug to get into the local LAN every 5 minutes.

Actually the IPAQ is pretty cool and much easier to lug around than a laptop. Even a 3 or 4 pounds those things are pain to have to carry. The IPAQ can be your calendar, ur music machine, e-mail and cell phone. Oh yeah, u can also use it write! then just transfer the txt to ur main rig for further editing, etc.
 
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