[rocks.in.my.shoes]

I am looking to purchase a new laptop for college this fall. I think I'm going to go with a customizable Dell Inspiron. The university campus has an all wireless broadband connection so what kind of router, if any, would I need?

Also, I haven't bought a new computer in 5 years. What are the basic specs of today? I was thinking:

1GB memory
80GB harddrive
64MB videocard
24x CD-R drive
no floppy (who uses them these days?)

Please suggest more specs I should consider.

[MarkoDaGeek]

64 mb video card would play just about anything on the market today but if you want to prepare for the future get a 128 MB video card, 64 mb will work fine though, espically if your not into gaming with your notebook and such, also you wouldnt need a router, just get the built in 802.11b card, the college supplies the wireless router to power their wireless access, 1 gb of memory is fine, 80 gb harddrive is fine, everything looks fine, just get the built in WIFI with your laptop, becuase its a good deal, also get a nice screen, dont settle for the XGA or SVGA or whatever comes standard, get the nice UXGA or whatever, its worth the money, if this is going to be a desktop replacement, get it built right and get it fully loaded, then it will last you a lot longer, that is if you have the money to deck it out, you never set a price limit....

[MarkoDaGeek]

also, Sloth is a proud owner of a newer Dell Laptop, he would have a good mini review for ya I bet.

[Thorian]

Get the DELL I sould have bought that Dell and top of the line is 3.4 ghz with hyper threading. Get a P4 dont settle for a celeron it is like buying a mustang cobra and saving money by running on 4 donught spares


but what ever you do DO NOT BUY THAT ALIENWARE POS

I could tell you my Reasons but that would quickly turn in to a 10 page rant.

This post has been edited by Thorian: 07 April 2004 - 09:34 AM

[Trakker]

I would love to hear these reasons.

[MarkoDaGeek]

Thorian has had some bad luck with the Alienware laptops, personally I have heard mixed reviews, and good or bad, they are hella spendy, and not worth it if you ask me, then again im into stuff that looks more professional...


Yeah stay away from celaron, and Centreno's are not really worth it yet, its an awesome technology and they have killer performance but its still not gonna be as speedy as like a 2.4 ghz - and up, pentium 4, unless your going for something with ultra long battery life, then centreno or a pentium M is the way to go.

you should give us more of an idea of what you want from your laptop, do you care about whight ? will you be gaming with it ? how long do you want the battry to last ? there are a lot of dell laptops to choose from, and they got one to fit every need.

[rocks.in.my.shoes]

I don't care about any gaming aspects of the machine. I have had my eye on this one. I'm majoring in Graphic Design and will need enough RAM to handle resource-hogging programs like Photoshop, etc. And I wouldn't mind a decent video card for watching video, but I don't need that to be top notch. A high battery life is needed, but can't it alternatively plug into an adapter/plug outlet? Any determining difference between XP Home and XP Professional? And I will need a couple USB ports as well.

What do you think?

This post has been edited by rocks.in.my.shoes: 07 April 2004 - 12:28 PM

[jaredigital]

that's a nice laptop. although 2" is hella thick for a laptop. oh, well.

[supersloth]

if your looking for long battery life make sure you get the Pentium 4 M. It will help you save battery a lot. I own an inspiron 5100. Overall its pretty kickass. Get the high res screen, i just do coding but doing graphic arts you'll want and appreciate it. Get an extra battery because the more programs you have hogging resources the more it sucks down on your battery. My comp can last ~3.5 hours if its not running programs but it decreases drastically when I game, watch movies, even just type in word.

One thing with dells, make SURE you have the right drivers. I had a problem with mine where I could not use the modem for about a week because the driver disk it comes with is not the right driver on the machine. dell support wasn't very helpful in resolving the matter but their were some knowledgeable people on their messageboards having the same problem that gave me the name of the actual modem in the machine.

I didnt get the floppy either, save the money. cd-r's are so much better as it is, and you don't even need to use cd-rw's to write and delete if you have a good burning program like nero.

I would tell you about the wireless card (i got mine built in) but i have yet to try it out, I got it for same reason as you, college in the fall, and no one around has a connection. i tried a p2p adhoc but that was a lot more of a pain in the ass when it was worth (though we did get the other laptop to read videos from mine, so it appears to be functioning)

[skyhawk133]

www.computergeeks.com has a awesome deal on a refurb HP right now, I was thinking of snagging one. Probably won't until I get my taxes back though.

[Jbssfelix]

My future college lappy:
Powerbook G4
1GB SDRAM - 1 slot
ati mobility 9600 - 64mb (eh)
bluetooth & 802.11g wireless
15" screen


yeah, so i'm a mac lover...sue me.

[rocks.in.my.shoes]

Now I'm looking at printers and scanners...any suggestions? I need something that at least prints 300 DPI (for photos).

[MarkoDaGeek]

the all in ones have gotten better over the years, i remember they used to really suck, my mom has one of them lexmark all in ones, i think thats what chris said he had too, their pretty nice, otherwise i know the HP all in ones are nice, im planing on getting one and i know people who have them, dont get the real cheap ones though, the good all in ones are gonna cost you about $ 199.00


Dell makes a nice all in one, witch is actually the lexmark all in one with a dell logo on it...

[objekt404]

rocks.in.my.shoes, on Jun 14 2004, 07:12 PM, said:

Now I'm looking at printers and scanners...any suggestions? I need something that at least prints 300 DPI (for photos).

This last Sunday, BestBuy had a sale start on a real nice Epson printer (model RX500: print/scan/copy).

However (if you were not a college student), I've found it better to just buy a cheapo Lexmark, run it for a year & trash it (this of course depends on how much you actually use it.) I've yet to own a truely decent printer (but I'm still running an old HP ScanJet 4c scanner (only about 8 years old)), mainly b/c good ones are $$$ (Epson makes some bang-on kit though if you're willing to pay the price...)

This post has been edited by objekt404: 30 June 2004 - 09:29 AM

[darkdog9]

Well if you had gotten the dell (read my thread with similar problem, and total props for the dell 5150), you could get a pretty decent free printer.

another person lost to the art of looking down on windows users...