Buying a Laptop

Techs/Experts please help.

[Buzliteyear]

Okay, I was pricing laptops today.

I am looking at the Sony Vaio w. the following specs:
Pent 4
538 Processor
1MB L2 Cache,
3.2 GHz,
533 MHz FSB
DVD/CDRW
80 GB Hard Drive
etc.

Any feelings on this computer? I have a price of $1299.

If not, any other suggestions? Thanks.

[Red_Eye]

What do you want to use the laptop for? Have you considered centrino with a mobile processor it will give you a better battery life. Pentium 4's eat batteries. Also How much ram do you have what graphics card and what sie screen.

I have just purchase a Dell
1.7GHz Pentium Mobile
Centrino with wireless built in
512 MB Ram (should have got 1GB)
40 GB HD (Should have got 60 GB)
DVD/CDRW
15.4" widescreen with 1680x1050 screen Which is great for web design as I get alot of screen space
Also it has a 64MB graphics card, which helps with the graphics
Also it has a 3 hour battery life.
This is quite a large laptop which is fine as mostly I use it as a desktop replacement. However I am quite often mobile and this is where having a good battery life is important. My last laptop was a pentium 4 which only had a battery life of one hour.

Hope this helps

[txbakers]

looks like a good deal!

[Buzliteyear]

What do you want to use the laptop for?

Basically, I want to be able to build web pages (MS FP), do online research, and write articles. I need something that I can use all over my house and in the car. Thanks.

[faltered]

I've heard bad things about the Sony Vaios. My BF had to prepare 400 of them for a school district last summer, and about 25 had to be sent back for various reasons.

HP/Compaq has awful tech support, in my opinion.

I just purchased a laptop from Dell very similar to the one RedEye posted about. Still waiting for it to get built and ship.

I like the Dells, mainly because you can usually catch a sweet deal and get yourself an accidental damage protection plan. Mine will come with 4-years accidental damage, plus premium coverage. Mine was $1,100 total. 1.8Ghz processor, 40Gb hard drive, 512Mb ram, 128Mb video card, 15.4 screen, dvd/cd-rw, wireless card, ethernet, 4 usb ports.

[rocknbil]

Dude (or dudette) get a Dell. :-)

I went through this about 8 mo's ago buying a laptop for my daughter who was stationed in Iraq at the time. When compared for the same or similar processor speed, HD, features, expandability, warranty and product support, and most importantly price, Dell came out ahead in every instance. Additionally Dell still uses quality components in comparison with many others that use bargain-basement HD's and components.

[javahava]

another reason to get a dell; if you use one of their promotion codes, which you absolutely should do, you can save a significant sum of cash. search for "dell coupon" on any search engine, and you'll get a bunch of promotional codes for various laptop deals for the week. I saved 35% (about a grand) getting a souped-up inspiron 9300 for 2K instead of 3K (it was a coupon for purchases over $1999). i doubt you'll find discounts as big for a laptop around $1300, but you'll still probably find something decent.

[Red_Eye]

If you are going to be mobile with this laptop I would definatly go for centrino with builtin wireless. If you get the option go for the wireless card that offers 802.11 b/g compatibilty as they are better you will get more range. I would say get the biggest hard disk and most memory you can afford, make sure you have window xp pro (this has iis the home verion doesn't). Stick with a pentium mobile processor (again you will get better batterylife). As far as brand goes for I chose Dell as a good balance on price and quality. When it comes to laptops I would always stick to a well known brand. IBM tend to built very high quality robust laptops but you pay for it. HP are also good.
My last laptop was base on one of the mass market cassis and quite cheap only lasted 3 years (which I know is about the average) the screen has failed and they wanted a lot of money to put it right so I bought a new one.

[Visit Thailand]

Isn't Pentium M a step up from Centrino?

Anyway I also would go with a Dell, Samsung would be second and then a Sony third choice.

What I like about the Dell is you can pretty much totally customise it.

Do look into the Pentium M v's Centrino because I was lead to believe that the Pentium M is the new mobile technology (longer battery life etc).

[Red_Eye]

Centrino is the underlying techology of the motherboard it is designed to be used with the pentium M mobile processor. The centrino provides the builtin wireless lan capability, better battery life (this works by throttleing back the system when only in light use)also inludes the intel 915 express chipset which has a load of cool features.

[The_Doctor]

I almost bought the same lap top a couple months ago. It is a great deal. I opted for the HP Pavillion zv5000 and I am not disappointed with it all. I would say it was probably the best overall value that I found a couple months ago when I bought it. I looked at everything the market had to offer including some incredible deals that Dell had going on at the time but nothing good touch the value of the zv5000. I also got $200 in rebates at the time which made it an easy choice.