A Hint About New Computers...

[mwfanelli]

My laptop suddenly died, a terrible HP computer that is only 1.5 years old and nothing but trouble since the first day I bought it. Everything HP builds these days is junk. However, that's not the point!

I am looking at a laptop to replace it. I went to several sites including Dell. Dell will, sometimes explicitly for certain models, sometimes if you call, allow you to choose XP Pro instead of Vista. This is especially true for their "business" computers.

Yeah, I know I'm being paranoid but that's just the way I am with new stuff! Thought I'd let y'all know about the policy and choices.

[Tel]

Acer makes some wicked laptops. Check out the laptops on www.newegg.com

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Su...ebooks-Laptops

[mwfanelli]

Acer makes some wicked laptops. Check out the laptops on www.newegg.com

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Su...ebooks-Laptops

Dell gave me an excellent price, better than the prices on Newegg. 15.4" Widescreen Core Duo, 2 G memory, 120 G hard drive, and 3 year warranty along with the usual stuff one expects. Just $1125 plus $56 for the high sales tax here in Maryland. It was one of those "buy it now or lose it" deals. I hate those kind of deals but went for it anyway. How weak am I?

[Mr Yuck]

pretty weak, but dells are OK

I wouldnt trust an Acer, i've heard too much.

I <3 costco for laptops. 6 months to try out a laptop, if you dont like it for whatever reason you can take it back. At first I thought I wanted a 15.4", then decided it was too big, went down to a 12" and that's too small, so I think i'll settle for a 14"

[Lionheart]

Have you checked out the Toshiba laptops? I love mine, (core 2 duo, 2 GB ram, 200 GB drive, dvd burner, Geforce 7900 GS PCI Express, 256 MB video memory, 17" glossy wide screen, finger print reader) but it's only 2 months old, so reliability isn't something I can vouch for. However, the longest I've had a laptop is 2 years anyway (my trusty if underpowered Panasonic cf-w2 made it just 1 week over 2 years before I replaced it with the Toshiba but not because my Panasonic died, just severely lacking in the muscle department), but the 2 compaq laptops I've had didn't make it past the 1.5 year mark (mobo failure, lcd failure) but my wife's HP made it 4 years before I replaced it with a Macbook Pro (the two batteries were dying, and replacement batteries were more expensive and hard to find than the laptop was worth.).

[mwfanelli]

Have you checked out the Toshiba laptops? I love mine, (core 2 duo, 2 GB ram, 200 GB drive, dvd burner, Geforce 7900 GS PCI Express, 256 MB video memory, 17" glossy wide screen, finger print reader) but it's only 2 months old, so reliability isn't something I can vouch for. However, the longest I've had a laptop is 2 years anyway (my trusty if underpowered Panasonic cf-w2 made it just 1 week over 2 years before I replaced it with the Toshiba but not because my Panasonic died, just severely lacking in the muscle department), but the 2 compaq laptops I've had didn't make it past the 1.5 year mark (mobo failure, lcd failure) but my wife's HP made it 4 years before I replaced it with a Macbook Pro (the two batteries were dying, and replacement batteries were more expensive and hard to find than the laptop was worth.).

My first laptop was a Toshiba. It worked well for two years before the screen died followed by a hard drive failure. I was looking at a Toshiba at Wal-Mart (their warranties are very cheap online) but it was locked in at 1 Gig memory. Yeah, I know I could upgrade that but I know I'll never get around to it!

As for Dell, I have used Dells in the past. My very old desktop is still flying fast and fine at home. The only problem was in the first few weeks when it had a noisy fan that a Dell guy came to my apartment to replace. The school uses Dell and we've had excellent results with them. They can be a bit more expensive (but not that much) but the service is always there.

I never considered a MacBook. The software I need just isn't available on the Mac and I have no intention of running Windows as well to get what I need!