Laptop Question

[Azlan]

I have an old Toshiba Sattelite that I've left plugged in for almost it's entire life so the battery has completely lost it's ability to hold a charge.  It doesn't bother me as much since I don't really take it anywhere.  It was a stopgap between old and new computers.

I have a really old one on a shelf with an old AMD K6 233 CPU.  After a while I noticed the battery did not hold a charge anymore and I had kept it plugged in for its entire life... it still is at that.

[Shadrok]

I think I'll go with a 4 or 6 cell battery and duo cores
Now to pick a brand.




Dell offers XP on theirs with no difference in price to Vista.

Gateway though charges $188 to change it from Vista to XP.

Acer has two on their site but from the looks of it I think they're sold out.

Toshiba has some with XP

HP (Compaq?) has some with XP




The ones I'm looking at are

The Dell Vostro 1000 starting price $449

The Toshiba Tecra starting price $1,199.00

The Compaq Presario V6000TX starting price $718.99

[Ryudo Lee]

I'd recommend the Compaq.  HP is surprisingly good at laptops.

[superluser]

NOOOOO!  Not HP!  They destroyed DEC!  Take their calculators, but please, not their computers.

Toshiba is very good (but it is the most expensive), so I don't know what to tell you.

[Ryudo Lee]

Even back in the day when Compaq was it's own company, they made good laptops, and I think that HP is continuing that with their current line of Compaq laptops.

[superluser]

Even back in the day when Compaq was it's own company, they made good laptops

Well, Compaq did invent the x86 portable.  Joining with HP could only reduce their quality.

[Shadrok]

Well, Compaq did invent the x86 portable.  Joining with HP could only reduce their quality.

I was talking with a friend about the Compaq and he was saying that they were now low end HPs.

I'm leaning towards the Toshiba Tecra though.

[Tapewolf]

I'm using a Toshiba Portege 4000, which according to Google means it's about six years old and still going strong, apart from the battery.  If the Tecra is as well built, you'll have no problems.
Something like the Portege would be good for Brun too - more than he needs, in fact.

[Azlan]

I recommend the Compaq.  Mine is slim, functional and reasonably decent looking.  Its not tremendously heavy, but its not super light either.  If I pop open the case, I'll let you know how the guts are thrown together.  I have to do a walk through for our laptop repair techs, so I might submit one of my Compaqs for review.

[mini-lion]

http://www.laptopshop.co.uk/compaq_hp-tablet_tc4400_rh570et-tablet_pc-2-t2.htm

tablet laptops for the artist without a pencil, or the architect on location

Compaq Presario V6000TX series i think would best suffice and be future proof for say 7months,  Tecra A8-S8513 series seems like overkill. I currently own a hp laptop which is a pavillion dual core, gig of ram and runs very nice when i am writing up notes.

to work on art

i would suggest looking into a screen with something a bit more to it, mines got something like ultra bright which makes the screen look much nice when working on and makes colours more crisp.

[Fuyudenki]

I actually just did some tech maintenance on a couple of Compaqs.  One Presario, one laptop.  I'm really, really impressed with the "Support" area of the HP website, had all the files the specific models need that didn't come pre-loaded on Windows XP, even for the old Evo N610c that I've got sitting next to my desk, and need to take back to the pawn shop I'm repairing it for.

Easiest $70 I ever made.  Rough calculations, I think I averaged to something like $30-40 per hour today.

[Brunhidden]

I now have the urge to get my old typewriter, complete in its carrying case, find the first person using a laptop in town, and plunk down next to him to start hammering out some text.

Beat a man with the strength of you argument, not with the strength of your arm.

[Tapewolf]

I now have the urge to get my old typewriter, complete in its carrying case, find the first person using a laptop in town, and plunk down next to him to start hammering out some text.

Awesome.  Maybe I should get one for my collection of arcana... come to that, I wonder what happened to the one my parents had?  It got kind of retired after they took up wordprocessing in the 80s.

[Brunhidden]

It hearkens back to the days when typing was a valuable skill, you needed to hit the keys hard, get it right the first time, and still go fast enough to compare to a modern typist.

the biggest upside is the musical cachophy they produce as you happily type, the biggest downside is trying to figure out the typewriter ribbon when it dries up.

undo, delete, and spell check are for rubes.

One of the great mistakes that can be made by a man of my age is to get involved in athletic competition with children--unless, of course, they are under six. And even then, stay away from hide-and-seek.

[Shadrok]

I had ordered the Toshiba on the 28th and they gave me an ETA of Aug 14th. Well long story short, it came today. 




Also the screen color looks to be good with only a slight difference in color (but I think a lot of it has to do with it being a flat screen) .



In case anyone wonders what the difference is like, compare #c9a588 to #c5a57f

[Fuyudenki]

Try recalibrating the color on your monitor.  here is a good website for adjusting your brightness and contrast, it's surprising what a difference it can make.

[Shadrok]

Try recalibrating the color on your monitor.  here is a good website for adjusting your brightness and contrast, it's surprising what a difference it can make.

It's also surprising what a difference tilting the screen a little can do 

Cause that's what was causing most of the color difference. I think I have it set now.