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Okay okay, so as some of you might know I will be attending college next year (University of Delaware, to be exact), and so I will be getting a laptop. In any case, I know very little about computers, so I admit I'm a little bit unsure of what's a good computer to get.

Currently, I've been suggested the [link=Dell Inspiron 6000]http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1777825,00.asp" style="COLOR: #40FFFF[/link] by a friend who's a little more tech savvy than I. It does not look like a bad computer at all, but I was looking for more opinions and perhaps other laptop suggestions from others.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

Only thing I'll really mention is the weight.
7lbs may not feel like much but if you plan on carrying it around with you rather than using it as a desktop replacement you may find it bordering on the edges of annoying.

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The life, the love, You die to heal.
The hope that starts, The broken hearts...
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I’m getting tired of starting again, Somewhere new."
[link=*refighting lost battles*]http://babelfish.qwertydigital.com/" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link]

If it will be your main computer, get a decent sized screen and lots of ports so that you can have it fully kitted out.

If its just for text and lugging around, the smaller and lighter, the better.

I'd suggest Dell. We have Dell and Acer here, and one of the acer's has had a massive hardware failure and is generally being horrid. The other one has hissyfits. The Dell just soldiers on.
I also had good experience with the Medion brand when OS for gaming, but they run VERY hot.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

dell's are generally regarded as rubbish if you want to do anymore than just wordprocessing. That one has rubbish graphics, poor processor, slow harddisk, no dead pixel warranty which means they'll deliver it with dead pixels and you'll have to lump it, 2 USB ports will be limiting and I('m not sure what their cooling is like, but if it's anything like my friend's dell, it'll be pants. Oh, and it comes with a rubbish o/s as well, which will want upgrading. oh, and 60g will last you about 5 minutes on a decent uni LAN.


Tbh, unless you need it for lectures, you're much better building a desktop and just using a harness to take it home. You will get much, much better specs, cooling and equipment if you build desktop than laptop. Even if you need a comp for lectures, you're better getting a palmtop of cheap wordprocessing machine and hooking itup to your desktop to file transfer.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

Holy crap, is it that bad? Well, it actually has 4 USB's, but I suppose that doesn't make up for the other things you mentioned. Well, then again, I know very little about computers...

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

I agree with TC completely! If yer just gonna take notes on it, get a palm and a keyboard and move it all on to a decent desktop (either build it or buy one) that has some carrying handles. If you want to build, here's a site that has some decent cases...most of them have windows, handles, lights, shiny blinky thingys, etc...have fun diggin' 'round

I doubt $1000 would buy a decent laptop...atleast not up to my standards. My computer (custom desktop PC) was worth 'round $2500 last time I checked the market...and I'm still planning on upgrading (got a job so I can buy things, getting DSL so I can take out my modem and fit in some cooling stuff, getting a new CPU, etc )...the thing's still not up to my standards...so I doubt $1000 would buy a laptop that's up to them

If yo do buy a laptop, I reccommend a Sony Vaio of any sort...tablets/hybrid's are good too

EDIT - Only 4 USB ports? My computer's got like 15 and it's still not 'nuff

Happy spending

Last edited by PoisonWaffle at 15-Jun-2005 23:26

shini - ultimately it is all up to you. I've had three different laptops in the space of a year (only because I like change, and husband gets my hand me downs - we've got 4 laptops that are ours, and one that my husband has from work for now).

As for what you want. Don't get stuck into just a dell. You can customise your laptop through dell and even gateway. I've owned toshiba, compaq and currently gateway.

All have their pros and cons, its up to you what YOU want it for. Do you want it as a machine just for schoolwork, or do you want to play games on? will you have a desktop machine also?

Answer those simple questions, then check out different vendors - go to a place like bestbuy or compusa, and check out what ones they have. sometimes you can get a good deal. My current laptop is a gateway with a 15" screen, a celeron processor (not the best, but for what I do its fine), 60gig hard drive and 512mb of ram for $800

I do graphics editing, and I have a dedicated machine for that, so i mainly use my laptop for surfing the internet and doing image transfers when i'm on the road.

Figure out what you'll be using it for, and if there are other things you want..

hope that helps.

you can get a 12" ibook for under $1200 with an education discount from the apple online store. and that's with 512mb ram, 80gb hard drive, bluetooth, airport extreme (802.11g internet), and a combo drive (dvd-rom, cd-r/w) and an ati radeon 9200 video chip with 32mb ram. that would be my choice, and in a year or so apple will release rosetta, which will allow you to run most pc programs on the powerpc g4

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

indeed, i mean, if you don't know much about computers, the likelyhood of you wanting high powered whiz bang flashy speedy flatscreen CRT with the uber spesh graphics card and 5.1 surround is rather slim.

I have a desktop cause the laptop just didn't cut it for what I needed at the time. Its got a good graphics card and some flashy lights. Suits me down to the ground. I mainly do research, worprocessing and net surfing and the occasional RPG.


Its for uni. You want lots of space, a clear screen thats easy on your eyes, reliability, portability and security (and something oh-so-run-of-the-mill so you can get help quickly mending it if it breaks or needs tweaking) .


IMO you should forget software bundles. They are an added extra and you really shouldn't base your purchase on that. Hardware purchases should be based on good hardware, not mediocre hardware that comes with good software.






For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

I disagree Calla.

Uni is a chance to meet new people and try new things. I went to uni not too interested in computers, but found that the people I got on with best were the computer people. I also found it frustrating that I couldnt do the sort of stuff my friends were doing cos my pc lacked power. My comp couldnt do LANs, couldnt play games, couldnt even fileshare.

The moral of the story, why limit yourself when you can buy better, especially when you are about to embark on a lifechanging experience?

Unis all provide computer access on campus now as a matter of course, so you might as well not bother if you only want a word processor.

Calla is right to consider fixing. OK, if you're going to uni you really need to learn to do a Windows reinstall before going, it is a necessary skill! However, you can basically consider a laptop written off if it breaks. Better to insure it and for it to have an accident if it stops functioning, cos it'll never be reliable once it's fixed, it will have no second hand value and you dont want to be relying on a knackered comp for your dissertation, etc.
A desktop can be easily repaired, upgraded, have more HD space added, etc. I fix computers at uni for extra money, and I've seen too many people with cheap, knackered laptops which are basically unfixable at a hardware level.

edit: The other problem with cheap laptops is cooling. You MUST have good cooling for it to stand up to university work, especially if you will be doing any sort of analysis (what course are you doing?) another major advantage of desktops is that cooling is much cheaper to achieve. But think about cooling before you buy a laptop!

Last edited by tiny_clanger at 16-Jun-2005 07:12

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

*cough*



Last edited by dude_dude at 17-Jun-2005 02:08

err TC - ALL of my laptops have had great cooling- all for under $1000.

Heck they withstand a heck of alot of abuse from me (you don't want one of my discards ), without fail.

But IF shini wants something later, he can always get something. This seems to be primarily for schoolwork, not gaming and whatever else. Each person is different.

My sister went to college this year and she brought along her toshiba laptop. Every month she would call me almost on the verge of tears with viruses and just weird computer behavior. She told me that everyone who had a windows computer no matter the make (dell, toshiba, sony, etc.) eneded up with a broken computer by the end of the year. They had all used anti-virus software and many of them were very comptuer savvy, but their computers just had soo many problems when attatched to the school system. On the other hand every person who had a mac, their biggest problem was the number of people lining up at their dorm door to use their computer. None of the macs ever broke or received a virus; my sister came home and told us that everyone who had a windows computer was going to buy a mac over the summer (or at least they hoped they could...).

I am a mac user and i have never had any problems. And just from my personal experience and my sister college experience, that mac is the only way to go at college.

Unfortunately I don't know what courses I'm taking; we do our scheduling in like July. I expect I won't be doing anything too high-tech that a computer would be necessary rather than a TI graphing calculator. However, I do plan on only one computer, be it laptop or desktop.

Well, there will probably be some sort of gaming going on... As of yet I'm not sure what, since I've never really gotten into PC games, but since I'm not bringing along my PS2 to college (or a TV...), I might get some games for the PC. However, I might make some small attempts at 3D graphics or Photoshop type things, though maybe not.:%)

Last edited by Shinigami at 16-Jun-2005 15:06

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

err TC - ALL of my laptops have had great cooling- all for under $1000.

I'd have to disagree with you. For a start, there is no such thing as great cooling for a lappy, you will never get it running at anything better than an acceptable temperature.

Also, all the laptops i have seen in this pricerange (£700-£1000) and identical brands to the US, have had poor cooling. You can measure quantitavely how bad it is by testing it. I'm sure you know the damage from poor cooling is cumulative, and in less than a year, you would not notice any significant damage unless you really thrashed the machine in poor environments, but in 12 months, system performance will degrade in a poorly cooled machine, and by 15 months, there will be major system instability, corruption and irreparable damage.

All this is from my personal experience, my decent but budget lappy lasted 6 months of uni use. My shop bought desktop made it, ooh, 3 weeks. My homebuild is still going strong after 3 years and has never been upgraded out of necessity.

As for virus prevention, a decent AV, a decent firewall, regular reinstalls (that's always the main prob, people dont reinstall enough) and common sense will avoid all virus problems. So many virus infections at universities occur because of stupid people not thinking.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

What about ASUS???


They have a good name here in Australia and I have one myself and also one at work. They are great. Not platicy like others and have a good warrenty which is needed and everything else that you might want.

It more comes down to price. After that then look for what you can get. The rest is up too you.

When I was getting mine. I looked for what it has (specs) also weight and battery life. You gotta keep that in mind as that is why you want a laptop for. Portability and well power is not always at you fingertips.

Good luck tho.

I personally wouldn't touch DELL. I have had a Acer desktop and it has had a few problems but they were fixed so they are not too back but only come with a 3 year warrenty.

Warrenty - A computer /laptop with a 3 year warrenty has better components then a computer/laptop with 1 year warrenty. So take this into account as well.

Hope this helps