Thanks for the 1st part of the comments! :) That actually has helped. If I go with someone other than Dell, it brings up the question. What do I need? What is the standard or norm? My technical purchasing department put out a handy little brochure that has some guidelines that I can follow. Apparently at least 512 MB of RAM and 30GB or higher HD. I was definitely thinking along the lines of 40+ so that's not too shocking. Is this reasonable? Intel is THE processor to look for? Or is that just because their commercials are on TV every 10 minutes? What do we think of HP? Am I obviously picking the brains of people who hopefully know more than me rather than doing my own real research? (Yes totally)
For the record, we (being me) officially hate Sony products and despite the fact that Jakob is a Sony product, we (being me) will not purchase another Sony product. Ever. And while Jakob was a refurbishment, if you were to scroll through the archives to about March of last year and the Peeves blog to Dec/Jan of 02/03 you'll find out why I am not itching to do refurbishment again. I have had too many problems. It is probably 100% attributable to the place I purchased it from and who held my warranty - In NEW JERSEY, but it has left a sour taste in my mouth for refurbs. Right out of the gate there was a problem (not blogged about) and when V & I opened up the memory chip spot, there written in tape across the chip in my computer were the words "bad chip." And the company had good ratings with shop MSN, but apparently the good raters were all people who worked there or something.
2 comments:
Those requirements sound reasonable to me. I think if you play fancy games you also need to inquire about the video card.
I would recommend Dell or IBM for a laptop. HP is ok, but their customer service isn't as good as the others, their prices aren't that great (more comparable to Gateway), and their designs are still pretty basic [although slightly better than Dell].
If you are playing games like the Sims, you really don't need to worry about the video card much. Gaming on a laptop isn't usually a great experience due to the power contraints and component prices.
IF [IF IF IF] you planned on playing high end games like Quake, Halo, Half-Life [or whatever other crud is put out these days], then AlienWare is the place to shop... but you are NOT playing those games - right? :)
Pretty much any standard laptop from Dell, IBM, or another vendor should be fine for your specs.
You might want to consider a CD burner if you like listening to music elsewhere. A DVD player should be standard.
The key with the harddrive size is storing digital music [ripped CDs or illegal downloads ;)], digital video [if you have a digital video camera], and photos.
I take a lot of pics, so that uses up space, but still only talking about 2GB and I take a LOT of pics and that is 5 years worth. Music on the other hand can easily take up 10-20GB (50-60mb per CD). Video editing is the killer - do you have a video camera?
If you plan on doing video editing, then I would DEFINITELY encourage you to go with Apple.
btw - you can always buy an Apple laptop and run Windows on top of it. It would be another $60-70 for Windows and the emulator [I have connections ;)] but that would allow you to run all of your existing stuff and enjoy the fruits of Apple [no pun intended].
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