Re: Off topic: Need cheap new laptop, any suggestions?

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Lisa Kleinholz wrote:

> My daughter's Dell Inspiron laptop is dying a slow death. With no money and great urgency, she is
> looking for a new one. Has anyone on the list bought something recently that is low priced and
> reliable (and smallish)? Mostly for word processing, web access, photos, & iTunes music.

Having gotten a new laptop in Oct. 07, I'll presume to give some
advice.

1. You really need to see and feel the machine before buying,
because two of the biggest issues with laptops are screen size
&nd resolution and keyboard. With so few brick and mortar stores
around Staples, Office Depot, MicroCenter) that gets difficult.
And I think Lisa once told us she lives in the boonies? (N.B.,
once you've found acceptable screens and keyboards someplace
physical, write down the make and model numbers--carefully:
manufacturers have a gazillion models with similar numbers)--and
see if you can get it cheaper from a reputable on-line merchant.)

2. Don't accept anything with less that 1 Gb of RAM. Even on XP
Home, it crawls with less.

3. Other questions to consider:
3.1 Do you need long battery life?
3.2 Is weight a consideration?
3.3 Will it need to connect to a wired network?
3.4 How will it access the Internet?

The new class of Netbooks are cheap and lightweight, and a few
have long battery life. But their CPU (the Intel Atom) is slow
and underpowered by today's standards. You don't want to try
photo editing or anything else processor- and graphics-intensive
on one. But if all she needs is e-mail, Web browsing, and word
processing (esp. if she learned how to use lean and mean Xy), one
would be adequate. Note that they don't have CD/DVD drives, so
backup would have to be either to USB or some kind of a network
connection, either through the Internet or a wired LAN. (If the
latter, you want to check if it has an Ethernet, or CAT 5, port;
if it doesn't, I believe there are USB to Ethernet adaptors
The July PCWorld magazine has a rundown of the latest Netbooks
(findpcworld.com/62994), and ComputerShopper.com (they've ceased
paper publication) probably has lots of reviews, if one can find
them.

RadioShack sometemes has Netbooks dirt cheap if you sign up for
Cellular Internet at the time of purchase. It's a two- or
thre-year contract, and not cheap (c.$70/month), but a very good
way to go online: anyplace you can get the signal, and much
faster than dial-up, if not quite DSL. And you can turn it off
and on with a mouse-click, so you don't have to be "always on,"
which I find dangerous.

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx