Notebook time!
Since my sister is graduating high school and going away to college, I'm selling my XP2200+ notebook to my parents to give her as a graduation present. That means I'm in the market for a new notebook.
Right now, I'm looking at one that Best Buy is selling, that looks pretty good. Here's the specs:
Athlon 64 3000+
Mobility Radeon 9600 64MB video
512MB PC2700
15.4" WXGA TFT LCD
60 GB HDD
DVD/CDRW combo
802.11g WiFi built-in
Here's the caveat: It's an eMachines! If it were any other brand, I'd snap this thing up in a second (especially considering the price). I'd prefer to get the new Mobility Radeon 9700 chip, but I'm hoping I can chug through modern games with the 9600.
What should I do?
Right now, I'm looking at one that Best Buy is selling, that looks pretty good. Here's the specs:
Athlon 64 3000+
Mobility Radeon 9600 64MB video
512MB PC2700
15.4" WXGA TFT LCD
60 GB HDD
DVD/CDRW combo
802.11g WiFi built-in
Here's the caveat: It's an eMachines! If it were any other brand, I'd snap this thing up in a second (especially considering the price). I'd prefer to get the new Mobility Radeon 9700 chip, but I'm hoping I can chug through modern games with the 9600.
What should I do?
0
Comments
Best Buy's price on it right now is $1500 with $250 in mail-in rebates.
I don't know about built-it-myself plans, because I can get a 20% reimbursement from work on the purchase of a new PC (once every three years) and I haven't used it yet, so if I get something in the $1500 price range, I'll get $300 back (the reimbursement is taxed though so it ends up being like $150 after taxes)
So that PC (or something with a similar deal) would cost me about $1100. ($1205 after tax though
If I get it at Best Buy, I'd also get about $100 in Reward Zone certificates back after a bit, which would get me the case and an MX-510 mouse...
Compaq Presario r3140us
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=629881
Product Information:
1.8GHz AMD Athlon 64 3000+
512MB RAM
60GB hard drive
DVD+RW/CD-RW
56K
10/100 Ethernet
WiFi 802.11b/g
Windows XP Home
15.4" WXGA active-matrix display
Price: $1,589.29
there are other fish in the sea but they all look and act alike in my opinion.. Im sure the emachine will do alright for you.
Gobbles
That's one of the sites I looked at 4 or 5 days ago and they have a damn good rating over at resellerratings.com too. I was drooling over a 2.0 Dothan with a 9700 mobile vid chipset.
I'd forgot the name of the website; thanks for the link.
But if you continue looking up more information, you'll find the M680X series is the best bang for the buck laptops out there right now.
Check this out here...
http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showforum=4
Lots of threads about these eMachines... I'll be getting the M680x next month sometime. I just can't decide on which... I'd probably go for the M6805 for the money saved cuase this is gonna be one of those buys that will hurt my pockets again lol.
KF
Anybody know how the Mobility Radeon 9600 is for gaming? I'm hoping to go DTR with this, and I need it to play Halo and UT2K4...
Geeky, what do you think of that powernotebook with the 9700 mobility and a 2.0 Dothan, the PowerPro M 5:6 FORCE? My present laptop is now over 3 years old and I was thinking of getting a 40 gig 7200 rpm Hitachi drive for it, but I started looking around while at work last week and ran across this one, dressed out with a Dothan 2.0, a 60 gig 7200 rpm drive, a USB floppy (for compatibility to transfer info to my reliefs) and the 4X DVD burner for $2296, plus shipping? I don't mind buying the high end in laptops because I don't upgrade but every 3 or 4 years. For the OS, I'll just buy an oem license since I already have the oem media and save a few bucks.
Depends on what you want. IF you want a media-rich desktop replacement in a lappie that's durable, Sager or PowerNotebooks or a couple others (Dell's cutom configurator lists some ways to do this for less than a Sager, but they are a bit more prone to heating issues as they have cases that are not tuned for heat dispersion as well as a Sager is)-- part of hardening a laptop is not how the case holds together when you drop it, but whether the HD does not skip if its also on when it hits the floor, whether the CD-ROm thats running lets loose of teh CD and the CD swipes the laser read head, ANd whether the thing will run outside or on a work site with bad air conditioning problems on a hot day stably. Sager chjarges, but they build for durablility and meeting needs of purpose.
IF you want, OTOH, a notebook mostly to take notes, keep docs for back at teh office work, (that kind of thing) and can process them on a desktop you have, look for something durable but not as fast as absolute top end. The more you want media-rich the more the diff between a lappie and a desktop will reach out and BITE you in the wallet, even now. But, Sager does have decent mfr behind them that has made lappies for a long time and as a result has weeded out most of the wrong things to do when building a lappie. Dell does also, they have long term contracts with third parties for lappie barebones and have other contracts for parts and accessories-- but most of their lappies are not media specialists.
One alternative, and I am not saying anyone is wrong, the right things have almost all been said, is an Area 51-M Laptop. Its gotten good reviews and those are on the web if you lookup that name on Google. Price will be similar, but it is specifically media tuned for media-rich use as a mobile desktop. Not as durable as a comparable Sager, not quite as much for feature set offered though in same ballpark. Those you can also get custom. One seller of this kind of media-rich laptop is Alienware (IIRC), and they have not been known for laptops but do not mfr their own totally either-- they use an established OEM laptop builder to supply most fo what gets shipped.
/me goes off to check his pulse
EDIT: If you are looking for more of a travel lappy with great battery time I think Toshiba or IBM are the way to go. Those are currently my top 2 choices.
I'm in the market for a new notebook myself, because mine is 2 years old, and it's time for it to be retired in favor of something a bit better. Right now, I'm basically considering either a 2.0GHz Dothan or an A64 DTR 3400+. I may wait, though, because ATi announced a PCI express-based X600m GPU, and I don't really need it until the middle of August.
Mudd: The PowerPro that you're looking at is one of the Dothan based systems I'm thinking about. It looks like a very nice notebook.
I'd stay away from the Alienware Area 51-M and the other machines based on the same chassis. It's got a SiS 648FX chipset, which means single channel DDR, no RAID support, etc. The Sager 8790 and 5690 are better machines.
Makes my Banias 1.3 look like a little bitch... That s'okay though.
DTR is Desktop Replacement. It denotes notebooks that are powerful enough to do anything a desktop PC can do. //edit: it also denotes desktop-derived notebook CPUs which are not truly "Mobile" versions of those CPUs.
I'm a little concerned that the M9600 is a bit weak to play games - the benchmarks and reviews I've seen show sub-30FPS performance in games like Halo... but the only notebook with the M9700 I've seen that I can afford is a dell with a 2.8GHz PeeFour... :bawling:
1.5GHz Pentium M, Radeon 9700m, 256MB DDR, 20GB HDD. $1410 ($1375 w/cash discount)
//edit: The other notebooks that I'm looking at beat the 5:6 Ultra in every spec except for the vid card... I don't know whether it's worth making a slight sacrifice in gaming, or a sacrifice in everything else...
whoa.
I know it may hurt to hear it prime, but your Banias IS a little bitch.