Please recommend a good laptop

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

As for Frys... I've worked there (don't shoot me, I quit after 2 months!). They put products known to be defective back on the shelf as new and their return/exchange is hell.

The "White Label of Death" as we call it.

[blueerica]

Oh my god, I'm about 3 sentences from derailing this into a Why I Hate Fry's Thread, and a What I Have Done To Fry's In Repayment Thread.

HBTF & I have talked this over, so I guess I have nothing to add here. I didn't know that Best Buy was so horrible. I guess my experiences weren't too bad, and I better stop before I end this 3rd sentence and derail this thread into the WIHFS & a WIHDTFIRT.

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by blueerica

Oh my god, I'm about 3 sentences from derailing this into a Why I Hate Fry's Thread, and a What I Have Done To Fry's In Repayment Thread.

HBTF & I have talked this over, so I guess I have nothing to add here. I didn't know that Best Buy was so horrible. I guess my experiences weren't too bad, and I better stop before I end this 3rd sentence and derail this thread into the WIHFS & a WIHDTFIRT.

It's a great topic, start a thread on it

[SacTown Chronic]

Originally Posted by blueerica

and a What I Have Done To Fry's In Repayment Thread.

I'd read that thread.

[Sheila]

Originally Posted by blueerica

Oh my god, I'm about 3 sentences from derailing this into a Why I Hate Fry's Thread, and a What I Have Done To Fry's In Repayment Thread.

Oh dear! What hath I wrot? A thousand apologies for naming the store that must not be named, and I shall speak of it no more.

(Unless of course, you do actually start a WIHFT or WIHDTFIRT. Then I'm sooo there....)

Signed,
Sheila the Repentant

[BarTopDancer]

Shelia,

This is the Dell I am seriously considering.

I upped the warrenty to the 4 year (same price as the 3 year) and also added the extra accident protection. I also upgraded the wireless card to an a/b/g card. The total with the modifications is $1345 + tax.

I went to Best Buy and Circuit City tonight and they had jack and squat. I also noticed nearly all their notebooks are under 2 gigs when you can get something faster for a comparible price online.

[Sheila]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

This is the Dell I am seriously considering.

That looks like a seriously good deal. And the price is right for all that you get too.

I've passed along the link to an Official Hardware Guru for his review and blessing. I'll let you know what he thinks, if you haven't already purchased the Dell above. (But I don't think you can go wrong with the Dell in any event.)

[Kevy Baby]

Dude... you're gettin' a Dell!

[BarTopDancer]

Dude.... I already own a Dell.

Shelia, MM likes this one as well does another techie friend of mine. Let me know what your techie guy says. I think the special ends today, though they have *Deals of the Week* every week...

[Sheila]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

Shelia, MM likes this one as well does another techie friend of mine. Let me know what your techie guy says. I think the special ends today, though they have *Deals of the Week* every week...

Okay, just finished talking with Mr. Guru. Basically, his take is that it is an okay model, but he has several reservations about it:

1. There are only two memory slots and they're already filled by the two 256 chips. If you wanted to upgrade your memory, you'd have to buy two new chips. He noted that there's an option to buy one 512 chip, leaving one slot open.

2. The system uses WinXP Home Edition. His recommendation would be to upgrade to WinXP Pro instead.

3. The video chipset as-is he believes would be okay for games like the Sims or RCT. However, if you ever want to play a more feature-rich game (like let's say Doom 2, etc.), he's not sure at all that the video would be able to handle it. There was no option at all to upgrade the video component in the Inspiron so to upgrade would mean changing to a different model line.

So, he went through the build-a-laptop wizard, swapping out for the 512 chip, converting to WinXP Pro and adding the components necessary for WiFi. The total came to $1,150. He did not add any extra warranty services. Personally, I would not as I'm not averse to fixing stuff on my own, and any catastrophic failures usually happen in the first few days (or in the case of a hard drive, within a year).

He basically felt that since I like to play games like Doom 2 or Hexen, etc., this would not be the laptop for me, mainly because there was not enough information given about the video chipset supplied with the model we were looking at.

Not sure if this information helps you or not. I thought the 512 memory chip was worth checking into, though.