Need a laptop for college

ianomccabe

I'm starting my masters in September and want to buy a laptop.
I don't know what i should be looking for.

I will need Microsoft office, wireless internet capability, dvd drive and am looking to try stay as close to €1000 as possible.

I have a dell desktop here at home so would like another dell as i am happy with this although in saying that it doesn't have to be a dell. I would be happy buying a refurb from their factory outlet.

Could somebody tell me firstly what i should be looking for, secondly maybe recommend a model? and thirdly tell me what kind of pricerange i'm looking at.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

skywalker

you could do a lot worse than a dell inspiron 6000, Ive got one & their a stylish solid machine, for €1000 you should be able to get one with a reasonable spec, keep an eye on the site as they change their offers every couple of days.

The only advice Id give you is a centrino chip will mean an extra hour of battery life, decide yourself if its worth the extra money.

chump

Get a small neat thing. Go centrino (pentium mobile or possibly celeron M) or the amd equivalent, for battery life and you don't want a loud fat desktop replacement in class (ie. celeron or pentium 4)! Get 512ram, 40+gig HD, 14inch or so screen... get a xp.pro (if want to use college wireless), get a student/teacher edition of office basic. you'll be pushing it for a grand, but best of luck

ianomccabe

Cheers for the help, any more ideas? could pay 12-1300 at a push.

Looked at the 6000 on the dell website and i couldnt find an option to upgrade to a centrino. even with the regular processer once i added on wireless and office i was looking at over 1500. am i doint something wrong!

Also what option do i need to get wireless internet? is it Local are network or just wireless connectivity?

One more question, is microsoft office any cheaper elsewhere would it be as good getting it with the notebook off Dell?

Wertz

i6000 has centrino by default...in fact any lappy sporting a mobile CPU (pentiumM/AMD turion) is a "centrino".
i6000 also has wireless card by default....I'd say what you added was a modem or router or something.
Don't buy MSoffice from dell...get it yourself.

Up to you on extended warranty....I took the gamble of not bothering and just opting for standard year next day pick up thing, but tohers swear by 3 yr warranty (depends who much you spend I spose)

One other thing to decide now is whether you want a decnt gfx card (or any gfx card ) on the machine, as you can't fit it later. I also think a higher resolution screen is worth having (again it's personal choice)

If you can't find something from dell that suits you try Acer or Toshiba maybe...



just configured an i6000 with 1.6ghz P-M, 64mb x300 gfx card, 512mb RAM, 40gb HDD, dvd burner and wireless b/g card with 1 yr warranty for €965 all in (add another €315 for 3 yr wrnty, or as I see it pay another 30% for something that'll be worth half what you paid for it come this time next year regardless of it's having a wrnty or not; really a personal choice there)

ianomccabe

Cheers Wertz, invaluable information

tryanythingonce

-snip-
no adverts please

skywalker

Wertz wrote:

.in fact any lappy sporting a mobile CPU (pentiumM/AMD turion) is a "centrino".

not true, centrino is an intel standard & only applies when a p4-m is present with a certain type of wireless & some other standards which escape me now. Centrino is just a marketing word anyway. It doesnt really mean anything in the real world.

ianomccabe wrote:

Cheers for the help, any more ideas? could pay 12-1300 at a push.

Looked at the 6000 on the dell website and i couldnt find an option to upgrade to a centrino. even with the regular processer once i added on wireless and office i was looking at over 1500. am i doint something wrong!

Also what option do i need to get wireless internet? is it Local are network or just wireless connectivity?

One more question, is microsoft office any cheaper elsewhere would it be as good getting it with the notebook off Dell?

First of all downgrade to the cheapest warrenty option. Imo its not worth anywhere near what your paying for it. You still get a 1 year warrenty.

You shouldnt need to add on wireless, its standard on the 6000, as is the centrino option. I think you were adding a wireless router as wertz said.

Here is a link on the dell site (downgrade the warrenty & click update price at the bottom, add the centrino 1.6 & change the wireless to the correct card) to the same machine wertz configured without the graphics card (are you going to be playing games on the machine, if not, you dont need it) for € 826 inc vat. Their throwing in free delivery & a printer this week. Next week it might be double ram or something.

you can add on office basic for €170, but you should look into getting that on a student licence as it should work out cheaper (possibly give dell a call & see if they sell it with student licence, if not ive seen them in pc world).

That gives you the whole shabang for under a grand. With just enough for a pint remaining.

ianomccabe

on that link though the price is still €1114?

wouldnt be playing games on it so i wouldnt need the graphica card.

edit: ah i get ya, i downgraded the warranty and changed the others and it came out at 799.

Chuffed with that. thanks so much for the info

skywalker

edited post above to show how I got 826.

maidhc

I am one of those who swears by getting a 3year Next Business Day warranty. I think its worth it considering the cost of parts for laptops and it is impossible to fix them yourself.

I wouldnt touch one for a desktop, but I think a 3yr NBD warranty is a must on a laptop that *must* be working. -e.g. its worth not messing about with a broken laptop a week before a thesis deadline.

Having said that 300 seems insanely expensive. How about a latitude D610? They seem to be well made, and come with XP Pro and 3yr NBD as standard. You would pick one up for under a grand on the outlet.

Make sure you get XP Pro, I dont think college admins like setting up wireless on XP Home machines. There might be a site licence for Office in your college. Thats where I got mine anyhow.

If you are carrying the laptop a lot I think you should consider one with a 12" screen like the Dell X300, D410 or x1

chump

Yea remem definetely upgrade to XP PRO
And don't get Office from Dell.

Also maidhc has another good point about screen size, that 15.4" is probably a bit big

skywalker

tbh the one quible I would have with the 6000 is that it is slightly larger than Id like (Ideally Id like a 14" screen) but it comes down to how much your willing to pay for that too.

If your willing to spend the extra (its a good bit extra) then any of the ones maidhc is reccommending are fantastic.


Whats the big diff between pro & home for networking people are talking about?

chump

in tcd for example they insist on xp pro

Genghis

Consider http://www.openoffice.org/ as an alternative to MS-Office. I haven't used it myslef, but am going to install it on my parents new PC. Apparently it is compatible with MS-Office programs (i.e. you can open MS-Office docs in it, edit them and save them as MS-Office docs), is very similar to use, and best of all is free. It is also backed up by Sun and a growing developer community (plenty of support).

skywalker

chump wrote:

in tcd for example they insist on xp pro

really? that seems strange, there isnt much difference in regards to networking between home & pro afaik.

Wertz

Isn't there a limit to the number of machines that can be networked with xp home? I thought that was one of the main differences between pro and home

maidhc

XP Home cannot be connected to a network domain, it can only be on a workgroup which is limited to about 12 computers.

XP Home also is lacking the ability to make network files available offline, which is a really useful feature if you use more than one computer.

I am sure there are many other things too to do with computer managment. Bottom line is if you want to be on a college wireless or wired network, you do need Pro.

Laguna

XP home can be connected to college wireless network in just the same way as XP pro, the admins in your college simply allow connections to and from your MAC address on your wireless card to the college WAN, you configure your internet browser to use the LAN settings (IE -> Properties -> LAN connections), why on earth would you want to put a shared folder on your laptop on the college network? do you want someone to virus you to death/put porn in your folder?. XP home lacks the Personal Web Server, which anyone who has done a computer course will tell you is nigh on essential, but if you're not doing web design with dynamic pages (.asp/.jsp) XP home is fine. The price on Dell's computers is beyond a rip off. I say get an iBook from Apple, and here's why..

a)It's €1058 (Wireless card, bluetooth, 40gig hardrive, 12" screen... blah blah)
b)Its battery runs twice as long as an intel/amd based laptop
c)Less virus prone/Inbuilt decent firewall... actually a hell of a lot less virus prone.
d)More secure system as OS is Linux based.
e)Having used Microsoft products in college/work for years, I made the transition to Mac (I've got a sexy iBook), I can safely say I won't be going back to Mr Gates for ANY more software with his "critical updates" four years after XP is released.
f)I have a Mac and have had NO trouble at all, administration wise or software wise, I'm a heavy duty user with web dev and application programming and the iBook just flies along.
g)They look damn good compared to the concrete slabs that are Windows based PC's. They don't give you back strain carrying them either.
h)All iBooks have the test drive of Microsoft Office for Mac on them already installed. Office is cheaper for Mac too.
i)Mac OSX has a personal web server for web dev- none of this home/professional edition **** like there is with MS, there's Mac OSX and Mac OSX server with Apple, the way it should be.
j)I wouldn't piss on Windows and its systematic unreliability. If you're making a big investment you should at least have peace of mind.


..Ahem there ya go

maidhc

XP home can be connected to college wireless network in just the same way as XP pro, the admins in your college simply allow connections to and from your MAC address on your wireless card to the college WAN

Indeed, but as noted already the Admins in TCD refuse to do so. UCC at the moment do allow XP Home connection, but say this practice may stop in the future and recommend anyone buying a new laptop to get Pro. I quote form sit.ucc.ie
"For laptops that students may already own, we are permitting the use of XP Home Edition, but this is only a temporary measure. All future PC laptops will need XP Professional. "

XP home lacks the Personal Web Server, which anyone who has done a computer course will tell you is nigh on essential

I am totally ignorant as to asp and jsp, preferring php and perl, but dont they use apache? If you need a webserver it installs and runs fine in XP Home.

I'm not going to engage in a Mac v PC war, but

1) even if you get a Mac you must have antivirus software if you want to be connected to some college networks, in UCC the PC software is on site licence (FSecure), with a Mac you must buy it.

2)Battery runs twice as long? Really? But wont your next iBook be intel based? Apple are switching to intel processors.

3)My Dell Latitude x300 is smaller in every way to an iBook and weighs less into the bargain. So it depends on what you compare.

4)Im not a great fan of M$ and have been running Linux as a dual boot since 2000, but XP is every bit as stable as Linux from my experience (although any instability in linux is probably me messing up configs). I do normal things with, and programs crash from time to time, but rarely if ever do they bring the system down. Compared to older version of windows it is very good.

chump

Laguna wrote:

XP home can be connected to college wireless network in just the same way as XP pro, the admins in your college simply allow connections to and from your MAC address on

From tcd website:
Machines running Windows XP Home Edition cannot be networked. See our FAQ.

Q. I have Windows XP Home Edition on my PC, why can't this be networked?

A. In the interests of network security all PCs connecting to the network must be validated by the domain servers. PCs must join and be managed by the domain. Windows XP Professional is the only member of the XP family which allows such a facility. This is a Microsoft constraint. See Windows XP in a Domain Environment for more information. An upgrade from Windows XP Home Edition to Windows XP Professional may be purchased from Micromail.

There we go now, all clear?

Laguna

Well then, that leads me to believe that TCD have some sort of under the table partnership/sponsorship deal with MS then, why else would they have such a constrictive college network system demanding you use Pro?, unless the network was set up by a group of work experience boys on a five minute lunch break. Why are they being so beligerent about people using XP Pro?, there's actually no basis for what they are claiming as any 'decent' network should allow connections from any OS. All from the alleged best college in Ireland.

Laguna

maidhc wrote:

I am totally ignorant as to asp and jsp, preferring php and perl, but dont they use apache? If you need a webserver it installs and runs fine in XP Home.

No, asp need IIS (Internet Information Services) that comes with Microsoft XP Pro or earlier versions of Windows like Win98 that had PWS. It need the ASP.exe file on the server to be able to interpret and execute commands written in your asp pages, jsp can run on apache, but the bottom line is, it is impossible to run a web server on XP home that can execute asp code, Microsoft have even said it themselves.

maidhc

I dont think there is any conspiracy, XP Pro just provides better tools for them to administer their network. God knows they need everything they can get with people connecting up with computers that are probably riddled with spyware and trojans of every description.

The ASP thing is interesting. I didnt know that!

rsynnott

Laguna wrote:

Well then, that leads me to believe that TCD have some sort of under the table partnership/sponsorship deal with MS then, why else would they have such a constrictive college network system demanding you use Pro?, unless the network was set up by a group of work experience boys on a five minute lunch break. Why are they being so beligerent about people using XP Pro?, there's actually no basis for what they are claiming as any 'decent' network should allow connections from any OS. All from the alleged best college in Ireland.

It's actually reasonable enough. They want Windows computers on their network to do domain authentication on their network. WinXP Home doesn't do this. Interestingly, they put no such restrictions on UNIX-y machines.

ianomccabe

checked with the IT department in my college and they said xp home works fine no probs.

Is there a big difference between getting a celeron or a pentium? anyone care to enlighten me?

Wertz

ianomccabe wrote:

checked with the IT department in my college and they said xp home works fine no probs.

Is there a big difference between getting a celeron or a pentium? anyone care to enlighten me?

If you're using CPU intensive apps then stay the hell away from a celeron, although I hear the mobile celerons aren't just as bad as their desktop equivalent. A pentium is worth the extra few pound IMO

Laguna

Yeah Smelleron's are no good if you are anything but a casual/light user looking for a chepa bang for your buck. Go Pentium or the decent AMD range

maidhc

Yeah Smelleron's are no good if you are anything but a casual/light user looking for a chepa bang for your buck. Go Pentium or the decent AMD range

The processors are all so good now you wont notice the difference unless you are compling programs or encoding video. Celeron Ms are good processors as I have said at least twice already. I really dont notice any difference between my desktop with a 2.8 p4 and a Cel M 1.4. Buy a decent laser printer with the difference.

ianomccabe

Just to update this thread, cheers to everyone for the advice.

today i got the dell 6000 for a price of 769 which i thought was very good.

Cheers again

skywalker

Laguna wrote:

Yeah Smelleron's are no good if you are anything but a casual/light user looking for a chepa bang for your buck. Go Pentium or the decent AMD range

Thats poor, poor advice. Check out this benchmark. Celeron-m's are just as good in the real world as pentium-m's for everything except conserving battery life

http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20040309/centrino-08.html


Well dont ianomccabe, throw up the full spec of the machine you got. Interested to compare to mine.

ianomccabe

Its the basic 6000 spec. dont have it to hand.

Have microsoft office professional edition on it too