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Thinking of buying a new Laptop?

Posted By : Chris of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on November 10, 2004

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I am thinking of buying a new laptop, and my choices are Dell (current user - it's fine), Gateway, IBM or HP. Since you work on these systems regularly, can you tell me which manufacturer and OS you would recommend? I use it as my desktop system as well, so it needs to be a workhorse. I am not a fan of ME, I need a burner, nice screen and the ability to have a number of windows open simultaneously.

Thanks for your help!

Marianne Bazan

This question was answered on November 10, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Your questions is missing important information in order for me to give you my thoughts The following are questions I have for you before I can give you my opinion on what to look for and what to not to look for

* What is your Laptop budget?

* Professional or Personal atmosphere?

* Is your laptop being used within a domain? OS?

* Are you planning to do any type of networking (complex or just high-speed ISP) OS?

* What type of programs will you be running (especially when multitasking?) [CPU, memory?]

{Graphic programs are memory hogs (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, CAD etc.}

* What type of media do you plan on burning (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD -R, DVD -RW) [CPU, CD?]

* Do you plan on doing video editing? [CPU, HD, Memory?]

* There are more ?'s but these would start you off in a direction for more.

I usually Recommend the following: (Keep in mind the following is based on my experience I would need to know your purposes before I can attempt to answer your initial question.

* IBM or Dell (Do not care for Gateway - HP would be third choice)

* Pentium (not Celeron chip)

* 512Mb RAM minimum (Not shared)

* Windows 2000, 2003 or XP Professional (not Home) (I use 2000 and 2003 - do not care for XP)

* 14 inch minimum screen with minimum of 1280x1024 resolution

* On board NIC (Carry Wireless PCMCIA Card) or vice versa (Depends on network)

* 40 Gig HD unless doing video editing

Truth151

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Posted by Chris of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on November 10, 2004

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