Metropol

So I will be purchasing a laptop sometime quite soon, and I'm looking for advice from anyone and since there are a few techie minded on here as well, I thought I might as well try. So...

*It's not going to be madly used for gaming or movies or anything heavy but I don't really want a slowpoke either, so any ideas on minumum processor power and/or ram, just for general day to day running, all Office Applications, Firefox, Acrobat Reader, Real Player, WMP, Sophos and the like?

*A 60gb hard drive should be plenty big enough for all of the above, about 3-4gb of college stuff and not too much else?

*When I see "56k Fax Data Modem" on most Dells, is that just a plug into a wall jack setup?

*The college and my house is hooked up to wireless broadband (2mb at home and ~5-10mb at college), what sort of wireless card would be OK to get a relatively decent connection?

*Some people have warned me about Dell laptops and PC World stuff, is there any particular brand(s) to look out for/avoid?

*Any other advice, suggestions, rants are welcome, thanks!

As a general guide the big names tend to be better, and by big I mean Toshiba, Hewlett Packard and Compaq. Obscure names tend to be cheaper but utter shite. I know because I've made that mistake and the laptop I'm typing this on is louder and hotter than THE SUN. I hate it.

What is your budget?

Chris wrote:What is your budget?

Going by normal conversion rates, just over £1000 (€1500). Although God only knows what Irish inflation does to the price of laptops over here, so it may be thrown out a bit.

OK, I have my own, lengthy queries.

I will hopefully be starting university on the 25th September. I'm currently running Windows 98 on an old Dell PC. Knowing that support for this has ceased, I want to upgrade to a laptop, and I have been intrigued by the new MacBook Pro.

Now I've been tempted towards buying a new 17" top of the range model, but I know that the new Intel chip, Merom, is out. 64-bit stuff aside, I like the idea of lower power consumption or whatever the fancy term is. I know that the WWDC thing is August 7th-11th, and I'm hoping that it will be announced and installed into the MacBook Pro there. If not, do you think it will be installed with enough time for me to buy it before I go to university?

Also, I would want to run Windows XP using Boot Camp. My Dad's currently the administrator on his machine; if the same Windows XP disc is installed afresh on the MacBook Pro, do I become my own boss as a new administrator? As well as this, I know that I would have to get used to Mac features like a one-button mouse and apparently no delete button. I'm not sure if there would be a way to enable the in-built iSight camera or backlit keyboard either (perfect for chats on Windows Live Messenger!). Money isn't really a huge problem, but would you recommend me buying a MacBook Pro or just a regular laptop?

bee bee see - have a read of this thread: http://www.metropol247.co.uk/forum/view ... 65&start=3

as far as laptops go, as has been said it depends on your budget - i do my fair share of buying and i can recommend the following brands (we have at least 250 laptops on this site alone)

Acer: Great for those on a small budget, have probably had a couple of faults (and no dead on arrival) in five years. they last and last.

Toshiba: if you've got a bit extra to spend, these make a really good compromise, the screens are lovely and they are solid and reliable, we've dabbled with sony vaios and whilst they look great and have a gorgeous screen they seem to be sluggish and fragile compared to some of the others i've used of similar spec - not really sure why.

We've also got fujitsu-siemens, hp-compaq - all very reliable but the two brands above we have the most laptops and we've never had any issues with either.

Dr Lobster* wrote:bee bee see - have a read of this thread: http://www.metropol247.co.uk/forum/view ... 65&start=3

as far as laptops go, as has been said it depends on your budget - i do my fair share of buying and i can recommend the following brands (we have at least 250 laptops on this site alone)

Acer: Great for those on a small budget, have probably had a couple of faults (and no dead on arrival) in five years. they last and last.

Toshiba: if you've got a bit extra to spend, these make a really good compromise, the screens are lovely and they are solid and reliable, we've dabbled with sony vaios and whilst they look great and have a gorgeous screen they seem to be sluggish and fragile compared to some of the others i've used of similar spec - not really sure why.

We've also got fujitsu-siemens, hp-compaq - all very reliable but the two brands above we have the most laptops and we've never had any issues with either.

Hmm well I'm not sure what to think really. I still like the idea of a MacBook Pro, but I still don't know. I'll wait until the Apple Conference (WWDC) has finished this week to see what they have to offer.