Super cheap laptop

Dell has a great return policy -- you can return a laptop for any reason within 21 days from the invoice date. With that in mind, I think you should try the 9300 with WUXGA. Personally, I love it, but some people find it too big, others find the resolution too high (i.e., fonts too small), some don't like the glossy LCD, etc. Laptops are all about personal preference.

The nice things about the 9300 are: great build quality (magnesium alloy base and lid mean that it's rigid, strong, and relatively light for its size), large high-rez display, subwoofer (one of the best sounding laptops on the market), DVI-output (rare to find on laptops, and great for use with an external LCD), good performance, quiet, cool, and the battery life with the X300 is outstanding.
 
lazyday said:
a 15" for $500 with desktop chip
Click to expand...

Which laptop does dell make with a desktop chip? I wasnt aware that they were putting a desktop chip into any of their mobile products...
 
Sorry, I'm exagerating. Not sure if any of the $500 deals (not just DEll) have true desktop chips in them. The $500ish laptop deals lately, mostly have the "mobile celeron" discussed earlier in this thread, which IIUC is more like a desktop chip than the cool running pentium Ms.
I believe the celeron-M's start at about $650ish now, including shipping.

My girlfriend bought the 9300 this morning, $1074 with 512meg. She's aware the same laptop was at least $100 cheaper a month ago, but doesn't want to wait. Will take about 3 weeks to ship though! Maybe if a better deal comes, will cancel the order. (I'm thinking HP or other company.)
 
What's a Celeron D versus M versus Pentium M versus 4 versus Centrino?

Sorry, lost the hardware plot in recent years, it was easier when chip clock speed double every couple of years. Need to purchase a euro zone laptop for a family member . . .

Would like the best technical bang for the buck Dell, (closest to desktop spec) 512MB main memory min, and best combination of CPU/cache/FSB

The rest isn't important i.e. LCD size, HD size, DVD spec, heat/fan issues.  Anyone have a table of H/W comparison perhaps?
cheers
 
lazyday said:
Price dropped and computer better! :)
Click to expand...

Good deal. I priced a 9300+go6800+WUXGA for about $1050 during that promo, and that's about as cheap as they get for a new system.
 
ER@40 said:
What's a Celeron D versus M versus Pentium M versus 4 versus Centrino?

Sorry, lost the hardware plot in recent years, it was easier when chip clock speed double every couple of years. Need to purchase a euro zone laptop for a family member . . .

Would like the best technical bang for the buck Dell, (closest to desktop spec) 512MB main memory min, and best combination of CPU/cache/FSB
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had that same problem. I avoided buying new computers for about 4-5 years, so I had to come up to speed on all of the new Intel marketing speak.

Ignore the Celeron-D. Please.

The Pentium-M is the best laptop CPU Intel currently ships. It has an efficient core, lots of L2 cache, and nice power-saving features.

The Celeron-M is a neutered Pentium-M. Same core, but they killed half the L2 cache and disabled the power-saving features. Still a nice chip, though.

Centrino is a "platform" that consists of Pentium-M + mobo chipset + wireless card. Basically, you get a "Centrino" sticker if you buy the Intel wireless card, which I personally find to be a poor performer compared to just about every other wireless card available. Get the Broadcom (TrueMobile) card if you're buying from Dell.

"Sonoma" is the code name for the latest rev of the Centrino platform. Basically, it boosts the FSB to 533MHz from 400MHz, adds support for DDR2 RAM, and adds PCI-express support. None of those new features are very useful (yet).

The 9300 we've been talking about here will give you the best bang/buck for a DTR. Although most Intel desktops use a P4 CPU, the Pentium-M actually performs *much* better clock-for-clock, so don't be fooled into buying a faster-clocked P4-based laptop. The 9300 also has video card options that will outperform most desktops, if that matters to you.

If you don't want some of the 9300 features (17-inch display, subwoofer, DVI, etc), then the 6000 is a good value too.
 
I can make it even simpler.

Unless you're a top-line 3d first person shooter gamer or you encode video every day (capturing with a dv cam and converting to mpeg4 or wma, etc etc), you dont need anything more chip-wise than the cheapest thing you can find. The performance of a 'bottom rung' celeron-D 2.4GHz chip is far more than you need for any application at all other than the two I mentioned, and its adequate for those.

Furthermore, unless someone drops the new application concept that nobodys ever thought of, its going to be good enough for 3-5 years at least.

The pentium-m is more efficient on power and cooler. If you run away from AC outlets all the time, its probably worth a little extra money. If it spends most of its time on a table plugged into the wall, chip type is irrelevant.

Buy the screen you want, the peripherals you need, and dont worry about the dang chip.

Past that, yes, you can split hairs indefinitely on the differences between a pentium-4, pentium-m, celeron-xyz etc.

I have a pentium-4 2.4GHz desktop, a Celeron 1.6GHz laptop and a celeron-d 2.0 GHz desktop. Cant tell the difference between them except when doing video and fps.
 
ER@40 said:
Need to purchase a euro zone laptop for a family member . . .

Would like the best technical bang for the buck Dell, (closest to desktop spec) 512MB main memory min, and best combination of CPU/cache/FSB

The rest isn't important i.e. LCD size, HD size, DVD spec, heat/fan issues.
Click to expand...

Depends a lot on what the laptop would be used for and how long want to wait before upgrading it.
Desktop spec has a wide range.

You didn't mention if used on the go. Battery life will depend on the chip, among other things.

For me (and to a lesser extent to my gf who just bought) ergonomics are important, so screen,heat,noise,keyboard,mouse are crucial. If these things really aren't important to the family member to use the laptop, that opens up option to buy whatever's cheapest.

There's also build quality. My anchient laptop retailed for about $7500 when new, and is built like a Lexus. Some I've played with in stores feel pretty cheap.

When I got it January 1999, it was obsolete (discontinued old model) but was much faster than needed for internet, email, spreadsheet, word processing. But the internet has changed. Within a few years, it was slowing down my surfing. Now, it is absurdly underpowered. I can click a link, and while waiting for the screen to be drawn and/or the website's server to respond, try to open a new tab to open another link while waiting, but often get no response. I used to be able to easily open several websites at a time, and while waiting for a server, switch to another site. Using firefox and shutting off ads doesn't help much.

I imagine that any new or recent chip will work fine for basic tasks today, and probably for the immediate future. But who knows down the line. Economically, it might make sense to buy the cheapest, and if it's too slow in a few years, just get a new one then. That might even mean a $500 laptop today, and a $200 laptop in 3 to 10 years from now.

There's another Dell coupon, might be able to get a decent laptop for about $750 after coupon, on the morning of the 24th: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=18&threadid=477102

If anyone is looking for a $1000ish 9300, this deal looks a little worse than the last one I posted, maybe $50-$100 worse depending on your choices. But it might be excellent for a $750-$800 laptop; I'm not sure.
 
OK, sorry to keep posting this thread, but I believe this is a new price point for a low-end laptop with a Celeron M, instead of a Mobile Celeron which supposedly runs much hotter/short battery life. 14.1" LCD and 512MB, Inspiron 2200

$550 after $100 rebate, +tax +$49 shipping, for Celeron M Dell:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?cs=04&kc=66784&oc=s80505u2&x=7&y=6
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/477128/

I've heard Dell is good about paying their rebates, just need to be careful and keep copies as always.
 
Thanks for the replies: (webmaster and th and lazyday)
Envisage it'll mostly be used at home for wireless broadband surfing. Occasionally it will be used as a DVD player in the car to keep the kids happy. Down the road they may do some lite DV editing, picture editing etc As the Kids get older it will be used for some gaming, but tough to gauge!

So the thinking process was - help them get a Laptop that'll last 5+years and tackle all upgrades to the OS and IE w/o painful performance decline. With Longhorn or whatever out next year it, the attractive GUI features may entice them. Either way, the new OS will probably spawn future upgrading of various XP modules including IE, and this might slow performance overall.

Lazydays advice to just get the cheapest and discard sooner is compelling. Has anyone seen any Eurozone DELL coupons floating around on fatwallet etc?
 
You dont know me said:
I can make it even simpler.capturing with a dv cam and converting to mpeg4 or wma, etc etc),
I have a pentium-4 2.4GHz desktop, a Celeron 1.6GHz laptop and a celeron-d 2.0 GHz desktop.  Cant tell the difference between them except when doing video and fps.
Click to expand...
Currently undertaking some Filmmaking projects myself (shorts 5-10 mins), using Adobe Premiere Pro.

Any views on what's a good Laptop spec for this type of Film Production? Incidentally I used to do Audio production on a laptop. But ran into interference when it came to mixing down? Interrupts, bad shielding, a whole host of things. It was in the win98 days so that was partly to blame. Built-in laptop sound support is unreliable IMHO.

Anyone think using a laptop for this is misguided?, especially when you could probably buy a multiprocessor desktop with 3 dedicated high speed drives (one for raw footage, one for rendering, and one for effects) - all for the same bucks. cheers
 
The biggest problem you'll probably run into doing video with a laptop isnt going to be cpu, its probably going to be disk speed. 4400 and 5400 rpm drives are pretty standard. The laptop drives running at 7200rpms will buzz your lap nicely and suffer a higher rate of disk faults from sudden laptop movements.

Built-in laptop sound is awful for anything except bleeps and bloops. I use a creative labs PCMCIA soundblaster in my home theater laptop; worlds of difference in sound quality.

In your shoes, I'd go with the high end desktop for less money, and spend $150 on a portable dvd player or $250 for one of those 'dvd/screen in a bag' that hangs on the car seat. Using a laptop is great if your kids are teenagers; the first time one of them drops the lappie in the car and breaks the 17" screen you're going to regret it. Plus most laptops can barely get through one movie without running a battery dry. I havent seen one that will do two (although they probably exist). A portable plugged into DC power will keep going as long as your car does...
 
You dont know me said:
The biggest problem you'll probably run into doing video with a laptop isnt going to be cpu, its probably going to be disk speed.  4400 and 5400 rpm drives are pretty standard.  The laptop drives running at 7200rpms will buzz your lap nicely and suffer a higher rate of disk faults from sudden laptop movements.

Built-in laptop sound is awful for anything except bleeps and bloops.  I use a creative labs PCMCIA soundblaster in my home theater laptop; worlds of difference in sound quality.
Click to expand...
Good point regarding disk speeds. Was considering also using 2 external USB 2.0 drives for longer more complex projects.

On the PCMCIA SoundBlaster, any particular model come to mind? When I've looked at prices they’ve been very steep compared to desktop models.
 
I use this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102183

I managed to get it for ~$99 after rebates, I think from buy.com?

I'm not using any audio in on it right now, just the sp/dif optical out to my dolby digital receiver for dvd audio. After I made a trip to radio shack for the optical adapter that they should have included with the product but didnt... :p

You might find the performance of usb 2.0 drives to be disappointing for this application. The raw speed on many USB drives is quite low. Read though some reviews, some external IDE chipsets manage a pretty good clip...but not as good as an internal drive. Firewire drives often do better, but there are some long running unresolved problems between some firewire chip sets and windows 2000/XP which sometimes feed them data packets too large for the chip set to handle expeditiously, causing a "delayed write" error or the disk to completely vanish from the OS's perspective. I use both usb 2.0 and firewire drives, but I only use them for backups and offline storage of large volumes of information.

I have an old pcmcia external drive that does perform quite well...similar to the notebooks original 5400rpm drive...a pcmcia card that has a cable running to an external frame with a regular disk mounted in it. Makes sense...its off the pci bus in the laptop, not the usb or firewire bus. Unfortunately the soundblaster card pretty much takes up both pcmcia slots when its in there.
 
The 9300 I mentioned has a built-in subwoofer, and it produces the best sound I've heard from a laptop (which isn't saying much). The internal audio card includes s/pdif output (but you'll need a special dongle). I haven't produced any audio myself, so I can't tell you how it compares to pcmcia cards, but games and music sound fine to me.

There are laptops available today with high-speed SATA drives, but standard notebook drives are fast enough for me. A 60@7200, 80@5400, or 100@5400 should all give better than 30MB/s throughput, which is fast enough for just about any app. And 80@7200 and 100@7200 laptop drives were just recently released, but I don't think they're available in the retail channel yet (you can get them pre-installed on a Dell Inspiron XPS2, for example).

I don't believe Dell Europe does many coupon deals, but I've heard that you can call a European sales rep and haggle. You should be able to get 25-30% off list.
 
I'm wondering what the effects of a subwoofer are on the hard drive, and all the 7200rpm notebook drives in notebooks where I actually moved them when they were on (as opposed to leaving them on a table) failed in less than 18 months.

Now if you change just the filter on those notebooks and left the oil in them...
 
I've never personally had a 7200 RPM laptop drive fail on me. But if you're concerned that a 25% increase in spindle speed is going to subject you to unwarranted risk, then get a 100GB 5400 RPM drive (such as the Seagate Momentus). Since the density is higher, the throughput will be about the same as a 60@7200 even at the lower RPM.
 
Yep, every single 7200 rpm drive (and these were in the good toshiba and ibm thinkpads, not a crappy unit by any means) developed so many bad spots the drive went south on me. But that was when I was sitting in meetings, picking the laptop up, walking around with it, pulling it onto my lap, snapping the lid shut and jamming it into a bag probably before the drive spun down because I was late to the next meeting. Same sort of behavior with a 5400 rpm drive in cheapo laptops...no problems.

The subwoofer in a laptop is still tingling my brain. A lot of people had premature tivo disk drive failures (and those were 4400's) by placing the tivo within a few feet of their subwoofer...
 
Try two aspirin for that brain tingling, and call me in the morning.

Do you know which brand drive you were using that failed?   The Hitachi 60GB@7200 drive is very well regarded among laptop "enthusiasts" and I've never heard of a failure.   I own two of them.

I've also owned three different laptop models with integrated subwoofers without problem.   "Subwoofer" in the context of a laptop obviously means something different than that 100lb monster in your den.    These things are just intended to give the laptop some low-end response (which most lappies sorely lack).

Here's the subwoofer in mine:

sullivbh.jpg


Nicely isolated from the hard disk (which would be on the far right of the machine in the picture).
 
Thanks wabmester and others for advice, my girlfriend loves the 9300. Especially the screen.

I also like it a lot--especially the 17"WUXGA screen. But, the screen is also its worst problem. Too reflective, causes some eyestrain. The keyboard is also kind of crappy IMO, compared to my 20th century Thinkpad. Pretty quiet with a download to temperature control the fans. And the case is really solid, feels as sturdy as the Thinkpad. Strange, it runs cooler! The thinkpad is a 266mhz PII, and subjectively seems much hotter than the 9300, even with fans off.

When she's not home, I use her 9300. Surprised to say, I like WinXP--especially the multiple users at the same time thing. No need to log off, just "disconnect." Very convenient.

If it were mine, I'd return it because of the reflective screen and no trackpoint. Could live with the keyboard. But, luckily for me, it's hers and she's keeping it. :)
 
lazyday said:
When she's not home, I use her 9300.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I predict that you will use it more and more, until you stop using your ThinkPad and buy a 9300 clone.

The glossy screen is a love/hate thing, and Dell's isn't as good as something like the Sony A-series. And the keyboard isn't as good as the ThinkPad's, but the action is similar (and much better than older Dells). All things considered, I think the 9300 is one of the best lappies on the market.

If you end up loving everything but the glossy LCD, try to find a Dell 9200 WUXGA on eBay. Basically the same machine with a matte WUXGA LCD.
 
IBM always did make the best keyboards. Even on a desktop machine I kept an old IBM AT style keyboard for a good 10 years, using several adapters to make it fit as the keyboard plugs changed sizes. I type really hard too...a lot of keyboards wont last more than a year or two, so lasting a decade was a heck of a tribute.

I've seen some stick-on screen filters for laptops that might help the shiny screen problem. I think they're about $8-10.
 
th said:
IBM always did make the best keyboards.  Even on a desktop machine I kept an old IBM AT style keyboard for a good 10 years, using several adapters to make it fit as the keyboard plugs changed sizes.  I type really hard too...a lot of keyboards wont last more than a year or two, so lasting a decade was a heck of a tribute.
Click to expand...

I think IBM still makes an external keyboard called the "SpaceSaver" or something like that. It's very similar to the ThinkPad keyboard, even down to the integrated trackpoint. I have a few of them and still use them on my desktops (the latest have a USB connector).

I've seen some stick-on screen filters for laptops that might help the shiny screen problem.  I think they're about $8-10.
Click to expand...

Ugh. That would be nuts. It's not widely known, but Dell is using the same LCD's on the 9300 that they used on the 9200. The 9200 LCDs were matte (anti-glare), but Dell wanted to join the glossy crowd (everybody loves the glossy Sony and Toshiba LCDs), so they secretly glued on a glossy coat to the old matte LCDs and called them TrueLife(TM). It would be the ultimate horor to stick an anti-glare stick-on on top of the glossy stick-on on top of the anti-glare coating on top of the original LCD.
 
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