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My wife has been asking for a laptop of her own (apparently the desktop is being monopolized by moi) and is finally getting her way.

Any suggestions?

She's not a hardcore gamer, very casual in fact, just wants to watch some youtube sometimes, maybe download an episode of heros once it's out, basic things.

Oh and it should have the integrated wireless, so she can move it to the kitchen so she can surf for new recipies.

I was never into laptops, so any help would be good, even if it's "Acer sucks!" (which I know it does)

Thanks in advance,

San

I like the Lenovo's They are the old IBM Thinkpad Brand which Lenovo took over When IBM sold their Notebook and PC Divisions. Look for One shipping with Vista Business as Most of those also include Downgrade CD's to XP Pro.

I am not sure about in the US But in Canada HP Service is the worst. Dell's seem to expire just after the warranty does. Toshiba is not bad and I like the fujitsu Line of laptops as well but they are a bit more expensive.

Sony can be very expensive for upgrades like ram, where most other lines can use generic DDR2.

Hope this helps you out..

K

If it's just for web browsing, the occasional video, etc -- then on of the 10 or 12" netbooks might do the trick:

- ASUS EeePC 1000H
- Dell Mini 12
- Plus any of the generic ones.

Yes, they have a low-end ultra-low-voltage CPU (1.6Ghz), but if you go with a decent amount of RAM (2GB) and a solid state drive (SSD) instead of a traditional spinning-media disk -- you'll have an amazingly fast machine for your web use. It'll also handle any of the office type tasks fine too. You'll ofcourse have limited storage on it.

Do yourself a favour though -- uninstall all the crapware that every manufacturer gives you. Dell seem to be providing a clean-slate DVD with their laptops which has nothing but the drivers on it. Not sure if the same goes for netbooks - You'd need a USB DVD Drive, or know how to make a thumbstick bootable though - they don't have DVD/CD drives in 'em as a rule.

Also, unless you or the better half is a linux geek - avoid the Linux versions. You might save yourself $50 on an XP Licence, but I've seen several non-geek people encounter problems using linux versions ("Why can't I get this Powerpoint Fred sent me to run... ")

Vista SP1 is actually pretty damn good on a laptop too, btw. The hybrid sleep functions are fantastic for when you just want to close the lid and put the laptop away for a bit - when you open the lid back up you're right back to where you were, and with minimal loss of battery power.

I've owned a dell inspiron 640m for the last 2 years and have found it to be a good laptop - enough built in cpu and onboard graphics to do anything (including my various university maths/science related projects) other than play 3d games, long battery life (i can still get 3+ hours out of my extended battery), a high res screen (1440x900 on a 14.1 in laptop; better than 100dpi ), and the warranty service is quite good (dell sent a guy out to where i work 2 days after i reported the problem, and had the part replaced).

Dell comps (at their normal prices) are a bit more expensive, but you get that back in service.

One thing i would recommend is to wait around, keeping an eye on the website of whichever vender you decide to go through, waiting for a good deal, as you can save 20% if you purchase at the right time (especially with dell, they often have various deals running).

In terms of components, on-board graphics are probably good enough. ram is cheap, and a good way to future proof the laptop, although if you get 32bit win XP, it can't use more than 3Gb. Probably the 64bit version of the OS, with 4G of ram is best.
There are 2 lines of laptop cpu's around - centrino, which is the laptop version of the core2, and the atom, which is a specifically made low power cpu for mobile devices. The atom has less computational power (not enough to run vista), but longer battery life, and the new EEEpc, Dells new mini-laptops and a few others use this. Any centrino based cpu is good enough for almost anything you would want, and the Atoms are good enough for all the common tasks you list (running word, web browsers, playing videos,...)

RE: the guy about linux above-- some vendors do support specific flavours of linux (eg dell; ubuntu), and yes while office 2007 support isn't available under linux Office 2003 itself can be run in Linux (google wine, crossover office, or just office linux), and OpenOffice is probably more compatible with office 2003 than office 2007 is.

If you do get a laptop with a graphics card in it battery life will be reduced, but then all the shiny goodness of vista will run well.

integrated wireless -- any new laptop of any type will have that.

RE:Spec8472's comments - good post (i read it after i started writing this and we seem to think along the same lines), although i'm not sure about the power comments - i run win xp, and i've a sleep mode which returns to fully operational in about 5 seconds, and uses about 1% of battery an hour, and it'll drop from sleep to hibernate (0% battery per hour) after a specified amount of sleep time (so i normally have it set to sleep on close the lid, or 5 mins, then hibernate after 2 hours - that way if i walk away form my laptop on friday, i know its only lost 2 or 3% battery life on monday).

edit, what was here before wasn't quite right:
One last thing to note: some Vista licences are also licences for XP -- so if you have a choice you can get vista, then borrow someone's xp cd and use your own serial no. to install it. (borrowing both their cd and their serial number is a no-no though, the activation process may result in both computers having issues if the same no. is used in multiple places.)
"Can I downgrade my OEM version of Windows Vista Business to Windows XP Professional?
Yes. OEM downgrade rights for desktop PC operating systems apply to Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate as stated in the License Terms. Please note, OEM downgrade versions of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate are limited to Windows XP Professional ..(list of cd versions which work)..There are no downgrade rights granted for Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium."


(wow, what a long post, now if only i could be this productive concerning the paper i'm supposed to be working on ...)

Thanks for the info guys.

I don't think battery power is going to be an issue, this laptop is strictly for kitchen recipe raiding, and nighttime newgroups.

(I'm going to get her hooked on Fel too don't worry).

One final question, heat buildup. I had a laptop that basically nuked itself because of heat buildup. Any laptops in particular to avoid?

Sancria wrote:One final question, heat buildup. I had a laptop that basically nuked itself because of heat buildup. Any laptops in particular to avoid?

If battery and sound aren't a concern then get a laptop cooler as well. It also makes the laptop semi-ergonomic.

I have an Asus EEE 1000h, and am quite happy with it.I mainly use it for surfing the web when I'm not at home, although I have used it occasionaly to doodle something up in Autocad. Since it doesn't have a cd, or dvd rom drive, i bought an external drive to go with it, but only to install some apps. such as Autocad, and Office,

re: linux on a laptop
http://blog.laptopmag.com/one-third-of- ... -run-linux -- about 1/3 of the small laptops dell are selling are selling w/ ubuntu on them, and the return rate on both the windows and ubuntu laptops are about the same, indicating that people have about the same amount of problems with both.