I don't think I'd particularly recommend it if someone has a better idea/offer, but I do have an Inspiron E1505 that I haven't gotten around to recycling yet. You'd have to buy a new battery for it, which would run about $150ish if I remember right, and apparently Dell has mastered the 13-month battery with a 12-month warranty.
Aside from the dead battery (which I think was fine for the first 10-12 months), it meets all of the above plus plays older video games decently. HD is about 60gig. It's painfully slow right now, but I think it just needs a reformat, which I'd give it before I sent it out, anyway. Possibly having a dead battery affects it, too, even though I've got it plugged in? I don't know. It wasn't this bad before the battery died.
The only personal Laptop I ever bought was an HP, and it was ok... I'm not sure if the various issues I had with it were from the OS. Which was the oh-so-wonderful Windows ME.
At work I've had a couple Dells and a Thinkpad. My first Dell was solid as a rock, never had any issues with it ever, I loved it, even ran FFXI better than my desktop. The second Dell had far, far, superior hardware but was consistently slower than the first. BSOD'd me about 25% of the time when just undocking. I gave up on Hibernating it because it would forget that I Hibernated it about 50% of the time and just power up like I never Hibernated it in the first place. Constant USB enumeration issues. Integrated wireless card had issues connecting to routers in the same room. Keeping in mind, this was a brand new laptop and one of the high end business types. I was always kicking myself for 'upgrading'.
The Thinkpad I have currently hasn't given me any grief, but I mostly leave it at work so I can't really say I stressed it much.
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Aside from the dead battery (which I think was fine for the first 10-12 months), it meets all of the above plus plays older video games decently. HD is about 60gig. It's painfully slow right now, but I think it just needs a reformat, which I'd give it before I sent it out, anyway. Possibly having a dead battery affects it, too, even though I've got it plugged in? I don't know. It wasn't this bad before the battery died.
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At work I've had a couple Dells and a Thinkpad. My first Dell was solid as a rock, never had any issues with it ever, I loved it, even ran FFXI better than my desktop. The second Dell had far, far, superior hardware but was consistently slower than the first. BSOD'd me about 25% of the time when just undocking. I gave up on Hibernating it because it would forget that I Hibernated it about 50% of the time and just power up like I never Hibernated it in the first place. Constant USB enumeration issues. Integrated wireless card had issues connecting to routers in the same room. Keeping in mind, this was a brand new laptop and one of the high end business types. I was always kicking myself for 'upgrading'.
The Thinkpad I have currently hasn't given me any grief, but I mostly leave it at work so I can't really say I stressed it much.
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