Laptop advice wanted
So I'm probably going to be getting me a new laptop soon, and I wanted to pick anyone's brain what's willing to be picked. If you have no advice on the subject, or are not inclined to share what advice you have, you can probably just skip
the rest of this.
So in the next month or two, I'd like to get me a laptop computer, but know almost nothing about laptops. So I was hoping to get some advice from anyone who knows more than me (which would be anyone that owns one, for example). In general, I'm looking for any advice, thoughts, suggestions, anecdotes, etc. More particularly, I'm hoping for a machine running at least 1GHz w/128MB RAM, although better is always better. Don't know if I have any use for a wireless network card or not. I'm hoping to not spend much more than $1000, and less is always better. Here are some more specific questions:
1) What brands have you found to be reliable/inexpensive/crappy? What about customer service? Particularly curious what people think of Dell and IBM, although I'm not necessarily leaning towards either of them.
2) Where are good/bad places to buy? Ebay? Overstock.com? Dell's on-line outlet? Circuit City? (well, probably not....)
3) What features should I be sure to get? (Like that lock cable thingie on Kurt's... how easy are those to find?)
4) What would be considered too much money for what I want?
5) Does weight really matter? Is 10 lbs too heavy?
Finally, just for a frame of reference, what do you think of this one and this one for the given prices?
So in the next month or two, I'd like to get me a laptop computer, but know almost nothing about laptops. So I was hoping to get some advice from anyone who knows more than me (which would be anyone that owns one, for example). In general, I'm looking for any advice, thoughts, suggestions, anecdotes, etc. More particularly, I'm hoping for a machine running at least 1GHz w/128MB RAM, although better is always better. Don't know if I have any use for a wireless network card or not. I'm hoping to not spend much more than $1000, and less is always better. Here are some more specific questions:
1) What brands have you found to be reliable/inexpensive/crappy? What about customer service? Particularly curious what people think of Dell and IBM, although I'm not necessarily leaning towards either of them.
2) Where are good/bad places to buy? Ebay? Overstock.com? Dell's on-line outlet? Circuit City? (well, probably not....)
3) What features should I be sure to get? (Like that lock cable thingie on Kurt's... how easy are those to find?)
4) What would be considered too much money for what I want?
5) Does weight really matter? Is 10 lbs too heavy?
Finally, just for a frame of reference, what do you think of this one and this one for the given prices?