I gotta think about the whole thing Chad, but what Mike says here is definitely true. Dent & Scratch or open box specials (since both are usually fully guaranteed to work). Mike, you got a great deal IMO.

I told my bro-in-law that the things he wants to look for in a laptop are, more memory, decent sized harddrive, 14"+ screen and if possible, a non-integrated graphics card (sometimes expensive).

 

MS has guaranteed (due to customer bitching) they will actively support XP for at least 2 more years. I'm still getting updates and hotfixes for my Win2000 system (though I just downloaded all of the hotfixes to cut to CD, just in case).

IMO, trying to run Vista on a laptop is a bad choice... if you want the extra features, it sucks down your battery life. MS recently released some "fixes" for it... essentially it determines whether you are plugged into the wall or nt. If you're plugged in (and you have the processor power), it enables the features, disables them by default when you unplug. Personally, I'll give up kick-ass looking Aero windows for that extra hour of battery life. You can't run both cores on the processor for free, and Aero (among other items) sits there chugging away on the second processor. Imagine being 10 minutes away from a mavie's end on a long plane ride and your laptop shuts down because the battery is low. I'd go for XP...

 

I agree with most of the things cow said. Intel over AMD, his Price/Benefits arguement, Vista (premium, not home or basic) vs XP (unless you're going XP Pro), etc.
I don't agree that the IBM Thinkpad is a good laptop. I think for $700 or less you should be able to find a good deal on a nicely built laptop, *IF* you can wait to buy it

 

[QUOTE=TepEvan,Aug 15 2007, 05:40 PM] I agree with most of the things cow said.

 

Both are the ghey.

 

Support = phone support and patches for security mostly though. After this year, you'll see few hotfixes for actual problems unless they are severe on XP, and less and less driver support from manufacturers. Windows 2000 reaches end of support at the end of this year, I know because we've been scrambling to upgrade our Windows 2000 servers to 2003 (yes we're slow). That means no new patches or phone support. XP still has life left in it, but since its the same exact money, Vista is the way to go. According to benchmarks, Vista with Aero disabled is more power efficient than XP is. So, like you said, just disable Aero.

As far as Aero sucking down your 2nd processor, thats just completely untrue. I'm sitting here on a Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz with Vista Ultimate running Aero, and my CPU usage is currently under 10%. The only thing using processor time right now is Firefox and thats because I'm typing into a Firefox window. If I stop typing CPU usage drops to below 5%, and most of that comes from the Task manager.

As far as Lenovo ThinkPads, I think their high end laptops are amongst the best laptops on the market, but they cost a pretty penny. They are road worthy laptops, in other words they are built to last versus most laptops. The problem is just that they cost more money for what you get.

Although all new Dell laptops are what they call "Road Ready" (Link: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global....=us&l=en&s=gen) which basically means they do stuff like open and close the lid to make sure that the hinges aren't going to break prematurely or the connection to the monitor isn't going to come loose.

I'd still recommend you wait until tomorrow to see what Dell's new deals are tomorrow.

 

[QUOTE=magikcow,Aug 15 2007, 06:44 PM]I've never had a problem with the IBM thinkpad.

 

I've had a Sony Vaio for over three years. It's been great for me, but there are so many options, it can be confusing. Good luck!

 

The thing is, if you had the choice for the same exact price on XP or Vista, you're not a gamer, and you can disable Aero for battery life thats BETTER than Vista, which would you choose? Thats the point of view I'm coming from. There's no real drawbacks for the average user to upgrade. Gamers should still stay away, and for existing computers there's probably not a good reason to spend the money upgrading -- but when it costs you nothing to go with Vista Home Premium vs. XP, I say go with Vista.

Just makes sense to me go to with Vista for new PCs.