THE Laptop Thread: Configs, deals and questions.

[Rtech]

Hey Guys,

I have to get or atleast decide on a new laptop by Tuesday latest!

Here's the basic specs I'm lookin at:
Min 30 Gb HD
min 256 mbRam upgradable
CDR/RW or DVD R
Needs decent battery life
Preferably lightweight and resistant to rough use
Don't mind compromising on screen size
Good warranty/service backup

Lastly, I can't decide whether is should spring the extra bucks for a centrino or a PIV is good enough. I'm still not very clear on the advantages of centrino either actually.

Main use would be regular office work, nothing to heavy on resources.

Does anyone know of a good reliable dealer in Mumbai, south if possible?

I know there are a bunch of PC specialists here, so please help me out guys...and fast!

Thanks,
Rtech

[GTO]

Rtech, lets take it one by one.

1. 30 GB Hard-disk. It should more than suffice for your intended purpose though my personal laptop has a 60GB Harddrive (of which 15 GB have been used for professional purposes and 15 GB for car videos )

2. 256 mb Ram- Windows recommends a minimum of 128 mb for the XP, but I strongly suggest you invest toward 512 MB here. Multi-tasking will be great if you want music, explorer, office and adobe open with still some memory in reserve. If you dont want to right now, please make sure that your existing memory will be upgradeable.

3. CDR/RW - CD-RW is a must, and I would suggest a wait on the DVD-RW. Firstly, of the four formats currently available in DVDs (DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW) not all are universally accepted by too many players. Second, burning speeds are yet in the nascent stage. Third, the prices will crash much much more - same thing that happened with CD-RW drives which are now as low as $20 for external.

4.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]Needs decent battery life
Preferably lightweight and resistant to rough use

You have yourself specified some of the biggest benefits of a Centrino. I use a Centrino while my sister uses an IBM P4 laptop bought around the same time with similar configs. My laptop is far lighter (despite a bigger screen), runs much cooler (the IBM laptop gets H-O-T and has a family petname - LapBurner) and the battery life on my Centrino is close to 4 hours (IBM is two). Performance of both is lightning fast but she cant multi-task as easily due to 256MB ram only.

The Centrino does not heat up as much, and lower power consumption leads to smaller and lighter batteries. Just go for the Centrino. P4's were actually designed for desktops not laptops.

5.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]
Good warranty/service backup

Go with a strong brand. IBM (the best), HP and Dell all offer great customer service. I have had bad experiences with the Zeniths in my office.

I dont recommend unbranded laptops at all and there is hardly any price differentiation now for the quality and assurance you get with the big 3.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]Does anyone know of a good reliable dealer in Mumbai, south if possible?

Consider this, I got my fully loaded Compaq X1000 lappy for $1300 (Rs. 65000) last year from the US. HP/Compaq was selling the same laptop out here for 1.5 lacs. Even after the recent customs duties cut, prices surprising havent fallen how much I expected them to. *

Warranty is not an issue since they are now international and my own Laptop has received full support at the local HP service outlet.

A neighbour of mine (close buddy and Team-BHPian) can source a Laptop for you at American prices. Your choice of brand. Extremely reliable and honest chap.

GTO

[Rtech]

Thanks GTO, but I got a few more quries.

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]Warranty is not an issue since they are now international and my own Laptop has received full support at the local HP service outlet.

Hmmm. I have an HP laptop at home, but when I needed some assistance from HP India, they flat refused saying that as its was bought abroad, they will not honour the warranty. This was 3 years ago though, so hopefully things have changed.

But a solid warranty is needed, and if your friend knows anything on this for sure, i would love to get in touch with him.

will call you on this today.

Rtech

[papps]

check up for an IBM thinkpad, they are real good, also HP service in India is much better now and check for a laptop with an AMD processor, i think that would be a better choice than a PIV or a Centario

[Rtech]

Never used an AMD. How are they and what code (like we have PIII, PIV) should I be looking for?

[2fast2furious]

forget everthing.... Use SONY VAIO Z1 series ... kewll... using since a year and never ashamed off

[GTO]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ] Hmmm. I have an HP laptop at home, but when I needed some assistance from HP India, they flat refused saying that as its was bought abroad, they will not honour the warranty. This was 3 years ago though, so hopefully things have changed.

As we spoke on the phone, just buy an extended two year warranty from HP India for anywhere between 15 - 19 grand. They will offer you the same service they do to an Indian laptop then.

Honestly I am not going for the extended warranty and my one year is up. These things are just so reliable these days with parts failures a very rare occasion. Even if say, you experience a part failure:

80GB Harddrive - Rs.7000
Ram - Much less
Screen - Rs.8000

The chances of a failure are very very very low with top notch quality brands. And the difference in Indian/American pricing more than double.

GTO

[Revvmaster]

Hey Rtech

I sourced my laptop around 20 months back. Its Dell Inspiron 4150 with 30 GB HDD, 1.7 GHZ PIV, 512 Ram with a 7500 graphix card and Wi-Fi enabled, CDRW/DVD rom.

I purchased it from the states for 1200$ during the christmas season with actual price being 1400 (means i got $200 rebate-2 weeks). Honestly I wish i cud pick up a thinkpad just cuz its an IBM but as a VFM package nothing comes close to a dell. I think for a similar price like mine u shud easily be picking up a better dell piece. They have a worldwide service network and my own experience with them in India has been quite nice. They are pretty patient when u speak to them on the phone and pretty much are quick with their solutions.

O/wise look for 2nd hand Vaios since i have started seeing quite a few now in the 2nd hand market. They look good, perform really nice, My only gripe with them is their battery performance. 2 hours at best under normal usage. My Dell gives me 3.

Revv

[SLK]

.. Though I don't own one...but I think I have seen enough of them. And somehow Toshiba.. is way ahead of IBM and Del.
Don't know much about Certino though.
When you go for a P4, I would recomend it is a P4-M i.e. mobile processor. as some cheaper ones come with non-mobile also.

Rest everything actually depends on how much you are willing to spend.

[RJK]

Hey Rtech

I have a Toshiba P4 1.8Ghz with 256 MB RAM, 20GB HDD & a DVD drive. It was bought around two years back for around 100K..was supposed to be a powerhouse then..not so much now *Anyhow get more RAM & I'm telling you 30GB of HDD will be more than sufficient. Half of my 20GB HDD lies unused & as GTO says if centrino doens't heat up then go for it otherwise it becomes a problem on the lap after sometime. Mine does heat up quite a lot after 1-1/2 hours & it becomes uncomfortable after that. Get a smaller sized one & with battery life. Usually laptops have a battery life of around 2hours. And as far as warranty issues are concerned be rest assured...Global warranty is applicable & nobody can deny you that. Infact my suggestion would be to get one from the US. Works out insanely cheap.

[Rehaan]

Hey Rtech,

Min 30 Gb HD 30GB or 40GB will be fine if you dont plan to have tons of movies and videos on your laptop.
min 256 mbRam upgradable Go for 512. It will make a difference to how fast your laptop feels outdated.
CDR/RW or DVD R You want a drive that can play DVDs and burn CDRs and CDRWs. Makes financial sense, plus i doubt you will ever have the need to burn 4GB of data onto a dvd!
Preferably lightweight and resistant to rough use Toshibas and IBMs are built tough IMO (but i hate IBM designs)

Lastly, I can't decide whether is should spring the extra bucks for a centrino or a PIV is good enough. I'm still not very clear on the advantages of centrino either actually.
Centrino. Reasons as above in this thread.

And when it comes to brands i lean towards (in this order)
Toshiba
Dell
Hp
IBM (my sis has one and i hate it... i just hate IBM laptops!!..badly designed and ugly...)

hope that helps.
cya
R

ps - i just got a mail from my college, thought id just put the stats in here coz its a laptop thread - heres whats waiting for me when i go back to college -
HP nx7010 customized
Centrino 1.7Ghz
1GB 333Mhz DDR Ram
60GB 5400RPM HDD (i was dissapointed by this )
15.4" 1920x1200 LCD WUXGA
DVD writer
ATI Radeon 9200 w/ 64MB
Wifi & bluetooth
not bad id say.... the school got it for $2000 (people doing my course are "forced" to buy this )
cya

[Revvmaster]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]people doing my course are "forced" to buy this

hahahaha... not a bad deal even if u are forced in it R.

BTW my good ol college woke up one morning and decided to give us lappys this year....

.... except that they will be lousy Zenith's at best...

Revv

[GTO]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] ]15.4" 1920x1200 LCD

Dude, you better get prepared to get some glasses. I had the WUXGA (1920x1200) and everything is just so small on the screen. EVen if you resize and adjust, its darned pathetic.

Sent it back (30 day return rocks) and got a WSXGA+ (1680x1050). Much happier.

Buttttttttt your new laptop looks exactly the same like mine. If only I could get my hands on that 1 G of RAM!

GTO

[Rehaan]

Hey GTO,

I foresaw the same problem. On my 19" desktop i use a res of 1280x960, and this is a 15.4" with 1920x1200!!!!!!
But the thing is that we need this res for the apps we will be running.

Also, just remembered mine should be the new "breed" of the mobile processor having a 2MB L2 cache.

cya
R

[satish_appasani]

I use HP Compaq nx 9010(P4 2.4, 450 MB RAM(something that really still doesn't make any sense to me), 40GB HDD, DVD-R/CD-RW, JBL speakers(No good to desktop speakers). This is owned by my company but purposefully bought for me in US for something around $1200(8 months back and I'm not really sure about the price). I am a developer and I really require lots of power and this machine is perfect fit for me (I don't mind having some more RAM). I run lots of tools, databases and services parallely.

When I checked the price in India six months back for this model, it was RS.95,000

My co-worker's similar laptop beat to death a desktop machine with 4 processors and 1 GB RAM when he ran the same application on both the machines.