Best notebook under $1k

[Piscivore]

I want to replace the three 7-10 year old desktops (running Win98SE) I have with something relatively up-to-date and that I can carry around. I don't have any pressing large-scale multimedia needs, though it would be nice to be able to let the kids watch a DVD on it during long car trips. I'm also cheap as hell. Any suggestions? Any warnings, brands to stay away from?

Thanks.

[cesium]

I am not quite sure what you want to use it for, but if you would just like to use word, email, excel, DVDs, powerpoint, etc. Get a 12" apple iBook ($999).

I have a 12" powerbook (it is an older model, but it works well), and I love it, very stable (Operating system wise), durable (probably not an intended feature, but mine is very beat up, and it still works), easy networking and other features.

The only problem with switching to apple would be that you would have to buy a new copy of MS office for mac, and if you use any programs that dont have mac versions, you would need to get virtual PC.



Oh, they have GREAT battery life, I can get 3 Hrs out of mine, and the new ones are probably better.

[Theodore Kurita]

I too would recommend the above mentioned Apple.

If you want a Windows Solution...

I know you said Sub 1000, however, not alot of sub 1000.00 notebooks are all that great.

If you want a decent notebook, be prepared to shell out around $1500.00

Take a look at PCTorque for example:

http://pctorque.com/3790.php

The Sager 3790-S should satisfy most all of your needs. It has plenty of RAM, a decent graphics card, so running some of the newer games is actually possible (ie, running Doom 3 at 40 FPS). It has a Centrino Processor, so Battery life should be around 4 hours. Overall it is a great notebook.

[scribble]

I just bought a "GQ" (Great Quality) brand laptop from Fry's Electronics ( http://outpost.com ) and despite costing me only $599 brand spanking new, it does everything I could possibly need and then some.

Comes with a DVD player included.

The only downside is there's only 128mb RAM installed by default, which I may change if it begins to annoy me, but so far, so good.

I've set it up to dual-boot Windows XP and Debian Linux (Sarge) and they both work perfectly. The synaptics touchpad needs a special driver in Linux, but the driver is included in my Debian distro for the 2.6x kernel -- no problems. I've used the Windows install for watching movies and playing some older games, and the Debian install runs an apache-ssl server and a copy of postgres for my development work (for which I use vim as my "ide").

You can see my needs aren't very severe... but it sounds like yours aren't either, and as far as it goes, it's a great notebook.


-Chris

[scribble]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
The Sager 3790-S should satisfy most all of your needs. It has plenty of RAM, a decent graphics card, so running some of the newer games is actually possible (ie, running Doom 3 at 40 FPS). It has a Centrino Processor, so Battery life should be around 4 hours. Overall it is a great notebook. [/B]

I'd just like to say I've got an *old* Sager, and it's crap. Maybe their new stuff is nice, but their old notebooks had serious battery issues. For instance, the 2200C I have won't boot if the battery has low power, EVEN IF IT IS PLUGGED IN. This has caused no end of problems in the old notebook considering that the batteries all stop holding a charge eventually. It is, in fact, the reason I went out and got the aforementioned GQ.

-Chris

[iain]

I've just been shopping around for a decent mid-priced laptop and finally settled on an IBM thinkpad R50. It isn't the sleekest thing around but it's ideal for my needs.

For one, it's solid. My last laptop was OK but continued mauling by my young kids led to one thing after another getting broken. Currently the diskette drive and mouse pad don't work and getting it to recharge the battery is not simple. Thinkpads are very durable and the R50 especially so.

Second, it's a good package. Mine cost around £800 (so probably a similar dollar price in the US) and I got 512MB RAM, a good Pentium M processor, 60GB disk drive and CDR-DVD drive.

Thirdly (and this is probably totally irrelevant for you) the Thinkpads run Linux very well so within a couple of hours of getting it I had waved a cheery goodbye to Win XP (which still bugs the hell out of me), successfully installed Mandrake Linux and was happily browsing the web. (It would have been a lot less that two hours if Win XP hadn't had a corrupted NTFS partition that it seemed powerless to fix :( ).