Jewelzz

A friend is looking to buy a laptop, what do you all suggest?

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SPeedY_B

Depends on the usage.. there are many different laptops out there now.
Small 10 to 12 inch models designed for portability and light weight, newer centrino notebooks designed for long battery life and wifi usage, mahoooosive 17" notebooks meant for desktop replacements, and then there's plain ol' 14 to 15 inch notebooks which are just the standard, but also come in varieties of work machines and uber-pumped up gaming laptops

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Admiral Michael

I have a Compaq Presario 2100 (Model 2180CA) and it rocks! It includes:

AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+ (1.8GHz)

256MB DDR RAM

60 GB 4200RPM

ATI Radeon Graphics with 8MB Shared Memory ( I knocked it down from 64 so I could have more system memory)

Built-in 56K MODEM

Built-in 10/100MBps Ethernet LAN

Built-in 802.11 Wireless Card

256 KB Cache

3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive

266 MHz System Bus

1 Type II PC Card Slot

2 USB, Serial, Parallel, IEEE1394

VGA, S-Video Out

16-Bit Stereo Sound

15.0" XGA LCD Screen

DVD/CDRW Optical Drive

Windows XP Home SP1

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Jewelzz

Here's the scoop

He's going to India for 6 months on business. He needs a laptop for business but also for his personal needs. He has a ton of MP3s (10 - 20 gig) plus his other proggies and company stuff.

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Henyman

how much is he looking to spend roughly?

also i presume he wants a new laptop rather than second hand.

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Jewelzz

Yes, new. $1000 - $1500

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SPeedY_B

I wouldn't know an exact model, but I'd say to try an go for a 1.3 to 1.4 GHz centrino (dont be deceived by the speed, a 1.3 is equal to that of a 2.0GHz P4) with 512ddr and all the other standard stuff, then as he seems to have a lot of files, look into the possability of an external USB 2.0 (or firewire) hard disk.

Acer make some good, and well priced, centrino notebooks: http://global.acer.com/

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PseudoKiller

Well I got my laptop last week and this is what I have ...
Compaq Presario X1000 (Model x1010us)
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Processor Intel® Pentium® M Processor - 1.3GHz
Memory 512MB DDR SDRAM (2 x 256MB) at 266MHz
Hard Drive 60GB Enhanced IDE
Multimedia Drive 8x DVD/24x CD-RW (24X/10X/24X) Combo Drive
Display 15.4" WXGA WVA display (1280 x 800)
Communications Integrated 56K modem, Intel® pro wireless 2100 802.11b and 10/100 Ethernet
Video ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9200 with 32MB DDR
Weight 6.5 lb.
Dimensions 14.06" (L) x 10" (W) x 1.30" (H)
Operating system Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
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I love it so far and this is coming from someone who only ever built his desktops... so buying one, I was worried. For the money I feel I got a good buy. Best Buy is running a very good sale, buy the laptop (Compaq) and get $200 in rebates.
Heres the Compaq site
And here the Best Buy site...

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NetRyder

You could also look into the Dell Inspiron 600m (which is also Centrino-based). I've heard a lot of good reviews about it on various sites.

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