laptop help

[Krux]

Has anyone heard of this company? does the hardware sound like its reliable? its a customizeable laptop cept the mobo and the video card. any sugestions on it?


http://www.actonlinestore.com/smoreinfo.asp?iid=1422

 

[Taurus]

ECS? sure.. they are a major motherboard manufacturer. though theior boards aren't really recognized as class-leading.

here is a direct link to ecs' i-buddie page. http://www.ecsusa.com/products/i-Buddie.html

 

[jonifen]

as I expected... my work just got some i-buddie laptops recently... 1.3ghz celerons, 256mb ram, 20gb hdd, dvdrom... all looked sweet until we found there was no floppy drive (not so much a problem), but no battery???!!!

from website you linked krux
Battery
This product differs from a notebook in that it does not include an integrated battery. An optional external battery is available

also, remembering back... the ventilation fan is on the base of the laptop - meaning you need to put the laptop always on a solid surface otherwise the hot air cant leave the unit - causing problems :/

also (another edit lol)... there are no PCMCIA slots 🙁

 

[Taurus]

actually, i kind of like the lack of a battery thing. it's definitely geared more toward people that don't need to actually work or play while in a car or cafe. i have a laptop and it's only ever on here or at a friend's house when we lan. i pretty much never run off the battery.

and the battery is heavy and expensive. so excluding it is smart... if you don't need it, of course. 🙂

 

[jonifen]

true... lack of pcmcia slots caused us a problem though... had to return the 3com xjack wireless lan cards we ordered at the same time 🙁 nice bits of kit they were too...

one bonus is that it took normal 168pin PC133 memory - none of that SODIMM stuff 🙂

 

[Krux]

this is good I like the feed back, its mostly so I can sit with my women while she does whatever and I don't go crazy with boredom.



so no battery, it comes with a wall plug right?

no floppy, I can still boot from a cd to install windows tho right?

 

[Krux]

the page says it has intergrated lan and usb what would I use the pcim slots for? 56k? wireless? what?

 

[jonifen]

krux: thats correct 🙂

you can get a fair distance from the power socket cuz the cables are pretty long - you get 2 power cables... one from the laptop which has the transformer on and another one (standard kettle type lead - used on desktop pcs etc) which plugs into the transformer and plugs into the wall... and you can get extensions for them easily enough, so I spose it aint too bad 🙂

you can boot from the cdrom yeah... thats how we got XP Pro on them 🙂

i gotta admit though... although the lack of battery and pcmcia slots caused a bit of a problem for us at first... they're pretty solid laptops - i never got to use them much, but they installed with no problems what so ever... which is always a good sign.

 

[jonifen]

you can use pcmcia slots for allsorts of things...

bluetooth adapters,
wireless lan adapters,
standard 10/100 nic adapters (altho one is on the laptop already),
56k modems (altho one is on the laptop already),
compact flash card readers,

etc etc etc 🙂

 

[Krux]

what do you think I would need the pcim slots for? they important? I know they hold things like modems and junk.

 

[jonifen]

nah, they aint really important for the normal user... it was a problem at work cuz we bought the PCMCIA wireless lan cards specially for the laptops only to find they obviously wouldnt fit 🙁

anyways... off to bed - will check back tomorrow to see if i can help anymore 🙂

btw... nice sig 🙂

 

[Taurus]

Originally posted by Krux
the page says it has intergrated lan and usb what would I use the pcim slots for? 56k? wireless? what?

looks like they all come with internal 56k modems. but no pcmcia slots isn't a big deal. anything that uses those can be found that uses usb 2.0 instead. that includes wireless adapters, external hd's, burners, etc.

 

[Krux]

Originally posted by jonifen
nah, they aint really important for the normal user... it was a problem at work cuz we bought the PCMCIA wireless lan cards specially for the laptops only to find they obviously wouldnt fit 🙁

anyways... off to bed - will check back tomorrow to see if i can help anymore 🙂

btw... nice sig 🙂

Thanks man first good comment Ive gotten on my sig 🙂

 

[Krux]

ok I bought it 970 bucks 1800+ 512 DDR 2100 8xDVD-ROM 20 gig HDD

 

[Taurus]

not a bad deal, man.

just don't expect to play 3d games on it. 😛

 

[Krux]

was more of a movie photoshop on the go type purchase 🙂