laptop for a friend

[sinstone]

hey all,

one of my friends is looking for a new laptop. she is on a budget of about 1500-2000 CAD (which is about like 1300-1800 USD). she is a huge fan of the sims and she recently bought the sims2 to notice that it look terrible on her PC. hehe she was really disappointed. now she needs a laptop for school and would like to own a computer that can take recent games on easily without any slowdowns. would be great if the notebook would have decent battery life too and wireless capabilities of course. do any of you guys have any suggestions? personal stories?

thanks!!!

 

[Wall7486]

I would say Dell's i6000, its very solid laptop and with Dell's current coupon you can get one at your price range. However, the laptop is 6-7 pound, don't know if she would mind.

 

[moretoys]

I'm guessing your in Canada by the CAD 🙂
I bought a Toshiba M40 JM300E for 1900 + tx from futureshop and love it.
Specs Here
I'd recommend a look...

 

[Rottie]

Originally posted by: Wall7486
I would say Dell's i6000, its very solid laptop and with Dell's current coupon you can get one at your price range. However, the laptop is 6-7 pound, don't know if she would mind.

I don't believe she can handle heavy laptop.

 

[RamIt]

6000 heavy?
If you like to tweak things like I do try this.

I bought my mom a 6000 with the PM 1.5 400 fsb. Wire modded it to a PM 2.0.
Undervolted it to 1.1v and now battery life has been extended about 20 minutes longer than when I recieved it. It also runs much cooler and the fans hardly ever turn on.

I got it under the recent coupon deals for $920 with a 8x dvd burner abg wireless.
Sweet little laptop.

 

[Jassi]

Originally posted by: RamIt
6000 heavy?
If you like to tweak things like I do try this.

I bought my mom a 6000 with the PM 1.5 400 fsb. Wire modded it to a PM 2.0.
Undervolted it to 1.1v and now battery life has been extended about 20 minutes longer than when I recieved it. It also runs much cooler and the fans hardly ever turn on.

I got it under the recent coupon deals for $920 with a 8x dvd burner abg wireless.
Sweet little laptop.

wiremodded? please explain.

 

[bacillus]

Originally posted by: Jassi

Originally posted by: RamIt
6000 heavy?
If you like to tweak things like I do try this.

I bought my mom a 6000 with the PM 1.5 400 fsb. Wire modded it to a PM 2.0.
Undervolted it to 1.1v and now battery life has been extended about 20 minutes longer than when I recieved it. It also runs much cooler and the fans hardly ever turn on.

I got it under the recent coupon deals for $920 with a 8x dvd burner abg wireless.
Sweet little laptop.

wiremodded? please explain.

I too would like to know about this!

 

[moretoys]

If the wire mod is a physical mod, it would most likely void warrenty, which a student may not be able to afford. So check before going down that road.
I also would like to know about the mod, although I'm betting my laptop wouldn't be a candidate (533 fsb).
Thanks

 

[RamIt]

Take THIS and put it into the cpu socket at c15 and c16 circled in red HERE.

This tricks the computer into thinking it has a 533 processor instead of a 400.

 

[moretoys]

No go for me cause I got a 533 processor, have to wait till someone comes up with a good way to go beyond 533.
Don't need it now anyway, I'll start OC when I find something I need an upgrade to run. 🙂

Thanks!

 

[Wuzup101]

A decent bet would be and IBM T42 now that the T43s are comming out (are out... whatever... not sure of their status). I'm guessing if she's going to school she could get a bit of a discount which may put the 14" T42 into her price range. It's an excelent notebook for a student, rugged, light, with decent power battery life. If you happen to know anyone who works for IBM you can get huge discounts, but if not the student discounts still make them reasonable choices especially for the IBM build quality which is hard to beat.

My school has this (thinkpad T42) for just under 1,800:

Intel Pentium M 735 1.7 GHz, 512MB RAM, Hard Drive 80 GB 5400 rpm, CD-RW / DVD-R multi-burner, 14 TFT active matrix SXGA+ (1400 x 1050) - 24-bit (16.7 million colors), ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600 - 64 MB, Fax / Modem, Gigabit Ethernet, Wireless Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG, Lithium Ion Battery 4.5 hours normal use, Microsoft Windows XP Pro, 3 years warranty through IBM.