Need advice on buying a laptop

[Yohhan]

I'm looking to buy a laptop, preferably something cheap, maybe something in the P4 1.5 ghz range or lower. Can somebody give me some direction? Is it possible to get something decent for less than $1,000? I checked out the Dell website, but they always give you add ons you don't need/want.

Thanks ahead.

 

[Darien]

What are you going to do with your laptop? ---> Can always give the iBooks a shot

 

[DaveSimmons]

Gaming or non-gaming? Non-gaming ones go for as little as $750 without too much effort (see Hot Deals), ones with ATI Radeon for light gaming usually start around $1,000. Check Hot Deals.

Remember that most laptop models do not allow upgrading the video card (most have the video on the motherboard), so if you want high-performance 3D graphics you need to look for a model that already has it.

If you care about battery life, a -M mobile chip costs more but usually offers better life than the P4 and celeron desktop chips used in some cheap models.

 

[Yohhan]

I've never had a laptop before, so mainly I'm just gonna screw around with it. Which is why I would like something dirt cheap.

For starters, I'm hoping to set up a wireless network. I have a big screen in the other room that I like to play online Halo on, so I'd take the laptop into the other room to setup games (rather than running back and forth). At the current time, I have an extra long cable that I just drag through the house whenever I play... which gets very annoying.

So the laptop's purpose will be trivial. The cheaper the better

 

[DaveSimmons]

Then you could get a used one in FS/FT or from eBay or www.truedataproducts.com. I'm not sure whether wifi cards run on win95 so you might need at least win98. Also, battery life on used laptops is sometimes very low.

 

[Markfw]

My brother wanted to do something like that and found a NEW Compaq something with an XP1500 mobile cpu for about $850 (I think at Fry's or CompUSA on special) including a burner and a decent video card and 512 meg ram !! He loves it. I wish I could remember the model number. I will look some more, and if I find it, I will update my post.

 

[Yohhan]

I've got windows 98 somewhere, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Mark, if you could get the model # for me, that'd be great. If you can't, thanks anyways.

 

[OldSpooky]

Toshiba Satellite 1200. Cheap, lightweight, and equiped with wireless for under a grand I believe the base configuration comes with a 14.1" XGA TFT, 20 GB HDD, 256 MB of RAM, and a 1.2 GHz Celeron (Tualatin-256) processor.