Other good places to look/purchase notebooks

[TC10284]

Does anyone know of any other good places to buy notebooks besides Newegg or Tigerdirect?

Also, has anyone tried any of those 44 pin to compact flash adapters and a 4 or 8GB CF card? If so, how do they work? Any issues?

 

[Brainonska511]

1) What type/brand of notebook are you looking for? What's your budget? What do you want to do with this notebook?
-There are certain resellers on the internet for laptops that only sell one brand of laptop, so if you know what brand you want, there are plenty of other places to go and look.

2) Never used one, but I imagine they work. You'd have much slower write speeds compared to a hdd.

 

[docinthebox]

http://www.dell.com

http://www.lenovo.com

http://www.shopping.hp.com

Sorry if this seems obvious. These are places where I would go if I had to buy a notebook, in addition to Newegg.

 

[TC10284]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511
1) What type/brand of notebook are you looking for? What's your budget? What do you want to do with this notebook?
-There are certain resellers on the internet for laptops that only sell one brand of laptop, so if you know what brand you want, there are plenty of other places to go and look.

2) Never used one, but I imagine they work. You'd have much slower write speeds compared to a hdd.

The brand doesn't matter much as long as they have decent support. I'm mainly looking to replace my current laptop. It has not been working to my expectations. I'm fully capable of working on it/formatting it, but it has been irritating me for a while now. Usually what happens is, the sound will work fine until I put the system into suspend to RAM mode, and then when I resume, usually the sound will stop working. If you try to play a sound, it'll make the CPU useage jump to 100% for a minute or so. I have reformatted, changed drivers (from Toshiba's to the manufacturer of the IC) with no luck really.
It is a Toshiba Satellite PA70 - 2.53GHz Celeron D, 768MB of RAM, 40GB HD, with Radeon Mobility 9000. I realize I probably won't be able to get much more than that with my prefered budget. I'd like no more than $700. I found one on Tiger that was refurbed with 1GB of RAM for a little less. What I do with my Toshiba now is mostly browse the net and type. I'm questioning even getting a new one because I don't take this one anywhere (yet). However, I got the idea that I could use a CF card and a 44 pin laptop adapter in my "old" laptop if I got a newer one (because I like tinkering and I've always wanted to create a solidstate only system)

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: TC10284

Originally posted by: Brainonska511
1) What type/brand of notebook are you looking for? What's your budget? What do you want to do with this notebook?
-There are certain resellers on the internet for laptops that only sell one brand of laptop, so if you know what brand you want, there are plenty of other places to go and look.

2) Never used one, but I imagine they work. You'd have much slower write speeds compared to a hdd.

The brand doesn't matter much as long as they have decent support. I'm mainly looking to replace my current laptop. It has not been working to my expectations. I'm fully capable of working on it/formatting it, but it has been irritating me for a while now. Usually what happens is, the sound will work fine until I put the system into suspend to RAM mode, and then when I resume, usually the sound will stop working. If you try to play a sound, it'll make the CPU useage jump to 100% for a minute or so. I have reformatted, changed drivers (from Toshiba's to the manufacturer of the IC) with no luck really.
It is a Toshiba Satellite PA70 - 2.53GHz Celeron D, 768MB of RAM, 40GB HD, with Radeon Mobility 9000. I realize I probably won't be able to get much more than that with my prefered budget. I'd like no more than $700. I found one on Tiger that was refurbed with 1GB of RAM for a little less. What I do with my Toshiba now is mostly browse the net and type. I'm questioning even getting a new one because I don't take this one anywhere (yet). However, I got the idea that I could use a CF card and a 44 pin laptop adapter in my "old" laptop if I got a newer one (because I like tinkering and I've always wanted to create a solidstate only system)

With a budget of only $700, you should check out the Dell Outlet. You'll be able to find something that meets your needs for that price.

As for the solid-state. CF isn't that great due to the limited read/writes that can be performed, also due to the dismal performance compared to a 5400RPM HDD. Solid-state hard drives are being developed and sent to market that are somewhat closer in performance to an actual HDD, but at the moment, you're better off sticking with a real hard drive just because of the extreme performance difference.

Also, many newer laptops are using SATA connections for their hard drives, so you'd be out of luck using a 44-Pin IDE adapter.

 

[TC10284]

With a budget of only $700, you should check out the Dell Outlet. You'll be able to find something that meets your needs for that price.

Thanks man. I'll check into it.

As for the solid-state. CF isn't that great due to the limited read/writes that can be performed, also due to the dismal performance compared to a 5400RPM HDD. Solid-state hard drives are being developed and sent to market that are somewhat closer in performance to an actual HDD, but at the moment, you're better off sticking with a real hard drive just because of the extreme performance difference.

Also, many newer laptops are using SATA connections for their hard drives, so you'd be out of luck using a 44-Pin IDE adapter.

I understand about the CF writes. I am not looking to put a solidstate in a new laptop if I get one. The plan was to put it in the "old" laptop (with 44 pin IDE interface) and try it out. I found this yesterday when I was looking around before I posted (one reason why I posted this question):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820208064
Although, it's out of stock and much more expensive (but I understand why it is - because it can probably stand up to many more writes and is hopefully pretty quick).