Toshiba A55 or A65 opinions?

[DT4K]

I originally planned on spending around $1500 for a laptop capable of playing some games, but I realized I would probably never use it for that anyway and I'd rather save some money.

So my goal now is to get a decent machine for under $1000 that will be able to handle the basics.
It will mainly be used by my wife for email, web surfing, word processing, and other school stuff. Longer battery life would be good, but probably not that important as this machine will be on my wife's lap or on the kitchen table most of the time. And I actually prefer the non-widescreen machines.

As a gamer and a tech type, I'm having a hard time deciding to go with a celeron even though I know it is probably perfectly sufficient for the way this laptop will be used.
Any advice on the comps below or other suggestions would be appreciated.

Is there a noticeable performance difference between the cel 2.8 and the P-M 715 ?

Here are a few of the weekly specials from the local Office Depot.

Toshiba A65S126
$800 after $150 rebate.
Celeron 2.8Ghz
256MB RAM (I'd buy another 256 stick)
60GB HDD
DVD/CD-RW combo
Win XP home
Integrated wireless

Toshiba A55-S3
$900 after $420 rebates
Pentium M 715
256MB RAM
40GB HDD
DVD/CD-RW
Integrated wireless

Toshiba A55-S326
$1150 after $500 rebates
Pentium M 725
512 MB
60GB HDD
XP Home
DVD Burner (all formats)

 

[imported_goku]

Key points, Never get a celeron laptop even if it's 5GHZ because celerons can be easily outperformed by Pentium III Laptops. Never get a toshiba because they are crap and will break on you, this also goes for compaqs. If you want I can show you photos of what was once a Toshiba laptop, I cant for the Compaq because my sister threw it out before I could check it out. Here are some key problems with these laptops, for a very unusual reason the keyboards go bad and type gibberish making the keyboard on them useless and the power hookup (Power port) on the laptops easily falls off. I would stay away from these laptops (HP sucks too just never had one for more than a month) like the plague because your money will be wasted.

BTW one more note, I know a lot about laptops I mean a lot, I know so much that I have been able to disassemble my laptop, change the thermal paste on the CPU and rebuild it agian and it works fine now. So my point is when I checked to see if I could repair the laptop, it turns out I couldn't. I even switched keyboards with my working laptop but still the laptop would write gibberish. There is only so much you can do to repair it and it became futile so I just stipped it for parts. Laptop was a 400MHZ Celeron (Coulda sworn 700MHZ) and performed slower than my PII 333 Sony Vaio or my Pentium 200 Desktop.

 

[RCA1857]

I have the a65-s1062 ($600 aft rebates), celeron 2.7, 400 bus and it is slow but for your purpose it is more than adequate. With the money saved you can buy extended warranty from toshiba, they have in home service plan available. I do not know of anything else that comes close for the features/price unless you buy a used laptop.

 

[SJP0tato]

I'd recommend staying away from a celeron processor. It's not a bad processor per-se, it's just possible to get a lot more performance for only a little more money in most cases. Be wary of people who say stay away from all of brand X, brand Y, or brand Z. There's no one specific brand to always choose or not choose. Most people mean well trying to steer others away from particular brands they have had trouble with, but unless they've been personal witness to a large pool of defects (say 200+ units with a 25+% problem rate from one manufacturer) it's tough to make a broad generalization of one brand based on the one or two units you know of poeple owning.

What I'd recommend is have your wife go with you to a couple stores and actually try typing/using the touchpad/display/features on a few of the models you're thinking of ordering. When I went to buy my laptop I was all set to get a toshiba, but decided to spend a few minutes on a store display and to my dismay the keyboard/touchpad just didn't quite feel right to me (just not to my personal preference) and I found a HP model to be much more comfortable. I never thought I'd be buying an HP, but here I am two months later and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. Also definately look into extended warranties with your laptop, and get in writing exactly what it will and won't cover.

All in all if you're not overly concerned with performance and just want a good price keep an eye out for deals (check your sunday newspaper and/or online ads) and see if you can give the floor model a whirl before buying.