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Posted

It's a general question I know but I'm just totally bewildered by the amount of choices there are out there so would be grateful if anyone can help me cut through it.

I'm looking for something that will mainly sit on the desk so weight is not a factor. Big screen would be nice and should be easy on the eyes due to the long hours I will be spending in front of it.

Ideally around 80g hard drive.

I like to have excel, word, itunes, msgr, feedreader, web browser etc all open at once and I do a lot of downloading too so will need something that can handle all of this with ease and stand up to heavy constant use.

I have no real budget at this stage.

Have been suggested to buy a made to order notebook on-line from Dell. Has anyone had experience with this? Otherwise any recommendation of other brands and specs would be greatly appreciated.

Posted

Just bought a laptop for the wife, Acer (=good support in Thailand)

* AMD Turion™ X2

* ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 Chipset

* Acer Invilink™ 802.11b/g

* Integrated Bluetooth™

* 512MB DDR2-533 (Max 4GB)

* 120GB(5400rpm) HDD , Weight 2.4kg.

* DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive

* 5-in-1 card reader

* 56K Fax/Modem, 10/100Mbps LAN

* 14.1" WXGA Acer CrystalBrite TFT LCD(1280 x 800 pixel)/S-Video

* ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 integrated 3D graphics 128 MB

* Acer OrbiCam integrated 0.31 megapixel CMOS camera

* Linpus Linux BE

* 1 year Local warranty (International)

* 1 year insurance

On which for your use I would only add at least 512Mb ram, to support having many programs open simultaniously.

It's a dual core processor, so even if you have one CPU intensive program running (mp3 encoding or something with video), your other programs will still be ran smooth by the second core!

Price was 28,000 Baht without the memory upgrade so you get quite decent specs for the price.

You might want to browse through the range for a bigger screen though 14.1" widescreen is not huge, although sufficient for me...

Not suited for gaming due to the on-board graphics card.

Note that there is NO Windows included, but most shops will install for you at only the price of whatever OS you choose! The machine is Vista ready!

Posted
Just bought a laptop for the wife, Acer (=good support in Thailand)

* AMD Turion™ X2

* ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 Chipset

* Acer Invilink™ 802.11b/g

* Integrated Bluetooth™

* 512MB DDR2-533 (Max 4GB)

* 120GB(5400rpm) HDD , Weight 2.4kg.

* DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive

* 5-in-1 card reader

* 56K Fax/Modem, 10/100Mbps LAN

* 14.1" WXGA Acer CrystalBrite TFT LCD(1280 x 800 pixel)/S-Video

* ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 integrated 3D graphics 128 MB

* Acer OrbiCam integrated 0.31 megapixel CMOS camera

* Linpus Linux BE

* 1 year Local warranty (International)

* 1 year insurance

On which for your use I would only add at least 512Mb ram, to support having many programs open simultaniously.

It's a dual core processor, so even if you have one CPU intensive program running (mp3 encoding or something with video), your other programs will still be ran smooth by the second core!

Price was 28,000 Baht without the memory upgrade so you get quite decent specs for the price.

You might want to browse through the range for a bigger screen though 14.1" widescreen is not huge, although sufficient for me...

Not suited for gaming due to the on-board graphics card.

Note that there is NO Windows included, but most shops will install for you at only the price of whatever OS you choose! The machine is Vista ready!

Thanks for the info Monty. That seems are very reasonable price for the amount of features. Vista ready is all I need and gaming not necessary. Agree larger ram and bigger screen would be ideal. Did you buy in BKK?

Guest Reimar
Posted

The Acer is good. I bought a 5593 in october last year.

Spec:

* Intel Core2Duo

* Memory 1 GByte DDR 2 667

* HDD 120 GB SATA

* DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive

* 5-in-1 card reader

* 56K Fax/Modem, 10/100Mbps LAN

* 14.1" WXGA Acer CrystalBrite TFT LCD(1280 x 800 pixel)/S-Video

* ATI Radeon Xpress 1300 integrated 3D graphics 128/512 MB

* Acer OrbiCam integrated 1.3 megapixel CCD camera

* Integrated Bluetooth™

* WiFi 54 Mbps

* Windows XP Media Center

* PCMCIA

* XPRESS Card Slot

* 3 USB

* 1 year Local warranty (International)

* 1 year insurance

The price right now is a little above 30k

For my opinion the Intel Core2Duo runs faster as the AMD and I'm a AMD Fan.

Posted

For more than a year I had a company HP Compaq V2362 TU besides my own desktop at home. As I changed jobs I wanted to have an own laptop for the price around 30,000 THB. I bought this one.

Lenovo 3000 N100 (0689A35) :

Intel CoreTM 2 Duo T5200

(1.66GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB)

Intel Pro/Wireless 3945BG

Genuine Windows XP Home

512MB 667MHz DDR2 /2 Slot (2GB MAX)

80GB HDD SATA (5400rpm)

DVD Burner (Double Layer)

14.1"WXGA (Vibrant View) 1280 x 800 Display

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 with up to 224MB

4 x USB 2.0, PCMCIA, S-Video, IEEE1394, 56K Fax/Modem,

10/100 Ethernet

4-in-1 Card Reader Slot (SD/MMC/XD/MS)

Blutooth

Integrated 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera

Integrated FingerPrint Reader

One Button Recovery

6-Cell Li-Ion Battery with 3 hours battery lift

Travel Weight 2.47kg.

Petch01

Posted

I have two laptops here at home.

HP Pavilion dv5000 series

OS: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (5.1 Build 2600)

Bios: Ver 1.00 PARTTBL

Processor: Genuine Intel® CPU [email protected] (2CPUs)

Memory: 510 MB RAM

Hard drive: 100gigabytes

Monitor: 15.1 widescreen

Sound: Altec Lansing stereo speakers ( awesome stereo sound)

wireless, bluetooth

I have been using this for almost 8 months now

and I haven't experienced any problems at all.

My other one is a 3 month old ACER that my wife is using for downloading and watching videos and for IMs has broken down 3 times already and I have just fixed it because it's crashing and the monitor shows nothing but vertical colored lines as the computer freezes.

Acer specs

AMD Turion64bit

80gigabytes

512MB RAM

annoying built in speakers which sounds more like tweeters

14 inch screen

In my experience, HP computers are a bit more expensive but is more sturdy than an Acer.

Stay away from Acer if you can. It's a cheap notebook that literally falls apart at the seams.

Posted
Stay away from Acer if you can. It's a cheap notebook that literally falls apart at the seams.

I've had my Acer for nearly 4 years and I have been happy enough with it to upgrade to another Acer model when I get round to it.

My Acer is used a lot, and it has done a lot of travelling and suffered various abuse from me. I have a very high speed connection here in Tokyo, so I am downloading like a maniac most of the time.

I would certainly buy another Acer.

Posted

Look at individual model reviews, not so much at opinions regarding entire brands as these are often based on the experience of one bad model (which makes the user not come back for more).

Most of the major notebook manufacturers will have a production line large enough to produce both good and bad models.

Posted

I am happy with my Acer. I bought it because of all the service centers around, but I didn't need them.

I think you should figure out what your budget is, and get the biggest screen and you can. I wish I had bought a bigger screen model, and I don't spend a lot of time in front of it. If you're going to run a lot of programs simultaneously, I hear the Core 2 Duo is good for that.

Posted

The first relatively powerful laptop I had was a Hitachi. I actually hated it from the day I bought it. Too many problems to ever consider another one. Since then I have had a Toshiba and two IBM Thinkpads. The Toshiba was a pretty good machine and a friend of mine is still using it. My first Thinkpad now has a keyboard problem but it still works fine with a remote keyboard. That one is also being used by another friend of mine. My current one is a Lenovo T43p. So far it has been everything I expected but unfortunately doesn't get used much anymore because I discovered the Nokia N-80. I'll stick with Lenovo until I have some bad luck (?) and then maybe try another brand.

Posted
Stay away from Acer if you can. It's a cheap notebook that literally falls apart at the seams.

I have a very high speed connection here in Tokyo, so I am downloading like a maniac most of the time.

Any machine could do that in Japan where the internet speed is mind blowing.

Posted
Look at individual model reviews, not so much at opinions regarding entire brands as these are often based on the experience of one bad model (which makes the user not come back for more).

Most of the major notebook manufacturers will have a production line large enough to produce both good and bad models.

I totally agree. Look at the individual reviews. Most of all laptops are made by two manufacturers only. These are Compal and Quanta.

http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_oem.html

Petch01

Posted

If you happen to live in Bangkok, drop by the Acer Service Center in Pantip Plaza.

The long line there would be enough to make you shy away from Acer.

It's always filled with people wanting to have their laptops repaired on last time before they finally throw it out the window.

Posted

As for specs you need:

- Large screen (obviously :o )

- 1GB RAM minimum (for multiple programs - 512 is barely usable)

Turions have worse battery life than Core 2 Duo, but then again if you sit at the desk it won't matter much to you.

I have had 3 Acers over the last years - the middle one was a lemon and I have now read enough reports of others about Acer quality to recommend people to stay away from them. At least until Acer fixes the QA problems.

My current Acer is a top of the line 8204 which is very good + has 3 years warranty but it's also close to 100k Baht. No problems in over 1 year of constant use though.

The lemon was a 4600 which was nothing but trouble from the day I bought it. The only reason I bought another Acer was that the service center in Chiang Mai was really just awesome. They fixed/replaced everything quickly and at one point even upgraded my HD to a faster model for free. Still the 4600 went back to the shop 5 or 6 times for serious issues, from a broken screen hinge to screen problems, overheating (never resolved and cause for most other problems), dead hard disk (2 times), dead mainboard.

HP/compaq has good support as well - very important.

Everyone without exception keeps praising Lenovo Thinkpads for their build quality. Higher price for same specs as others, but I think next time I buy a PC it will be one of those.

If you want Acer, I would recommend reading about the different models first and getting the 3 year extended warranty. Better still, there are some cheaper "business" models Acer sells which already have a 3 year warranty - I would kind of assume those are the ones that have decent quality control. I think Acer made a conscious decision to skimp on quality in order to get the price down.

Dell also has had its fair share of quality issues of late - the latitudes (business line) used to be pretty good back in the days. But apparently not anymore.

Asus has a good reputation but I have never had one.

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