Buying A Notebook In Bkk

[horse]

Hi,

Does anyone have some good experiences of where to buy a new notebook in Bangkok?

A shop with good English/knowledge and lots to choose from?

Cheers

H

[Amethyst]

Hey do not buy any local made Notebook or PCe.g BELTA,POWELL,etc'''

very bad customer Service ive got experience before....so buy IBM,Compaq,NEC, and other international Brand,

ASUS is good Buy...IF you wanna get a notebook PM me

[Firefoxx]

It's not really a good idea to go by brand, since quality/service can vary from model to model, year to year. If you want a nice story on how a notebook purchase can go wrong, try

http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=155&pgno=0

One thing to note is that the prices displayed in pricelists for notebook shops is the price *without* VAT. Consider that most notebook shops will insist on VAT (whether you want a receipt or not), and you might feel a bit cheated. Of course, they'll pull you in with a bit of a discount, but from my experience, tack on the VAT, and it's still more expensive than the advertised price.

There are some notebook shops that do sell without VAT, and I usually buy from them.

Another thing, the new "Sonoma" chipset notebooks are being seen. You should try and get those, since they support (among other things): PCI-express, SATA, dual channel DDR.

[Amethyst]

FireFoxx do you know anywhere i can buy a Second hand notebook HD

i need another 40GIG im currently using 40gig on my belta mini mollis 164

[Firefoxx]

I don't know specific places, but I remember seeing secondhand notebook parts in all the major IT places (Pantip, IT Mall, Seri, etc). You need a replacement?

[Phil Conners]

As Tytus said, AVOID Belto and other local brands.

Good names in Thailand are Acer, Compaq, HP - reasonably prices, good local support, good international brand names.

Get a Centrini based notebook, avoid Celery, P4 and AMD based notebooks due to power consumption and heat generated. Note that Centrini based PC's will have a GHz rating roughly half of a P4 for the similar actual speed, i.e a Pentium M 1.5 ~ P4 3.0.

Acer is considerably cheaper here presumably because they come with Linux installed. It's very easy to install your own Windows if required.

Edited March 16, 2005 by madsere

[Amethyst]

Well 40GIG on my notebook is not enough for me....I need to add another 40gig...

do u know how much does it cost ??? 2nd hand HD in bkk

[Firefoxx]

Well, for nearly all notebooks you can't just add another harddisk inside. You'll need to change the harddisk. The other option is to get an external case (usb, firewire) and get a harddisk (2.5" or 3.5", smaller or cheaper/faster). Of course, this is slower than an internal harddisk.

The strange thing about 2nd hand in bangkok is that it's not that much different from the normal 1st hand market price, at most 30% cheaper. This would mean that a typical 2nd hand 40GB notebook harddisk would cost around 2-3k baht.

The correct word is "Centrino". "Sonoma" is the new version of Centrino, and you should get a "Sonoma" if you can, since many things have been updated to follow the desktop. Of course, it will be more expensive.

Edited March 16, 2005 by Firefoxx

[sajal]

Well 40GIG on my notebook is not enough for me....I need to add another 40gig...

do u know how much does it cost ??? 2nd hand HD in bkk

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i doubt if a notebook can accomodate 2 hdd..

60gig on my notebook wasnt enough so i got myself a 80 gb notebook hdd in an external casing usb interface for 5500 baht at itmall rachada..its really small..

[Phil Conners]

I'm shopping for the "perfect" notebook myself these days and haven't seen any Sonoma on the market here yet.

I particularly like the Acer 3202WNXCi:

14" TVF (1280x768 pxl widescreen)

Pentium M 1.6/Centrino

Integrated WiFI/BT/LAN/fax-modem/Cardreader/CD-RW/DVD

60GB HD

Beautiful small package @ 2.25kg

49,900+VAT

Other opinions?

PS. thanks for the correction on CentrinO

Edited March 16, 2005 by madsere

[Firefoxx]

madsere, meet "sonoma":

http://www.tohome.com/product_detail.asp?c..._id=20050200147

You can have a look at it in some of the bigger Sony shops. Stunning display. Of course it's really expensive, but expect more sonoma notebooks from other brands to appear very soon (or already, I haven't been to the IT places in a while).

It's interesting to note that with the same configuration, it's around 30% cheaper in the US.

Edited March 16, 2005 by Firefoxx

[Phil Conners]

Thanks but no notebook is worth 150,000 bath to me, no matter how fast the processor or how much disk space it has.

Besides, I've had a Sony Vaio notebook once, that was enough. Never had anything so non-standard. Any attempts to update the OS wrecked the box and Sony couldn't care less. Never again will I waste my money on a Vaio.

Oh, and while I can't read much Thai script it says "Intel® Centrino™ Mobile Technology" somewhere in the text

Edited March 16, 2005 by madsere

[Firefoxx]

Sony Vaios have their good and bad points, but they're all pretty expensive. My friend has this model, but with the older chipset, and has a love/hate relationship with it. Some things are great (the display, the accessories, the functions) some things are lousy (the bad support, the hard upgrades, the bad recovery disk).

Anyways, yes, it's still Centrino, but it's the "sonoma" revision. The original was "carmel" and the one after sonoma will be "napa". They're all Centrino, since centrino refers to the trio of the PentiumM, the low power supporting chipset, and wireless tech. Carmel had 400mhz fsb, parallel ATA, single-channel DDR memory, and AGP. Sonoma has 533mhz fsb, dual-channel DDR2 memory, serial-ATA, and PCI-express. The napa chipset will support dual-core PentiumM's.

The reason I'm recommending Sonoma is because it brings a lot of the desktop innovations to the notebook (SATA, PCI-express, dual-ddr2). The Sony was just proof that it's here already, and therefore you should be able to find Sonoma notebooks from other manufacturers, if not now, then very very soon. The tech's here and it has a lot of changes for the better, I say go for it.

[udon]

Talk to K. Thaksin at Adtech...... Panthip Plaza.

Up the escalator to the Mezz floor and turn right and then left, its just there on yr right. small shop with blue and white signage.

He speaks perfect English and will quote you on anything.

Good tech staff too.

I've been dealing with him for 4 years, he is a very patient Chinese Thai and a gentleman.

Edited March 16, 2005 by udon

[Phil Conners]

Interesting!

Acer Travelmate 4101WNLCi has exactly the same specs as the 3202WNXCi except:

- Bigger screen (15.4" - 1280x800 vs. 14" - 1280x768)

- 700g heavier (2.95kg vs. 2.25kg)

- no builtin bluetooth

- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 instead of the ATI Radion 9700

- 533 MHz FSB so presumably Sonoma?

- 7,000 cheaper

Where's the logic?

Edited March 17, 2005 by madsere

[Firefoxx]

533fsb and media acclerator 900 means it's the sonoma. It's probably a different class (different body) and so has different components, and is thus cheaper. Another big difference is the graphics... the mobility radeon 9700 is top of the line (for AGP at least), and compared to the built-in graphics (media accel), there's a big performance gap.