Advice On New Laptop Purchase

[bkkbarnstormer]

Considering buying a new laptop for personal use in Bangkok. Mainly for internet access, DVD, Skype, email etc. Needs to look good - not too small, not too big

Interested on views of other users who have recently purchased:

- Best value purchases in Bangkok.

What did you consider when you recently purchased? I know the benefits of Apple but really looking for one that is cheaper than this. Approx. 20000THB seems to be a reasonable amount. How do you compare Samsung, Acer, Dell, HP etc

- Where is the best place to buy?

Took a quick look at Powerbuy the other day. Are there better deals at Pantip? What about carrefour/Lotus?

Am I better to wait until I visit Singapore or Hong Kong?

[siamect]

oops

pressed twice...

Edited May 19, 2010 by siamect

[siamect]

I never buy computer that way...

My philosophy is that I will never hit the cheapest and best one anyway. To chase that is just time consuming and 2 moths later you see a better deal and you are miserable until you buy your next computer...

I usually go to a place and take a quick look. If I know my budget I buy the best one I can find on my budget. If I don't have a fixed budget I ask what the shop can recommend. If I find anything they say that is not true, I walk away...

When it comes to being happy with computers, for me at least, it is all about staying out of trouble.

I never buy a computer with lots of extra buttons and other cool stuff. Buy the simplest one.

Do you need a CD burner/player? I usually don't, There are USB stick with more space. And I never trust a CD-burner for backup. but if I need one I can hook one up on the USB port temporarily. I don't want to carry one around all the time.

Make sure you have a USB port on the same side where you have your mouse. Wireless mouses = battery power = trouble.

Can you put in your AirCard and mouse cable in at the same time. Sometimes the USB connectors are too close together...

Most laptops sooner or later break when you open and close the computer... where the display and main unit is joined together. Laptops nowadays are much better than they were 10 years ago in this respect but... Basically the thing should have as much as possible in common with a Russian ww2 tank.

Never accept any single core processors and avoid Celerons... If you really need to run Win7 (or any MS windows for whatever reason) prioritize performance and RAM space.

Not that it will solve the MS windows performance problems but it will create less frustration, and you will be able to run it for a longer time before you threw it out the w...

If you want to run GNU/Linux, prepare a bootable USB stick with the distro you want to run and test it in the shop. Not necessarily for testing that it will work, it will... but it will show the sales guy that you know what you want... less BS from his side. In that case tell him if you don't want to pay for any Win License.

It can be good to let some RAM test run for a while (Ubuntu CD have one at startup menu) ... I recently had RAM problem in a new computer I bought. It seemed to work well, no strange stuff. But after handling files larger than about 500MB the files were corrupt. I discovered it because Git version control system is doing SHA1 hashes out of everything .. I could also see it with a RAM test.

Turned out to be a bad connector but it worked when it was cold... But after fixing that problem, it was difficult to trust the thing...

I still do integrity checks every day...

And one more thing ... test the sound...some Laptops have low volume and also check the sensitivity of the microphone input.

Air intake/exhaust for the cooling is usually placed to there is no circulation if you put the laptop on a soft material like your lap, and it gets hot... Some computer have the air openings on the side...that's better.

Martin

Edited May 19, 2010 by siamect