I'm looking to buy a laptop in the next couple of months and have been wondering what features to look for. Strength and reliability are the main concerns, then speed. Hard-drive space and screen size aren't too important; I think most laptops will meet my minimum requirements in those areas.

I know a little about what to look for with desktops, but I'm out of my league when it comes to laptops. So does anyone here have any specific recommendations for what parts to look for, brands, operating system, processor speed, etc.?

My budget is extremely low; under $1000 and preferably closer to $800. From what I've seen so far, I'm going to be stretching things a bit to get a good laptop for prices that low. So would a used or refurbished laptop be worth buying?

And finally, to what extent can one build one's own laptop? I've seen a few kits out there, but the "barebones notebooks" seem to have quite a few parts included anyway. I know you can always get a better machine for the money by building it yourself; still, is it really worth it in this case?

Any and all advice is appreciated. I probably have at least two months to make this decision, but I'd like to know what I'm looking for by the time the holiday specials come out . . .

Thanks,

Matthew
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What are the requirements for the new laptop? I have a junky Gateway Solo 2100, junky screen, upgraded harddrive, 192mB ram, it runs W2K, has mysql/apache/php etc. Slow but it all runs, my estimate is that a 1gHz laptop would work great.

I just helped a client select a laptop, we did searches for problems on the various brands she was looking at, Toshiba, which used to be excellent, now appears to have dropped out of the reliability and support picture. Fujitsu the same, except it was never excellent. She had a Compaq, that's garbage. All my research showed in the end one and only one good choice: IBM

IBM laptops are professional corporate machines, they work, there are no problems or websites devoted to how much they suck, I could not find a single meaningful negative comment about them when I searched.

Build it yourself is a bad idea, laptops and desktops are completely different animals, there's not really anything to build, there's a built in screen, a motherboard that has almost all the peripherals built in, modem, networking, graphic processor. Then the case, and a, usually anyway, removable harddrive cartridge and floppy/cd rom unit.

If you go new, you must get a service contract, 3 years ideally, that runs several hundred dollars. Which makes a used machine a good option in my opinion.

IBM runs its own used laptop store here

I looked on that today, a one gigahertz 14.1 inch screen, $700, comes with w2k. That's not a bad deal.

For 400 more you can get a new one, 2.5 gH, very nice unit, a G series

If I were going to buy a new laptop I'd get the Thinkpad G40, celeron processors are really junk, very slow, don't be fooled by the megahertz, I'd rather have a 1 gHz pentium 3 than a 2 gHz celeron.
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Thanks for the advice. IBM is what I had been looking at and so far they look good. Basically the requirements are to run W2K and Office XP without instability issues. I don't like the idea of waiting on the computer, but I understand that, without spending a fortune, a laptop is going to be slower than my desktop.

Your estimate of a 1 gHz laptop working great is the kind of information I was looking for. I just wasn't sure what types or speeds of components to look for. Thanks also for the details about the Pentium vs. Celeron. I like Pentium anyway but now I know for sure to stay away from Celeron. The Thinkpad G40 looks good; hopefully I can afford it when the time comes! ;)
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The critical thing on processors is the L2 cache, that's the on processor memory, it's a very high speed memory, the processor puts stuff it needs there right away, so the more there is, the better, celerons had I think 128kB, it's a very noticeable difference. Standard good like P4 or Athlon XP/Sempron is 256 - 512kB.

That's one ot the main things that differentiate the cheap processors like duron and celeron. Laptops also come with special laptop processors, I think the intel ones are the M series, for Mobile, those don't run as fast but are much more efficient.

There's a good read here on processors, L2 cache etc, it's a review but has a good explanation of this stuff.
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Just bought an emachines 5405 at BestBuy brick n mortar for $1k - and a $150 rebate.

1.6GHz Mobile AMD Sempron
15.4" WXGA TFT widescreen, 1280x800
Cache Memory 256KB on die Level 2
PC2700 DDR SoDIMM 512MB, expandable to 768MB
Hard Drive 60.0GB
DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive 8x max. DVD-ROM; 24x24x24 CD-RW
Integrated SiSM760 Ultra 256, 64mb shared vid ram
56 Kbps ITU V.92 Modem
Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g); 10/100 Ethernet LAN

Has XPHome, which I'll upgrade to Pro after the first of the year (assuming I can find an old XP SP1 - I will NOT use SP2!); also a bunch of useless MS junkware.

I think it's not a bad deal for $850....
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Ouch, that's very risky. E-Machines is a sort of no name assembler, I'd have spent 300-400 more for a new IBM. The problem with low end laptops is the screens generally. I hope you got a good warranty, 3 years is good.

After doing way too much research, I've decided that I'll only go with IBMs from now on, even though IBM has just sold their PC/Laptop division to a chinese company this week.

I'm planning on picking up a used IBM thinkpad for around 700 once I get the money, that will get me about a 1 gigahertz 30 gig harddrive unit, my trusty old 200 megahertz gateway with its sometimes failing screen [the real danger of all lower end laptops] just isn't quite enough to run a decent linux distro anymore, although I guess I could pop damned small linux on it and see how that went.

But check your warranty, sometimes you can be lucky with stuff like emachines equipment.
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That was what I thought too until I did some reading around. Emachines laptops have some of the best user approval on the net, though their desktops suck, for sure - and this model got some really good reviews from pcmag among others.

I won't buy used, even IBM. The warranty stuff is too risky. I've got a year parts, labor, onsite with this one, and 3 years extended. I won't HAVE it 4 years, most likely. While over the long term the screen may be a problem, right now it's materially easier on my eyes than either one of my 17" CRTs, one of which is a true flat....

It's also a bit faster loading than my desktop, and isn't "hot" either. Which WAS a nice surprise!
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That sounds good, as long as you did the research and couldn't find any major problems online that's a good sign. I searched for problems with IBMs recently and literally could find nothing online related to real problems with those machines.

If you got a 3 year extended warranty you should be fine no matter what, the price was good, that's for sure.

Sound like a nice machine, if you ever want more ram, doesn't sound like you'll need it though, 512 is fine, go to crucial.com and pick up another 256 mB of ram, they are right in your neck of the woods, Idaho I think. Great company, great prices, great quality [but when will they pay me to push their stuff... ha ha ha]

Although I've been doing some real testing on Linux, it's ram useage is very different from Windows, it likes and will use all of your ram, I did some processing on a 250 mB data text file, while running streaming audio, browsing, etc, on a 1 gigahertz pentium 3 512 mB ram box, very impressive, audio never skipped even though processor was running at 100%, swap activity heavy, it's not until you actually make linux do something real that you can see that it really is significantly superior to Windows on a technical level.

I thought the networking guys I recently worked with were being stupid for having 2 gigabytes of ram in their laptops, but I don't think that anymore. By the way, that's a difference between ibm and emachines, IBM's support 2 gigabytes of ram, but those machines are expensive, I just ordered 1 gig for my boss.



Oh, man, LCD monitors, I just got a samsung syncmaster 710n-2, for about $400, for my eyes, that's a great monitor, great deal too, see the posting on it. It's numbers are really good, beats almost anything else out there for that price, by quite a bit too. I'm only doing LCD from now on.

Staring into a tv screen, no matter how 'shielded' it is is bad for your eyes, especially at 12-24", CRTs are dangerous, there's tons of high energy radiation being blasted out towards your eyes, I've had so much burning eye stuff in the last few years, no more.

I looked at somebody else's lcd, a sharp, and I wanted to cry it was so bad, same model as a really good sharp I set a friend up with, only the first one was 15", this one was 17", absolutely horrible, fuzzy fonts etc, couldn't handle refresh rates over 60 hertz without lining the screen...
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That's something else I'd noticed about my monitors as opposed to those friends of mine have: neither of mine was EVER expensive, and - here's a deal - I paid $100 for the Proview when my ANCIENT compaq monitor died 2 years ago. Then it developed "hiccups" when warming up/starting (lines across top of screen), so because it was still under extended warranty (heh - I ALWAYS buy them!), the coverage provided me a "similar" monitor - the ViewSonic - for free not even shipping, and they didn't want the Proview back. So I have two, now set up dual on my desk, just don't look at the old one until the lines go away.... anyway, neither of these has a clarity problem of any sort compared to various I've looked at that belong to friends, some of which cost HUNDREDS of dollars more than mine. Interesting....

I think the thing that makes my eyes happier with the laptop is the lack of that "background invisible" motion that I know must be happening on the CRTs - the slight shimmer or "vibrato" that I KNOW is there but really can't SEE....
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Oh yeah, we've got a syncmaster 710 on the box downstairs and it's such a pleasure to look at. Funny enough, this one here's a slightly older Proview 18" and, like vkaryl's experience, this one does weird stuff so ever occasionally. Not as nice a view as the Syncmaster, but it was dirt cheap and it's sharp enough.

After a while, you'll appreciate having some screen borders along the sides of your open windows. I've got my desktop set to about #333 without any distracting icons (pekwm window manager rocks) and get slightly irritated now on smaller monitors when I don't have that nice border space - I guess it just helps keep the eyes focused or something.
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