Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

Looking for a cheap notebook PC, Where is a cheap and reliable place to find a bargain. Looking to spend $5 or 600 only. DVD burner would be good.

Doesnt need to be cutting edge, and ideally Id rather not get lumped with Vista as it wont support the kids games anyway. 15" or larger ideally.

Mailorder is OK. Any suggestions? Tips?

Is this any good?

Cheers

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

I use a Levono Thinkpad (slightly different spec) for sports video analysis work. It's been transported from ski slopes to gyms to hockey rinks etc and been 100% reliable - robust and well made.

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

Looks pretty horrible, and it's refurbished. This is better bang for buck:

http://www.directcanada.com/products...nufacture=ACER

or try something from Dell.

With a bit of tweaking you can make Vista look and behave pretty much like XP, and your kids' games will work fine.

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

Sleek and streamlined, they're not. Closer to heavy and brick-like. I chose it due to its construction and strength and needing to use it in less than ideal locations.

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

Cheers for that site (that one is unavailable at present)

Dell were cheaper than I was expecting too.

Ive been recomended to just install XP on a partition as some of these games go bacl to win98 and beyond and Vista is a bit dodgy with the old stuff (and a lot of the new acording to rumour)

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

We buy some IT from CDW Canada. Might be worth looking here:
http://www.cdw.ca/shop/tools/product...order=priceasc

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

I'm pretty sure the compatibility options in Vista are the same as in XP - just go into Properties and select the appropriate options. Of course, if you've got a copy (ahem) of XP sitting around, you could just install that over the top of the Vista install and just pray that all the drivers work fine (they probably will).

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

The spec on that one looks pretty good but it's refurbished and only has a 3 month warranty - suggesting they don't think it'll be all that reliable.

When buying mail order, there's always the check-out price shock when taxes and shipping are added... and the "joys" of having to find someone on the phone to argue with and return it to when it breaks. Might be worth checking out what Walmart etc have?

Main things I'd look for (especially if the kids are going to use it) would be good long-term support (e.g. Dell has a good reputation, HP and Gateway don't) and a good battery.

I have heard a lot of people bought new PCs with vista and rolled them back to XP, only to find they can't get the drivers for the hardware (as they only made vista drivers). Just a heads-up in case you have a spare XP license tempting you to do this..

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

probably isnt a good word when it comes to compatibility and drivers in my experience....

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

When buying anything here there is the tax shock isnt there?

Walmart were pretty useless, as were the other local suspects:(

Good advice about the battery and support...Dell is looking more attractive, although its a little more than I want to spend.

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

Dell still provides XP if you want. Lookee here. Another tip, try using the Small Business configurator. I know that on the desktop side you used to be able to get a machine almost identical to one on the "home" configurator for less money. I don't know if they've closed that loophole, or if it exists at all for notebooks, but it's worth a look.

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

In a former existence I spent a few months in Dell's European product marketing office for notebooks. Back then (1999, I think) there was a much more obvious distinction between a home machine and a work machine: the Inspiron range got better graphics processing and worse built-in networking stuff than the Latitude equivalents, for example.

These days there's much less to choose between the innards (and a couple more model names to confuse the unwary), it's mostly a different case and different bundled software. It used to be the case that home machines were a little less rugged than the business ones and an equivalent spec would be a tad cheaper, but it may well be the other way round these days due to relative sales volumes of Latitude. I'd recommend you try and spec up each variant the way you want and see which turns out cheaper.

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

Get a Dell. Their older crappy reputation no longer bears out, and for the last 4-5 years they have been a serious contender in high quality PCs for a good price. Reliable, with a great warranty (by Canadian standards, and this is a big plus) and good machines. Seriously. Me and Zoe just both got Dell gaming rigs. Friends of mine who I worked with in IT who 6 years ago would never have touched Dells all now buy Dells.

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

I beg to differ - mine's been a POS since day 1, and a number of colleagues have suffered problems too (all hardware related). They're all Latitude D620's.

In just over a year, I'm on my 3rd motherboard, 2nd set of speakers, 2nd screen and 2nd hard drive.

Warranty has been good and always resolved things, but I've spent several working days in total talking to customer support, and been without the machine for several weeks at a time.

Re: Where to get a cheap notebook PC?
 

Note that if you buy a cheap laptop it won't run most modern games at any usable speed; even Half-Life 2 is a slideshow on my Acer with the crappy Intel integrated graphics chip, though games from around 2000/2001 run fine.