i think i killed my laptop (Got the new one today!)

[ZfrkS62]

My AC jack was coming loose again so i took it apart like i did last time and resoldered it to the motherboard. Only this time, about 30 seconds after booting up, my touchpad takes a shit, which forced me to go and by a USB mouse :? Now, the AC jack is fixed, but the power type indicator LED isnt lighting up anymore, nor is the power LED. all the others are on except for these.

Time to hunt for a new laptop i guess :bah:

[Zot09]

Sorry to hear that, i'd love to help but I can't.

[ZfrkS62]

anyone have any suggestions? I have an HP Pavillion ze4300 series now, and while i liked it in the beginning, the AC jack bullshit has kind of put me off of them.

I looked at Sony and Toshiba in the store today, and while the Vaio is impressive, it's battery life is not.

I'm looking for something below $1000 with fairly good battery life. Prefereably a 60gig or more hdd since i am kind of a vid whore. I've got all 8 Hellraiser movies plus a bunch of vids from JW stashed on my disk right now, along with all my CDs.

The Acers look promising with 3.5hrs battery life. I would like to use the hard drive from my HP as an external if possible. HDD's should be able to be swapped right?

>dammit, as i type this i keep catching myself moving for my non-functioning touchpad :? <

The only gaming i do is flash games so i don't need something that would be ideal for World of Warcraft or something insane like that.

any help would be appreciated

[sameerrao]

My company used to get Sony laptops for a year or so but we had a lot of them failing due to varied issues - screen, battery. IMO don't buy it.

I think for the money the Toshiba laptops are awesome - very, very reliable and pretty cheap too. I currently use a Dell D610 for work and I pretty happy with it.

[TNT]

my Powerbook can go depending on what i am doing up near 5 hours on battery life. now if i am playing in PS then its like 2 hours :) but i have a G4 at 1.67ghz with 256mb of ram and i have no problem running large PS files or 3d video. but get the Ferrari Laptop :mrgreen:

[ZfrkS62]

my Powerbook can go depending on what i am doing up near 5 hours on battery life. now if i am playing in PS then its like 2 hours :) but i have a G4 at 1.67ghz with 256mb of ram and i have no problem running large PS files or 3d video. but get the Ferrari Laptop :mrgreen:

Aren't those things astronomically expensive?

[TNT]

nah i got mine for under 3K, but the ferrari laptops are closer to 4K, US.

edit: i have 512MB of RAM on my laptop.

my laptop


15.2" TFT Display with 1440x960 resolution
1.67GHz PowerPC G4
512MB memory (DDR2 PC2-4200 SDRAM)
80GB 5400 rpm hard drive
Slot-load 8x SuperDrive (DVD+/-RW/CD-RW)
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card with 128MB DDR memory
Full size, backlit keyboard
Gigabit Ethernet
USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 & 800


Ferrari Laptop

Ferrari 4006WLMi Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition ; AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology ML-40 (1MB L2 cache, 2.2GHz ); 1GB (512/512) DDR333 SDRAM; 100GB hard drive; integrated DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive; 5-in-1 card reader; 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) TFT display; ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON® X700 graphics; 802.11b/g WLAN, gigabit LAN, V.92 modem

[ http://us.acer.com/acereuro/page4.do?dau22.oid=10478&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=25&CountryISOCtxParam=US&LanguageISOCtxParam=en&crc=256486494 ]

[TNT]

Amazon.com: ACER Ferrari 3400LMI notebook Mobile Athlon 64 AMD3000+ 15.0" SXGA+ 512MB DDR333 80GB 4200rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility RADEON 9700: Computers & Accessories

$1,899 :shock: i may get one

[stracing]

my friend bouht a samsung and he's vey happy with it. good price too.

don't buy vaio, ihave one and its not as robust as other sony products. plus their recovery dscs are full of useless software unless you're a video or sound editor

[DeMoN]

Hey Z, if you are looking for something under 1k then I recommend DELL. Those peeps have tons of coupon codes available online. All you have to do is add a coupon (www.xpbargains.com) and you get discounted up to 750. As for the battery life, they offer an 80w battery which gives my brother (according to him) 4 hours.

All you need to do is go to xpbargain and put "dell _model type_" and youll get coupons. If you have a hard time looking for them or getting the coupon to add correclty, gimme a shout.

[dutchmasterflex]

Don't go Dell, although there prices are very cheap and quite inviting.


HP has the best build quality IMO. They've gotten much better since your current(dead) laptop. They have VERY good deals too if you check out hpshopping.com too. You can pick up a laptop with very nice specs for around 600-700 bucks.

I work in IT for a Raytheon(a major defense engineering company for the US and the rest of the world with $). We have Dells, HP's and IBM(lenovo). IBM's are nice because of all of the extra gadgets and features (finger print scanning, hd movement sensors) but the build quality is NOT like HP's buisness laptops.

Check out an HP NC6220 and that line of laptops (business not pavilion).

I actually just bought a Pavilion L2000 (special edition Lance Armstrong laptop) but it JUST got stolen yesturday from my apartment. The pavilions do not have as good of build quality as the buisness laptop line up from HP.


Hope I was helpful..

[Zot09]

I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop for school, and although it has served me pretty well, it does have it's occasional problems(doesn't want to boot w/ the power chord plugged in, I used to get the blue screen of death when I first bought it). Not only that, this is the second Inspirson 6000 I had to get, the first one would die on my after a couple minutes of use. About Dell's customer service, I once e-mailed them about a problem I had with my computer, and they never e-mailed me back! I probably won't go back to Dell for a while. A friend in my dorm recently bought an Acer and it seems to be running pretty well without any problems so far. Not only that, but the Acer's are fairly cheap considering what you get. Best of luck!

[crazidude]

Well if you're considering the Ferrari notebook, then I'll suggest something by Panasonic or Samsung. The really thin and light ones have an insanely long battery life, they claim 10+ hrs on the Panasonic one, and they look pretty good. The problem is that it costs 1700+ and they have slow processors to ensure a longer battery life. The Panasonic R5 or W5, if you feel like spending more, are both really nice.

Almost forgot, IBM or lenovo laptops aren't that bad. Not the greatest battery life, but nothing a secondary batteries can fix, and they're also compact!

Or if you want one of those tablet things a Motion LE1600 is apparently really good, though most people I know have one of those HP ones.

[evoWalo]

Get an Alienware.

[ZfrkS62]

thanks for the input guys. I think the Ferrari laptop is a bit ludicrous for what i need, it's also 3000 dollars over my budget, at least.

i'll let you know what i decide. I might sell this one to me co-worker so he can use it to tune EFI systems.

[evoWalo]

The 1.83 GHz, 13-inch white MacBook, for a suggested retail price of $1,099 (US), includes:

# 13.3-inch glossy widescreen 1280 x 800 display with 250 cd/m2 brightness
# 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor
# 667 MHz front-side bus
# 512MB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 2GB
# 60GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor
# a slot-load Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) optical drive
# Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
# Mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
# built-in iSight video camera
# Gigabit Ethernet port
# built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
# two USB 2.0 ports and one FireWire® 400 port
# one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog
# Scrolling TrackPad
# the infrared Apple Remote
and
# 60 Watt MagSafe Power Adapter.


The 2.0 GHz, 13-inch white MacBook, for a suggested retail price of $1,299 (US), includes:

# 13.3-inch glossy widescreen 1280 x 800 display with 250 cd/m2 brightness
# 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo processor
# 667 MHz front-side bus
# 512MB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 2GB
# 60GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor
# a slot-load SuperDrive(TM) (DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive
# Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
# Mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
# built-in iSight video camera
# Gigabit Ethernet port
# built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
# two USB 2.0 ports and one FireWire 400 port
# one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog
# Scrolling TrackPad
# the infrared Apple Remote
and
# 60 Watt MagSafe Power Adapter.


The 2.0 GHz, 13-inch black MacBook, for a suggested retail price of $1,499 (US), includes:

# 13.3-inch glossy widescreen 1280 x 800 display with 250 cd/m2 brightness
# 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo processor
# 667 MHz front-side bus
# 512MB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, expandable to 2GB
# 80GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 5400 rpm, with Sudden Motion Sensor
# a slot-load SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive
# Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
# Mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
# built-in iSight video camera
# Gigabit Ethernet port
# built-in AirPort Extreme wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
# two USB 2.0 ports and one FireWire 400 port
# one audio line in and one audio line out port, each supporting both optical digital and analog
# Scrolling TrackPad
# the infrared Apple Remote
and
# 60 Watt MagSafe Power Adapter.

[dutchmasterflex]

^^ yea if you want to get ripped off my Apple..

Sure hte macbooks look nice.. but come on you can get a similar laptop for about half the price..

There are deals for a HP NX6110 for $499 with free shipping and no tax.. not to sure if theyre still goin on..

Sorry for not postin this earlier, it slipped my mind..

Before you go out and buy something, make sure you check these two sites for deals.

www.gotapex.com and www.techbargains.com

almost every week they have a brand new laptop deal for 500 bucks...

[saadie]

i aybe a bit late .. dont forget to check the new deals at Dell .... heard they have some sweet deals these days .... like a 1.8M 512m with dvd dual layer rw for arround 800bucks .. something like it

[ZfrkS62]

haven't had a chance to shop this week, but i will be checking those sites out. thanks for the help guys

[ZfrkS62]

bought it. my laptop now has started shutting down and refuses to boot back up so it kind of forced my hand :?

http://www.powersellernyc.com/viewitem.php?IndexID=16704&RefTag=pricegrabber

$958 shipped with 3 year warranty. It was $778.95 + $30 for 3 day shippng and another $150 to extend the warranty another 3 years.

I was kind of hoping to wait another month or so, but like i said, my Pavillion ZE4365 just said "fuck off" and went on a permanent vacation :?

[dutchmasterflex]

Sounds like a good deal.. I havent gotten a chance to get my hands on an Acer notebook..

How are your overall first impressions?

[ZfrkS62]

i'll tell you after i get it :P i just ordered it tonight so i won't get it until tuesday or wednsday.

i need to take the HP's hard drive and find something to stick it in so i can get the info off of it. i have the draft and pics for the engine thread i'm working on sitting on it, along with a shit load of pics of my g/f. everything else is pretty much useless though. probably need to hunt through all the folders though just to make sure.

[dutchmasterflex]

If you don't find something to stick the hard drive in, send it to me and I'll put the data on a bunch of DVDs for you.

[evoWalo]

Identical specs? An identical spec'd PC laptop would start at $1070. If you want a Celeron then they start at $399. But you have to consider is the $1070 & $399 laptop have the same physical dimension & weight? Chances are they're larger & heftier than a Macbook what with the PCMCIA slots that are rarely used and paralel/serial/ps2 ports that pretty much no consumer brand sells devices for anymore.

There's a big diff between a Core Duo & a single core old school processor too. AMD proved clock speeds arent everything but performance per watt is.
^^ yea if you want to get ripped off my Apple..

Sure hte macbooks look nice.. but come on you can get a similar laptop for about half the price..

There are deals for a HP NX6110 for $499 with free shipping and no tax.. not to sure if theyre still goin on..

Sorry for not postin this earlier, it slipped my mind..

Before you go out and buy something, make sure you check these two sites for deals.

www.gotapex.com and www.techbargains.com

almost every week they have a brand new laptop deal for 500 bucks...

[ZfrkS62]

you're a couple posts behind evo :wink:

Ronin, the problem is my lap top no longer boots up. the lights come on for 3/4 of a second and then it goes out. So uploading everything may not be possible. I think i may have left out an important ground screw when i put it back together and fried a transistor cluster somewhere.

dutch, i'll keep that in mind. It's only a 40gig HD, and i only need a few things from it. mainly pics and stuff like that so it won't take too much space. i'll let you know in the next few days.

my coworker offered me 50 bucks for it so i'm going to sell it to him and hopefully he can get it going again :|

[saadie]

50 haha ... give it out for 150 :P
btw ... you can get one of those IDE-USE thingy .. but you will have to open the old laptop :?

[ZfrkS62]

50 haha ... give it out for 150 :P
btw ... you can get one of those IDE-USE thingy .. but you will have to open the old laptop :?

why would i need to do that? the HD unscrews from the outside and slides right out.

[saadie]

ohh ok ... :P
btw oppsie .. i meant ide to usb cable :oops:

[ZfrkS62]

^ bought one of those cables today and got the shit i needed off of it. 24 bucks from best buy. out of 35gigs of info on it, i only ended up saving about 1.2 gigs :? where the hell did the rest of it come from?????? :shock:

[saadie]

porno? :lol:

[ZfrkS62]

^ had a couple in the random videos folder :lol: i actually had a ton of vids in there which i think accounted for at least 15Gs, and my music folder was a good 7.5Gs..so yeah...i can thank JW for the majority of the random videos :lol: external storage device, here i come....

[DeMoN]

as long as you dont get em vids from webpages, your fine. Limewire is ok 2 dload.

[ZfrkS62]

well, i am currently playing around on the Acer :D It's going to take some time to get used to the widescreen and new touchpad, but so far i'm liking it. I forgot how much of a pain in the ass it is to get everything configured the way i like it.

I'll write a first impressions review next week after i fiddle with it a bit more.

[ZfrkS62]

i bought the extra warranty when i bought the computer.