I've got funny taste in notebooks, or so I've been told- a mixture of high end aspirations and bargain basement means. Gee, that's probably something like champagne on a beer budget, right?
Well, when my Sony laptop flaked out on my last fall, and the estimate for repair time was a month plus, I was in a panic to find a good low cost notebook. Good, because I needed to be able to do CAD work and DTP on it, as well as play back DVD's; low cost, because I had NOT planned on getting another laptop anytime soon, and it definitely wasn't in my budget.
As reported in a previous post, after looking at many machines from Dell, HP, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and others, I settled on an eMachines widescreen laptop- it met the pricing guideline, at about $1100 after rebate, and it met the performance requirement, with a 1.8 HGz PR2400 Athlon, 60GB HD, 1280X800 display, DVD/CDRW drive, 512KB of memory, USB2, Firewire, Ethernet, and 802.11G wireless built in. That machine has since become my primary laptop- BTW, the Sony is in need of repair again- doesn't boot, no HD or CPU action.
But now I'm faced with the delemna of a new eMachines notebook with Athlon 64 CPU, ATI Radeon 9600 with 64MB ram, 60GB disk, DVD burner, full set of media slots, etc.
Yeah, you guys with your big 10 lb Dells would probably look down your nose at this little 7-1/2 lb puppy, but the batteries are only $110 (I have an extra for my current eMachines, and they do actually last for about 3 hours, even playing back DVDs). It actually fits in most airline tray tables, and it doesn't break my poor aging back (microdiskectomy last year) to carry around.
Oh, did I mention it's 64 bit? Hmmmm, I wonder if my daughter would be interested in a slighly used eMachines laptop to do her homework on....
Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....
Well, when my Sony laptop flaked out on my last fall, and the estimate for repair time was a month plus, I was in a panic to find a good low cost notebook. Good, because I needed to be able to do CAD work and DTP on it, as well as play back DVD's; low cost, because I had NOT planned on getting another laptop anytime soon, and it definitely wasn't in my budget.
As reported in a previous post, after looking at many machines from Dell, HP, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and others, I settled on an eMachines widescreen laptop- it met the pricing guideline, at about $1100 after rebate, and it met the performance requirement, with a 1.8 HGz PR2400 Athlon, 60GB HD, 1280X800 display, DVD/CDRW drive, 512KB of memory, USB2, Firewire, Ethernet, and 802.11G wireless built in. That machine has since become my primary laptop- BTW, the Sony is in need of repair again- doesn't boot, no HD or CPU action.
But now I'm faced with the delemna of a new eMachines notebook with Athlon 64 CPU, ATI Radeon 9600 with 64MB ram, 60GB disk, DVD burner, full set of media slots, etc.
Yeah, you guys with your big 10 lb Dells would probably look down your nose at this little 7-1/2 lb puppy, but the batteries are only $110 (I have an extra for my current eMachines, and they do actually last for about 3 hours, even playing back DVDs). It actually fits in most airline tray tables, and it doesn't break my poor aging back (microdiskectomy last year) to carry around.
Oh, did I mention it's 64 bit? Hmmmm, I wonder if my daughter would be interested in a slighly used eMachines laptop to do her homework on....
Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....
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