Tater Rocket
Enlightened
As many of you know I am currently the youngest ACTIVE member (at 17, 18 come July) on the board. With that comes the goal of most high school students: college. While I have a computer that has served me well the past year or two, I am now looking for a laptop that will outperform it. Specifically, I am looking for the following:
gigahertz or faster
20 gig MINIMUM hard drive, 30 would be better
Wireless networking included (but if the laptop is $1200 or less, can be bought later)
I NEED at least a cd burner, preferably rewriteable (DVD not necissary, and is most likely just an additional cost that wouldn't get used that much)
something with a screen size over 12 inches, 14 probably being about right.
128 megs of RAM minimum. Actually, that much is about right because it is a hundred or so cheaper than 256, and I can get 128 at bestbuy sometimes for $30 or so.
Now, I don't have a whole lot of experience with laptops (read:none) so I don't know what good brands are. I have checked out SEVERAL different makers and such, but I want your input. I am looking for something under $1500 (even that is an awful lot for a highschool/college student, but I can get that much by the end of summer) and I realize I likely won't get anything under $1000 with the specifications I am asking. I am really wanting the wireless ethernet though as my (future) college (UMR) is wired (lol, oxymoron) for it in SEVERAL of the areas I would be around including the quad, the dorms, the library, and several of the buildings. This would be nice. I can also get another network card and realize the full 100 megabit access speed when I am in the dorms.
Now, info I am requesting. What systems do you have experience with? What about battery life? Any specific suggestions regarding anything (model, speed, etc)?
Off topic for a moment: How many volts does a lithium-ion cell put out? I noticed several of the laptops had 8 cell lithium ion batteries. However, they never said the voltage. If they are the standard 1.2 or so, I was thinking I would make my own (VERY) high-capacity battery kind of like I did for my cd player. What I did was I took a 2 D-Cell holder from radio shack and hooked it up to a plug that will now let me run my CD player off of D-cells instead of wimpy AA's. What I was thinking for the laptop was to use 8 of the 9000mAH D cell NiMH batteries to make my own battery pack around 2.5X2.5X6 inch or so. That would be fairly small, and with a long (5-10 foot) cord would allow me to leave the battery pack in a backpack or under a table or wherever. It would also give me around 85 watt hours (compared to the ones listed around 55 watt hours, so I'd have around 40-50% advantage over the lithium ion packs). This would be around the same price (around $90), but would be heavier and would not offer as much flexibilty as simply a spare lithium-ion pack would. What do you all suggest? Actually, now that I think about it, AA's might be cheaper. Figure 5 of them to get the power of a D-cell (1600 ma and 8500 ma), so I'd need 5 parallel sets of 8, so 40 batteries at 1.55 each is around $60, so that would be pretty cheap. I also can fit the AA's (actually, can fit around 50 of them, so I could have 6 parallel sets of 8)in a package around 3X3X6 (whatever the size of this lantern battery flashlight is. I can fit 5X5 in the bottom and stack them 2 deep. This would give me LOTS of juice. Then again. ALL of this is assuming the Li-ion's are 1.2 volts each cell. I could still rework it so that the AA's would be cheaper. What are the cheapest per mA batteries out there? I'm thinking probably the AA's because you can get them around 1.40 or 1.50 each on ebay (mine were 1.40 each) for the well-known brands.
Sorry for the long post (I had bettery copy it in case it gets lost, it would take FOREVER to rewrite all this), but I just need some info. I won't have the money until the end of summer (unless I can convince my parents to go in on it with me for my b-day, and my grandma to go in on it with me for my graduation gift (she told me to pick something, I can't think of anything really that I want that is not expensive, and not that many things that are)) in which case I could have the money now. I have about $600, and I'm thinking I'll be able to (HOPEFULLY) make $1000 over the summer. We'll see.
Spudgunr
gigahertz or faster
20 gig MINIMUM hard drive, 30 would be better
Wireless networking included (but if the laptop is $1200 or less, can be bought later)
I NEED at least a cd burner, preferably rewriteable (DVD not necissary, and is most likely just an additional cost that wouldn't get used that much)
something with a screen size over 12 inches, 14 probably being about right.
128 megs of RAM minimum. Actually, that much is about right because it is a hundred or so cheaper than 256, and I can get 128 at bestbuy sometimes for $30 or so.
Now, I don't have a whole lot of experience with laptops (read:none) so I don't know what good brands are. I have checked out SEVERAL different makers and such, but I want your input. I am looking for something under $1500 (even that is an awful lot for a highschool/college student, but I can get that much by the end of summer) and I realize I likely won't get anything under $1000 with the specifications I am asking. I am really wanting the wireless ethernet though as my (future) college (UMR) is wired (lol, oxymoron) for it in SEVERAL of the areas I would be around including the quad, the dorms, the library, and several of the buildings. This would be nice. I can also get another network card and realize the full 100 megabit access speed when I am in the dorms.
Now, info I am requesting. What systems do you have experience with? What about battery life? Any specific suggestions regarding anything (model, speed, etc)?
Off topic for a moment: How many volts does a lithium-ion cell put out? I noticed several of the laptops had 8 cell lithium ion batteries. However, they never said the voltage. If they are the standard 1.2 or so, I was thinking I would make my own (VERY) high-capacity battery kind of like I did for my cd player. What I did was I took a 2 D-Cell holder from radio shack and hooked it up to a plug that will now let me run my CD player off of D-cells instead of wimpy AA's. What I was thinking for the laptop was to use 8 of the 9000mAH D cell NiMH batteries to make my own battery pack around 2.5X2.5X6 inch or so. That would be fairly small, and with a long (5-10 foot) cord would allow me to leave the battery pack in a backpack or under a table or wherever. It would also give me around 85 watt hours (compared to the ones listed around 55 watt hours, so I'd have around 40-50% advantage over the lithium ion packs). This would be around the same price (around $90), but would be heavier and would not offer as much flexibilty as simply a spare lithium-ion pack would. What do you all suggest? Actually, now that I think about it, AA's might be cheaper. Figure 5 of them to get the power of a D-cell (1600 ma and 8500 ma), so I'd need 5 parallel sets of 8, so 40 batteries at 1.55 each is around $60, so that would be pretty cheap. I also can fit the AA's (actually, can fit around 50 of them, so I could have 6 parallel sets of 8)in a package around 3X3X6 (whatever the size of this lantern battery flashlight is. I can fit 5X5 in the bottom and stack them 2 deep. This would give me LOTS of juice. Then again. ALL of this is assuming the Li-ion's are 1.2 volts each cell. I could still rework it so that the AA's would be cheaper. What are the cheapest per mA batteries out there? I'm thinking probably the AA's because you can get them around 1.40 or 1.50 each on ebay (mine were 1.40 each) for the well-known brands.
Sorry for the long post (I had bettery copy it in case it gets lost, it would take FOREVER to rewrite all this), but I just need some info. I won't have the money until the end of summer (unless I can convince my parents to go in on it with me for my b-day, and my grandma to go in on it with me for my graduation gift (she told me to pick something, I can't think of anything really that I want that is not expensive, and not that many things that are)) in which case I could have the money now. I have about $600, and I'm thinking I'll be able to (HOPEFULLY) make $1000 over the summer. We'll see.
Spudgunr