Affordable Lightweight Notebook

[mf1462]

I'm looking to purchase a lightweight notebook in the sub 700-1000 price range. I am not too worried about the computer being fast, because I will have a full fledged PC for video and gaming. Main priorities are
Lightweight less than 6lbs preferably less than 5lbs
Battery length at least 3 hours
standards like wifi, 80gb, media card
Ram will probably be added because most 2gb systems are $1000+
I have done much research, but I would like to see what else people have in mind.

 

[ajikan]

Try going for the new Dell systems. They're pretty light and durable, if you can take care of them well.
Maybe go for a Tablet PC?

 

[gus6464]

What size? But I would look at Dell Latitudes.

 

[CTrain]

I would just get the Gateway MT3707 from Bestbuy for $599 on sale right now.
You get one right away and the specs are surperb considering the price tag.
I bought one for my sister.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Check the Dell Outlet for previously ordered new D420s & D620s.

 

[rml]

Sony, Acer, MacBook

 

[hmsrolst]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
Check the Dell Outlet for previously ordered new D420s & D620s.

I concur. I picked up a D420 (just over 3 lbs.) Core Duo with 1GB of RAM for just under $900. But you have to be patient, wait for well-priced things to come up and then move fast.

 

[gus6464]

I was also in the market recently for a new laptop as well for work and was about to go for a dell when my office just decided to order me a new Latitude D620. It is very light and the build quality is very good comparable to my macbook. It came with 9cell battery, 2gb ram, and 120gb hard drive. Battery seems to last forever as I have yet to use it long enough in one sitting to require me to plug it in.

 

[deeznuts]

I actually got an older Fujitsu Lifebook S6240 from geeks.com, brand new. It's older with just a pentium M 1.73GHz, but it was $750, is 13.3" screen 4lbs (less if you take out the dvd drive).

I added 2gb of corsair on it's way from axiontech for $85. Why did I go with an older laptop? Well first of all price, $750 plus tax cuz I'm in CA. At that price for a light lappie I would have to go with refurb or a generic brand. My experienc with Dell Laptops vs. IBM I'm probably not going back to Dell. And I've heard great things about Fujitsu laptops, and indeed mine is well built.

Like you, I have a desktop to do anything I want with it. It's a QX6700 so I'm not starved for power. I wanted something light, quality, and cheap and this fit the bill. If you're not in a rush check out geeks.com lappies for their deals. Warranty is one year I bought it with my CC which added another.

 

[MSCoder610]

Originally posted by: CTrain
I would just get the Gateway MT3707 from Bestbuy for $599 on sale right now.
You get one right away and the specs are surperb considering the price tag.
I bought one for my sister.

I randomly broke down and ordered one of these also. Intel Dual Core CPU, under 6 lbs, "thin & light", 160GB HDD, 1GB RAM... seems like a good value.

If anyone else is interested, I'll post about it after it comes (but I guess it wouldn't be on sale anymore).

 

[CTrain]

Originally posted by: MSCoder610

Originally posted by: CTrain
I would just get the Gateway MT3707 from Bestbuy for $599 on sale right now.
You get one right away and the specs are surperb considering the price tag.
I bought one for my sister.

I randomly broke down and ordered one of these also. Intel Dual Core CPU, under 6 lbs, "thin & light", 160GB HDD, 1GB RAM... seems like a good value.

If anyone else is interested, I'll post about it after it comes (but I guess it wouldn't be on sale anymore).

I think its easily the best deal for $599 around.
Its small, gorgeous and pretty well equiped.
Only thing I would do is take out one 512 and add a 1gb of memory to it.
Sell the 512mb for $25 or something.

I love the laptop even thought its not for me to keep.
I probably would have bought one for myself if the resolution was 1440x900 even I have a HP nc8430.

 

[MSCoder610]

I love it so far also. I was generally unsatisfied with the performance of Vista on it, though. So I made a recovery disc, then reformatted and installed Windows XP Pro. Once I found the XP drivers for everything, it's great - plenty fast, and looks nice also.

The Vista slowness I noticed is probably mainly just due to all the pre-installed crap on it - Google Desktop, McAfee suite, Napster, like 25 WildTangent games, etc. I'm used to XP though, so making a fresh install of that was easier than cleaning out the Vista install (since the included Vista disc would have the same stuff on it).

At $599, I don't regret a thing. (Although its not on sale anymore.)

 

[MSCoder610]

I had someone email about how I installed XP on the laptop - here's what I emailed them, if anyone else is reading this. (Applies to the Gateway MT3707)

I did something like this:
1. In Vista, burn a driver & application recovery DVD (probably not necessary)
2. (Make sure nothing important is on the main HDD partition)
3. Put in an XP CD, restart, choose the boot menu on startup and pick to boot from the CD/DVD drive
4. Choose to setup XP on the main partition - quick reformat as NTFS. You should only have to choose to boot from the CD once. Then after the HDD is reformatted, and XP setup does the first phase, it should automatically boot to that HDD partition to continue setup. Note: I kept the 2nd (Recovery) partition untouched, I only reformatted the main ~140GB partition.

Drivers: I found most of them on the Gateway site, by looking up MT3705 drivers for Windows XP. Here are the file/ download names, if you search Gateway's site (or Google) you should be able to find them:
D00560-002-001 (Audio driver)
D00671-001-001 (ATI/ Chipset drivers). Note: I'm actually using the "Radeon Omega drivers" right now for video, it was the easiest way to give me a few more resolutions to choose from.
D00669-001-001 (Touchpad driver/ utility - not as important
Ethernet: http://www.marvell.com/drivers/upload/yk51x86_v86173.zip
Wireless Net: Don't remember where I got it, google for "RTL8185 XP drivers", the directory name I have saved w/ drivers is called "x86-8185(1094)"

I'd try to find all of those drivers beforehand, then burn them to a CD or something before going ahead with the install. (Definitely find the wired/ wireless networking drivers before hand - having the XP SP2 network install sitting around beforehand is a good step also, before hooking up to the internet -
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta...-4F30-8245-9E368D3CDB5A&displaylang=en
)

I hope that helps a little.