Need Help Choosing a Laptop

[xcheckers]

Due to an upcoming relocation, I am going to need to add a laptop to my computer inventory. Don't know how long we will be in temp housing until our stuff gets delivered and we get the desktops back.

I am looking at the Sony VAIO PCG-FXA47 that has a nice 1ghz athlon and comes with quicken (must have or add the cost as I need it) and a firewire port and dv software so I can capture stuff from my camcorder and a 20gb hard drive with a CD burner to also help store digital camera photos. The only other thing I may need is FrontPage

Mainly going to use it for accessing the net the old fashioned slow way (unless apt has high speed access), paying bills, other financial management, and managing my son's website to the extent I can on a slow speed connection.

Any opinions or other suggestions????

 

[xcheckers]

can anyone help???

 

[littleprince]

have you checked out the compaq and dell laptops?
Much cheaper.
Also the toshiba's are nice.

My compaq has the P3 1g -M.

For laptops I thought about going with an athlon, but they get really really hot. And battery consumption is an issue.
Also pay attn to vid chip sets. I went around playing with a bunch of different chipsets.

If i recall, full screen, wmp, the winxp install theme song, and the first visualization full screened takes like 80+%cpu power with the savage 4 core, and around the same for the .... cant think of it, ibm uses it a lot.

So I got mine with the mobile radeon.

Check out the manufacturers forums, as you will find out all the problems.

Eg. Compaq radeons have problems with output to 2nd monitor and lcd.
dells have problem output movies to 2nd display etcetc...

 

[xcheckers]

believe it or not, I am finding similarly equipped dell and compaq machines seem to cost MORE for the same features...