Question about Notebooks (laptops)???

[AB]

Being a fullhearted desktop enthusiast, I know very little about laptops/notebooks, and who better to ask about it than you guys that read this board.
I am in need for a laptop and am looking around for one. Of course I am looking for the best value, but unlike in the case of desktops where I can pick out my components and build one, I feel very restricted in this case. I am not really looking for a gaming notebook... all my gaming will be on my desktop. This is mainly going to be for office use, word, excel, PP, photoshop, surfing the net... etc;. With this is mind, what should I look at? The pentium 3's are so expensive, that I am inclined moreso to look at the celerons at the same clock speed or even a k6-2. I need to know what are the positives and negatives for each of these. Next, which manufacturer has the least problems with their notebooks, or the best reputation? Next, I want to stay within 1400 dollars, what's out there? Also, what are the differences in display types? I keep seeing these acronyms TFT... Can I add an ethernet card if I need to? Basically I am clueless on this matter. Any help will be appreciated. Also, referral to sites reviewing laptops would be great. Thanks.

 

[aUt0eXebat]

Well, awhile back I was looking into laptops to buy....
I checked out the Compaqs (not very good), Dells, IBMs..

And I found that the Dells had very good customization, the price may be a little expensive, but Dell makes very good quality products. Id go for Dell. IBM is the 2nd best IMO.

Dell Laptops from there, you can select which model you want, then, Costumize it anyway you want pretty much.

 

[Wizkid]

Toshiba also makes very good laptops. We use them at work and they are great, and I just bought one myself and so far it's awesome

Dell's customization feature is the best though.

It usually cheaper to get a built-in network card if possible, but you can add one later if you want.

 

[fun007]

The Pentium III is faster, especially for applications written to take advantage of its "Katmai New Instructions" ("Katmai" was the code name for the Pentium III during development ).The 70 new computer instructions make it possible to run 3-D, imaging, streaming video, speech recognition, and audio applications more quickly . In addition, the Pentium III offers clock speed up to 800 MHz.Celeron is the low-end member of the family of microprocessor from Intel that is based on Pentium II architecture. Although it is based on the same architecture as the Pentium II, it lacks some high-performance features of the Pentium II line. The Celeron L2 cache is smaller (128 kilobyte) than the Pentium II's (512 KB). However, because the Celeron L2 cache is on the processor chip and the Pentium II's is not, their effective L2 speeds are closely comparable.Celeron offers clock speeds up to 466 MHz.

A display screen made with TFT (thin film transistor) technology is a liquid crystal display (LCD), common in notebook and laptop computers, that has a transistor for each pixel (that is, for each of the tiny elements that control the illumination of your display). Having a transistor at each pixel means that the current that triggers pixel illumination can be smaller and therefore can be switched on and off more quickly.TFT is also known as active matrix display technology (and contrasted with "passive matrix" which does not have a transistor at each pixel). A TFT or active matrix display is more responsive to change. For example, when you move your mouse across the screen, a TFT display is fast enough to reflect the movement of the mouse cursor. (With a passive matrix display, the cursor temporarily disappears until the display can "catch up.&quot. Solo 9300cs series from Gateway offers TFT active matrix display and has Celeron processor.OmniBook 4150 from Hewlett Packard Company features a 500 or 450-MHz Intel Mobile Pentium III or a 400- or 366-MHz Intel Mobile Pentium II processor.WTI 991 Celeron Series Notebook from Wave Technology , Inc features Intel Celeron 566/600 MHz processor and many more.I was searching for a site to buy a good barcode scanner and finally I found a site named www.solveit.com.This site explains about different hardware,software,services,solutions and also about different wireless technologies used.

 

[Eli]

I recomend getting a laptop based on the AMD K6-3+/500 with PowerNow!.