Which laptop to buy?

[CLiu]

My old laptop is showing age with a bad screen. I'm looking for a new laptop. After researching a little bit, I would like to buy a system with specs like the one below:

Pentium Duo 2 Core T2250 (1.73GHz) minimum would be nice iif T5600
(1.83GHz) or T7200 (2GBHz)
A separate video card instead of using system memory
15" monitor is fine, 17" ok too
1GB of DDR 2 memory
120GB of HD
Firewire preferred
Wireless and other standard feature


With that in mind, which model would you recommend?

Also, a few questions on laptops:
Can you upgrade the processor later when you buy a slower CPU today (eg. 1.6GHz now but upgrade to 2 GHz a few years later)?
Is it cheaper to get full memory (2GB) from the vender or it's usually cheaper to upgrade yourself? Can you mix 2 different RAM modules? I think most would put 2 512MB of memory for 1GB of RAM. If I buy a 1 GB memory myself it would be one 1GB and another 512MB. Is that OK?

Thanks for the advice,


cliu

 

[Nameless1990]

This may be close to something you'd like, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16834220141 In fact, the specs on this are almost identical to what you listed. It also comes with a single 1GB RAM stick, so you can add another stick yourself. As far as I know, in most cases it's cheaper to add your own memory than have the vendor add it.

You can also add this memory stick, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220078 for just $87, $67 AR and you have 2GB.

 

[thudia]

i just got the HP dv6258se.

AMD turion64x2 TL-56
2gigs ram
firewire.
15.4 widescreen
wireless
120gb HD
built in webcam.

All around great.

 

[moosey]

Yeah, HP makes a nice system too. Configure one of these to your liking
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopp...tertainment&series_name=dv6000t_series

 

[russdaren]

If you are into using firewire it behooves you to look for a box with TI firewire. The other chips by Ricoh Via etc sem to work, but can be problematic if you are doing audio or NLE.Something to do with asynchronous and isochronous transfers that I dont recall the details of. Anywya, VIA 1394 chips are lame. TI chips are supposed to be the best. Lucent/Agere is good, and Ricoh it seems it is still debateable.
As far as I know you want to stick to two matched sticks of ram. My lenovo ame with a single 512 stick, not two 256's as some guys do. Some of teh better manufacturers are getting hip to this.

 

[alimoalem]

this Asus is basically the 14.1" version of what nameless1990 linked...and comes with 2x512mb (since you want that).

you can mix and match, i'm just not sure it'll run in dual channel

you can replace the CPU down the line...whether it'll be cheaper, i doubt it would significantly drop like desktop CPUs. i think the T7200 costs something like $300 on newegg right now. (the laptop i linked comes with the T7200)