Hello All,

Any suggestions on buying a new notebook...
which brand , dell, compaq, toshiba

intel centrino or the intel pentium..?

budget is expandable....

thanks and regards
Mutahir

What do you plan to use it for?

intel centrino for work and pentium for play.. or you could also get an AMD cpu.. which i recommend for both work and play.. i'd go with a sony or toshiba..

If you need a more powerfull laptop i would get a pentium. If you are more concerned about battery life get a centrino. It uses less power sacrificing performance.

Read my sig!

Personally, I've had bad luck with Sony. Driver incompatibility (when I reformatted and reinstalled, the stock sony drivers from their website no longer worked for some components) and touchpad crappiness were both issues.

If you want something for school, I can recommend highly a tablet. They're very good for note taking, and can read even the most horrendous handwriting.

If you want something for gaming, go with something other than centrino. It's really fast for office apps, but not very good for gaming.

If you want something with good battery life, as everyone else has said, go with centrino.

But most of all, ENJOY having a new laptop!

Hey, just my 2 cents:

'
neither! compaq is horrbile. don't even bother. toshiba is over priced for what you get. dell, well i just don't like them. and sony is your typical look cool laptops.

i would look at either acer (i love mine, no problems with drivers or anything) or asus.

i would recommend an intel centrino with an 8 cell battery. if you want battery life get a 14.1 or 15 inch screen, but if it isn't such a big priority get a 15.4.

]Bonkers[

What about AVERATEC. My dad has one of those but i havn't got a chance to look at it.

and



I agree compaq and HP are full of crap!

Most definately without a doubt an IBM T41.

*double post

Also do centrino cpu's use socket 478?

Hello All

Thanks for all the suggestions, I would go for a pentium now....but i am amazed to know that toshiba is over priced and hp and compaq are crap?

is ASUS good ???

thanks for all the advises.
Mutahir

As far as Averatec: they make an excellent, cheap, thin notebook (I have a sotec 3120s, which was Averatec's name up until last year), though they tend to lag behind the major laptop makers when it comes to features. Mine is a great notebook, but if you get one, make sure that you don't need something that'll survive rough use. Currently, they have two series of notebooks: I don't remember the model numbers, but one is thin and light, and the other is large, but still thin. The larger one comes with centrino and a dvd-rw, among other things. For my next notebook, I wanted the features of the larger notebook, in the smaller form factor. I therefore e-mailed them to see when they might have one. The answer was at the end of this year, to the beginning of next. I'm waiting for that one to buy a new one.

http://usa.asus.com/products/notebook/l5se...ga_overview.htm

This ASUS looks pretty good!

Pentium M does use Socket 478, but the pins are keyed differently, so you can't plug a PM into a P4 mobo. Besides, the pinout are all different so it wouldn't work anyway.

Pentium M is a very powerful processor, even better than Athlon's at the same clockspeed and vastly superior to the Pentium4. But the top of the line graphics cards, which are very powerhungry, are usually paired to the equally powerhungry Pentium4. Centrino is about battery life after all.

Some advice when buying Dell, Compaq, Sony... Buy a basic configuration, it's often cheaper to order RAM or HD from your local PC store. When buying a mobile harddrive you need the Hitachi Travelstar 7K60, accept no substitute. The only 7200rpm notebook drive...