recommended laptop specs - usage VoIP

[daevor]

hi there

a cousin of mine is interested in buying a laptop, but my knowledge is more on the desktop pc side (read: I know nothing about laptops! ).

She will be using it primarily for internet surfing & VoIP purposes. Anyone have any recommendations as to make (e.g. dell, compact, toshiba, etc.) & minimum specs?

Thanks,
D

[rburley]

well seing as she is a girl she will need something pretty.
so sony vaio will be a nice choice.
its powerful, slim, long batery life and looks stunning

[daevor]

Thanks for the info, but she's not looking for the absolute latest in technology! The price jump is simply madness!
She just wants something functional for VoIP from Saudi Arabia to SA.

[rburley]

Acer notebooks are very good so i would go for one of them.
On the performance side DONT get a celeron M, rather fork out for the Pentium M.
Also make sure its got more than 512Mb ram becose most notebooks onboard gpu's use shared memory.
My advice is a acer centrino.

[Angellus]

Acer notebooks are very good so i would go for one of them.
On the performance side DONT get a celeron M, rather fork out for the Pentium M.
Also make sure its got more than 512Mb ram becose most notebooks onboard gpu's use shared memory.
My advice is a acer centrino.

Sound advice but just check if the Gfx Card does share main memory. Some of the better Gfx cards have seperate dedicated memory. If it does have dedicated GFX RAm then 512Mb should be fine. 1024Mb is nice though but for what she will use it not a must have.

Acer is good I know from expereince. The Sony Laptops are awesome but very expensive here in SA. My father is about to sell his Acer and buy either the 10" or 13" Sony. Here they cost around R18000 and in Dubai about R11000. He goes there once a month so he gets lots of things there for cheap.

[rburley]

Some of the better Gfx cards have seperate dedicated memory. If it does have dedicated GFX RAm

i very much doubt that she will need a mobile 6800ultra

[Angellus]

i very much doubt that she will need a mobile 6800ultra

Yep I doubt that too But the 9700/X600's have dedicated memory AFAIK. I dont know about the 6200/X300's though.

[gkm]

a cousin of mine is interested in buying a laptop, but my knowledge is more on the desktop pc side (read: I know nothing about laptops! ).

She will be using it primarily for internet surfing & VoIP purposes. Anyone have any recommendations as to make (e.g. dell, compact, toshiba, etc.) & minimum specs?
D

I would say any laptop you can buy new today would be fine for VOIP and internet surfing. Obviously just need to get a headset or "USB phone" type thing as well for VOIP.