Buying a laptop

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leonb

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I'm looking to buy a laptop for office use (small business) around R6k - R7k. Any pointers.

How about the HP Pavilion (DV6204EA): Sempron 3400, 1Gig ram, 80gig HD, Vista Basic - R6999

Between celeron M and sempron, what is best for laptop?
 
Celeron M will have poor battery life (1-2 hours max).

Semprons are AMD entry-level so will also have poor battery life and run hot.

Check out Incredible Connection or Makro for some well-priced machines that fall into your price range and are not Celeron M...
 
The old Celeron M's have got poor battery life. the 3xx series ones

the new 4xx series do scale the processor's speed according to your usage. They have got FAR better battery life (2.5-3.5 hours) and the performance is better than the Semprons.

Just remember that when you go with Vista, make sure you have got 1024mb ram (Vista on 512 is a joke). You can have the shop upgrade it for you. If they ask more than R600 for the memory, you are being ripped-off.

look for this notebook and have the ram upgraded.

ASUS F3H Series F3H-C44HP
Intel Celeron M 440 1.8Ghz
Intel 945GM chipset
512mb ram (upgrade to 1024mb)
80GB Hard drive
Dual layer DVD writer
15.4" glossy coating screen (like sony VIAO)
Wireless and normal LAN
MS windows Vista Premium
Expresscard slot (if getting 3G, dont take PCMCIA modem, go for USB or expresscard one)
2 year global warranty (1 on battery)
3.5 hours battery life
Carry bag and Logitech mouse included!!! (R500 value)

With the ram it should cost about R7000

It is in my opinion, the best entry level notebook available on the market. If store don't have it in stock, ask if they can order it. otherwise ask anyone with a dealership at Rectron.

if you are in Cape Town, give me a PM and I might be able to help you out.
 
Last edited:
I did not know that about the Celeron M 440's, nor about the price of the RAM. Most places ask a whole lot for an upgrade.
 
they are quite nice. They will actually scale down to 200Mhz when you are basically surfing the web or using word.

benchmarks put the 440 1.8GHz at about the same performance level as the old Pentium M 1.73Ghz

Rough guide to buying memory is R1 per MB is great price R1.2 per MB is Ok price
 
Last week I bought me a HP 510 Series Notebook
15.4" 16:9 WXGA screen | Intel® Pentium® M Processor
RU964AA HP 510 Series Notebook, Intel Pentium M 770 (2.13GHz 1MB L2 Cache 533MHz FSB), 512MB DDR2-533 SO-Dimm Memory (1x512MB), 60GB ATA 5400rpm Hard Drive, 15.4" WXGA (1280x800 resolution) TFT LCD Display, Intel Media Graphics Accelerator 900 128MB, DVD+-RW writer optical drive, Wireless LAN 802.11b/g, Microsoft Windows XP Home, 1-1-0 (one-year standard parts and labour limited warranty) for R5999 @ Café Java in Claremont, Cape Town. I thought it was a good deal.I just need to upgrade the ram to 1gig.What does ram cost for the HP 510 Intel Pentium M 770 (2.13GHz)?
 
I'm sure you will be able to find a entry level pentium m/ centrino or Core2 notebook for about R7k. Shop around, IC's notebooks used to be their only decently priced products, no longer I see..

Also make sure you get at least 1gb, even for a XP machine.
 
GTi said:
Last week I bought me a HP 510 Series Notebook
15.4" 16:9 WXGA screen | Intel® Pentium® M Processor
RU964AA HP 510 Series Notebook, Intel Pentium M 770 (2.13GHz 1MB L2 Cache 533MHz FSB), 512MB DDR2-533 SO-Dimm Memory (1x512MB), 60GB ATA 5400rpm Hard Drive, 15.4" WXGA (1280x800 resolution) TFT LCD Display, Intel Media Graphics Accelerator 900 128MB, DVD+-RW writer optical drive, Wireless LAN 802.11b/g, Microsoft Windows XP Home, 1-1-0 (one-year standard parts and labour limited warranty) for R5999 @ Café Java in Claremont, Cape Town. I thought it was a good deal.I just need to upgrade the ram to 1gig.What does ram cost for the HP 510 Intel Pentium M 770 (2.13GHz)?
Click to expand...

The problem with the 510 is it only has 1 ram slot, So you will have to thow the 512mb away and get a 1024 for about R1100
 
Nameite said:
And compared to normal centrino and pentium M?
Click to expand...

Centrino and pentium M are kinda the same thing. Centrino is the "platform" ie Pentium M processor with 915 chipset and intel wireless.

anyway

about the same speed
Pentium M has longer battery life
Pentium M runs cooler
was about the same price (can't really get Pentium M's these days)
 
killadoob said:
didnt you guys read that vista is causing kuk on laptops

stick with xp if you own a laptop
Click to expand...

I found the opposite

Vista sorted out tons of issues on my laptop. Standby works for the first time since I bought it, Battery life it better, hopping between wireless networks works like a charm.

Most of the issues I hear about involve the words "Nvidia", "Norton", "HP", "Pastel". Ask yourself why each time a new OS come out, it is the same companies in the spotlight? They had issues running under XP 64-bit (HP still does not have 64bit drivers for half of its printers, scanners and faxes. It was the same XP came out, and 2000, and 98 and NT.

Ask yourself why you are using those product if they are so "backwards".

Canon had Vista drives for it's printers and scanners ages ago when Vista was still in BETA. AVG antivirus works like a charm on Vista. Nvidia seem to be finally catching up, but ATI had their drivers sorted. Don't get me started on Pastel. You are probably using Pastel because your accountant uses it and you have always used it. Pastel says they don't even support Vista in pastel 2007. Quickbooks 2007 works fine on Vista.

People advising you to wait until the first service pack is released are actually saying:"by the time the first service pack is released, the lazy 3rd parties would have gotten round to making their software work properly on Vista"

With the right 3rd party software, Vista is the most stable OS I have ever come across!
 
leonb said:
My question stands, which is best between the two, price approx the same? Only performance?

Also why Asus above HP?
Click to expand...

I would go for Celeron M if you can find the new 440 ones with the decent batteries and better performance.


For me, HP rather than Asus.
 
Stay away from HP. I have endless crap with both HP and Compaq. Rather go for an Acer. There should be a couple you can choose from in the R7K range. Also try and get a 3 year warranty.
 
Abe said:
Stay away from HP. I have endless crap with both HP and Compaq. Rather go for an Acer. There should be a couple you can choose from in the R7K range. Also try and get a 3 year warranty.
Click to expand...

I have also had problems with HP/Compaq - failed hard drive after one year (2 laptops). failed graphics card after 4 years. Yet, they are really good laptops with good support.

For what it is worth - A medical colleague needs to get a laptop for her work, and it needs to link to one of the major pathology laboratories. They have advised her to get any laptop, except an Acer - say they have too many problems with them.

Finally, Vista works great on laptops, even my old Compaq X1000 series.
 
leonb said:
My question stands, which is best between the two, price approx the same? Only performance?

Also why Asus above HP?
Click to expand...

ASUS comes standard with 2 year warranty and the build quality is far far higher. That notebook that i gave the specs of is ASUS's cheapest notebook. They don't do rubbish

Unlike the HP 510 that only has 2 USB ports and 1 ram slot
 
mohammedm said:
For what it is worth - A medical colleague needs to get a laptop for her work, and it needs to link to one of the major pathology laboratories. They have advised her to get any laptop, except an Acer - say they have too many problems with them.
Click to expand...

if she has the budget, Look for an ASUS R1 tablet PC, that thing is simply LEGEND! There is also the baby laptop (UMPC) called the R2 tablet. it detaches from it's keyboard and can fit in the pocket of a lab coat
 
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