Friend wants to buy a laptop for schooling

[Akkernight]

HP COMPAQ 17" CQ70-120 LAPTOP

    * Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200 prosessari
    * 3 GB DDR2 RAM
    * 250 GB SATA harðdisk
    * 17" WXGA Widescreen HD Brightview skýggi
    * Upp til 1277 MB grafikRAM (Intel GMA 4500MHD)
    * Lightscribe Super Multi DVD brennari
    * Vevkamera við mikrofon
    * Tráðøst netkort 54Mbit, 802.11 b/g
    * 5-í-1 kortlesari
    * Numerisk keyboard
    * Windows Vista Home Premium

Now I'm a bit skeptical about the Intel Gfx...
And it's from a Faroese website, so some stuff there is Faroese, but you should be able to read the specifications

[SlyMaelstrom]

The GMA 4500MHD is fine for anything except gaming. It even decodes 1080p with pretty low CPU usage. You have nothing to worry about there. I would probably say, though, he should be looking at smaller laptops if he's going to be lugging it around campus all day and trying to use it on the cramped little desks in the lecture halls. Screens that large generally yield terrible battery life, too. It's ashame your kortlesari isn't going to support SDHC. Unfortunately, most laptop kortlesari don't, these days.

[Akkernight]

Well, I like laptops when they're about that size 'cause they include the numpad, and he does think that too but thanks!

[SlyMaelstrom]

I would argue that there are plenty of good USB number pads, but it's personal preference, anyway and he's the one buying it.

[IceDane]

Hah! I can read that.

Ég þakka fyrir peningapakkann!

[Akkernight]

From Iceland I suppose? xP
And USB numpads are crap xP

[cyberfish]

Laptops that size usually have dedicated graphics, though. But then cheap dedicated graphics (9400/9500M GT and below) only eats more battery life for nothing. You can't really play games on those anyways.

I agree with SlyMaelstrom. A 17" laptop is going to feel VERY unstable on those tiny "desklets" in lecture halls. Even my 12" tablet feels a bit shaky. Battery life should be okay... assuming the scale the size of the battery up with the laptop.

I gave my 15" (2ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 8600m GT) laptop to my bro and bought a 12" tablet (random AMD dual core crap that eats battery life like there's no tomorrow, geforce 6150 integrated graphics, 2GB RAM). I think it was well worth it. That's how important I think the size is. Also, my 12" is 2kg, and I thought it's pretty heavy already. 15"s are usually ~3kg. 17"s are ~3.5-4kg. Better start weight training soon if he is going to carry that heavy block around.

17" and above laptops are for people who primarily use it as a desktop, and only need to move it (to presentations for example) a few times a year. A few of my friends also bought 17" laptops for school, and ALMOST ALL of them regret it. I didn't think weight and size is THAT important, too, before I actually had to carry it around.

[Neo1]

Why not save both money and muscle, and get one of the new netbooks? They are perfectly sufficient for schoolwork, performance-wise, and the new Asus EEE 1000HE will have amazing battery life considering a 6-cell battery and very small screen, and of course ULV Atom CPU...

[zacs7]

Why not save both money and muscle, and get one of the new netbooks? They are perfectly sufficient for schoolwork, performance-wise, and the new Asus EEE 1000HE will have amazing battery life considering a 6-cell battery and very small screen, and of course ULV Atom CPU...

Or better yet. An MSI Wind U100. I have one, ~10" LCD very light and it often out performs the other "dual core beasts" with Windows Vista and other laptop bloat.

Of course I don't run X on my netbook, just vi, gcc, jdk, irssi and friends. And because I don't run X I get huge battery life.

[Neo1]

zacs7:

They will be pretty much the same, same CPU and same battery, so that's more a matter of personal preference methinks.

But yea, get a Netbook OP, rather than one of those 17" container ships! You will regret one of those, or your friend will.

Besides, the point of those beasts is that there is space enough to cram all kinds of harware into it, stuff like two high-end graphics card or a RAID array or a fusion reactor, but the one you are looking at is.....pretty mediocre!

[Elysia]

Or better yet. An MSI Wind U100. I have one, ~10" LCD very light and it often out performs the other "dual core beasts" with Windows Vista and other laptop bloat.

Of course I don't run X on my netbook, just vi, gcc, jdk, irssi and friends. And because I don't run X I get huge battery life.

That laptop weights less than the EEE PC 1000HE, so kudos to that.
But the battery life is pretty pathetic compared to EEE PC 1000HE, so it's a trade-off there.
Otherwise they are pretty similar.

I second the Asus EEE PC 1000HE, though. Waiting for one myself...

[zacs7]

> But the battery life is pretty pathetic compared to EEE PC 1000HE, so it's a trade-off there.
Not in the MSI Wind U120 which comes with a 9-cell battery. But you can also get the 9-cell batteries for the U90 and U100.

I get more than the advertised battery life anyway with a 6-cell.

[Elysia]

There is such a thing? From my information, the battery life is 2-3 hours (as listed).
Of course, battery life is highly dependant on what you do, but I tend to compare them to each other just to see which have more battery life. The longest possible battery life is the model I would choose and love.

[Akkernight]

Well, we both are gonna buy laptops, since we're both going to collage next year, just not same collage xP I'll probably try to find a laptop that doesn't have any OS installed (WAY cheaper) and install Ubuntu xP
But the reason we both like large laptops, is that the keyboard is too small for the small ones, like the numpad is pressed into the keyboard D:
Oh and, are there language correctors for open office, just like Microsoft Office? You know, those things that add red lines under words that are wrong...

[Elysia]

The 10 inch netbooks have a 92% normal sized keyboard.