[mr_Cash]

late edit: caution.
this may not be the best idea after-all.
please read the caution post later in this thread.

$229 new 15.4" toshiba vista laptop & cannon printer

 

[jwight]

Black Friday ads

Thanks! Looks like a great buy.

More Black Friday ads at: http://www.blackfriday.info/

There are some great GPS deals coming up this Friday.

 

[mr_Cash]

late edit: caution. this may not be the best idea after-all.
please read the caution in this thread, following this post.

this may be a little more, but a better deal than the $229 at best buy. the circuit city $299 compaq presario 1g mem, vista home premium & printer & router.

the question seems to be, if mem is epandable to 2g (?), or limited to 1g (?). if limited to only 1g, its probably best to pass on this computer. one memory vendor says this c700 series is expandable to 2g, so, thats likely the case. but verify asap, before buying if possible. this system does has 1) a faster dual core processor, vs. the slower centurion at best buy on the $229 toshiba model. 2) vista home upgrade to 'premium' (instead of 'basic'), 3) comes with 1g of mem, instead of 512meg for the best buy $229 toshiba, and 4) its mentioned often as a good looking laptop.

 

[mr_Cash]

... c a u t i o n ...

i noticed dell is offering supposively great (?) deals with 2g of mem, & the duo processors, for $599, yet, they are 'only loading win xp', 'not' vista. this implies, there may be significant bugs remaining in the heavy vista program, even with 2g of mem, and duo processors. vista may so big, such a mem hog, so slow, so heavy a program, that todays lower cost chip/board technology can not satisfactorily handle it yet.

... conclusion: if you already have a computer thats working ok, or don't really need a laptop, it may be prudent to simply wait to buy a laptop at next year's black friday sales, when vista bugs can be further worked out, more streamlining can be added to vista, and more powerful/lower priced new tech comes along that can better handle the memory hogging vista.

... it may be best, for this years christmas gifts, if in tech, to be something small, like an under $25 or so mem upgrade, or an under $20 flash drive memory usb plug-in bullet (if needed ?), or just skip computers and tech entirely this year, and buy other non-computer gifts.

... or if you have no computer, and need something, go ahead, cautiously, with one of two computers mentioned in this thread, and be prepared to possibly remove vista, and load up xp, which would give good power for most common non-game uses. you will have to check, if or how to get the xp for no charge, if you take delivery of a vista product. i'm not up to date on the vista to xp cost, copyright requirements, special reload procedures, etc., if any.

.. merry Christmas ..

 

[sisyphus]

Or buy a Mac...

 

[gamernotwatcher]

It means that the Dell system was developed with XP, Tested with XP, QA'd on XP, for $599 you are buying a Dell dated 2007 (early)

 

[DaveInTexas]

Windows VISTA is Junk IMHO!!!

I have it on my computer and it is super slow. I had XP before and wished I had never bothered with Vista.

Vista = Viruses, Infections, Spamware, Trojans and Adware

One thing you have to check on the fine print is if the rebate requires you to buy a year of internet service from a certain ISP.

I wished I had bought a Mac.

 

[SmartShanna]

Once you go Mac, you never go back

 

[ifishcat]

for the shopping bargan hunters at large the following two websites are great jumpping off places...

fatwallet

slickdeals

though ifn you are real savy, then this is old news, in which case, got another good link?

(Mr Cash, in like holiday manner, the above offerings to you )

 

[propes]

As an IT professional, who works with Windows all day long.... go with a Mac.

 

[jwight]

XP

As an IT professional, who works with Windows all day long.... go with a Mac.

Apologies to all Mac aficionados here but been there, done that. Quite happy with an XP system (glad I didn't fall for the Vista "upgrade") and the way it handles lots of photo editing.

 

[SmartBob]

A gig of memory is plenty unless you're a serious gamer in which case a laptop is not the machine. The first machine only has 512mb of ram but is probably upgradable. The Celeron is a slow processor but all of this depends on your needs. For the average Mom & Dad or kid in school either will do. Those laptops are a real bargain nonetheless. If you're downloading songs and movies that's a whole other ball game.

As for Mac...I have a friend who bought an iMac. He uses it for slideshows and music. That's all. PC is most popular for a reason. There's a ton more software and it's less expensive. The Macs are great for pros, particularly in the graphic dept but the PC can keep up, no problem. Just my 2 centavos.

 

[2442]

XP.... I'm glad I passed on the Vista.

 

[Fredvon4]

XP here also and over 3 years 24/7 on my three home brew computers (Thanks Newegg!) with zero issues or BSOD...

Mac is not for me...I will never own any of Steve Jobs children after his lousy business tactic of giving Macs to schools hoping to force unknowing young parents to buy his over priced machines and software...

I am an early computer hobbyist that enjoys learning and tinkering under the hood. Army taught on a FADAC and early large scale computers...

The Timex Sinclair was first PC (?) with the odd Vic 20 and Commodore 64 along the way...I passed on the Radio-Shack trash80 and still have a working Intel 8088 4.77Mhz 640Kb ram, floppy only Dos 3.2 machine that I cobbled together 25 years ago....

When you can show me the free OS and a decent selection of productive software for a Mac I might start to be impressed... IBM based computers have a exceptional following in open-source free or very cheap OSs and exceptional selection of any software solution you can think of....This is semi true of the Mac but no where near as free, cheap, or extensive

Thanks IBM for screwing up your Personal Computer business model and forcing direct clones to happen as a result. Thank you Intel for outsourcing CPU fabrication and sharing the proprietary instruction set with Cyrix and AMD...IBM and Intel's bonehead decisions made a lot of people very wealthy besides Bill Gates

IBM variants of PCs have inspired a lot more innovation, created more jobs, and enhanced international business and communication more then Mac by a exponential factor so great that Mac is not even close to achieving similar density of use, post machine (aftermarket) sales, or support.

But Hey! all you Mac affectionados... hang in there...keep buying them...Like AMD, the Mac is good stuff, great competition, and provides consumers with choices forcing innovation and price reductions from all the competing players!

PS --- I toted a Panasonic Toughbook all over the globe for 6~7 years... over time it was upgraded from Win3.11 to Win 98 to Win 2000 and never gave me any trouble...I hated parting with it but it was not able to have enough ram to run XP... That notebook, brand new, cost us tax payers 1/3 what a similar Mac machine was back then... I know I was the IT procurement officer for my group...

 

[spdickey]

When you can show me the free OS and a decent selection of productive software for a Mac I might start to be impressed.

Not including off topic rant... but...

I've used ubuntu on a Mac, works just fine, but I like Leopard better.

 

[pauly]

I'm running Vista on a $300 Acer laptop with 1GB RAM that I bought at Walmart a month ago - the pre-Black Friday sale. I'm online maybe 4 hours a day with this laptop - no problems, no issues, no hassles - I'm lovin it.

 

[mtndrew1]

Very happy here on my MacBook Pro!

Macs cost a little more, but the lack of software headaches is worth every penny to me. I'm just installing Leopard as we speak and it's silky smooth so far (touch wood).

I wonder how many Smart buyers are Mac users? Might be an interesting poll.

-Drew

 

[dbwill]

I've got vista on my laptop and my home server and have had no problems.

 

[DaveInTexas]

XP here also and over 3 years 24/7 on my three home brew computers (Thanks Newegg!) with zero issues or BSOD...

Mac is not for me...I will never own any of Steve Jobs children after his lousy business tactic of giving Macs to schools hoping to force unknowing young parents to buy his over priced machines and software...



The Timex Sinclair was first PC (?) with the odd Vic 20 and Commodore 64 along the way...I passed on the Radio-Shack trash80 and still have a working Intel 8088 4.77Mhz 640Kb ram, floppy only Dos 3.2 machine that I cobbled together 25 years ago....

The Commodore PET and TRS-80 were out in the 70's. The TRS-80 had 8" floppies as an option. The Pet had a 5 1/4" drive.

The Sinclair was the first personal computer under $200 and then $100 but it only cam with 2K of RAM. The keyboard was so tiny, you couldn't type on it.

I had a 1975 Rockwell AIM computer at one time, that a friend of mine built himself and ran a bulletin board off of.

The TI 99-4A was an upgrade to the original TI 99-4. It came with a better keyboard.

Before my father purchased a Sinclair Z-80 computer, he had been looking at the Apple and Kaypro computers. Co-incidentally, he took it back after trying it out for two hours because the basic program he inputed was bigger than the memory allocations.

Steve Jobs built his first computer when he was 14 years old, if I recall correctly. Wouldn't you want to through your support toward education if that was how you learned about a new technology that made you rich? By the way, The OS-X is Unix based.

Oh, and what of Bill Gates business tactics.

 

[2442]

My first TRS-80 (model 1, level I)had cassette storage (no floppy drives yet). The 8" Floppy was used on the Model II (not to be confused with level 2 on model I.) The model I had two cassette ports, 1 for program and 1 for data. It used standard cassette recorder/player. The first floppy for model I was 5-1/4" single-side, single-density and cost $499.00 each. I paid $2,000.00 for 4 (max).