A question for all my tech-wise American friends. :)

[Sapphire]

Hi!

As some of you know, I run Bwint and write my fan fiction on my wonderful little Packard Bell laptop, which has served me extremely well for the past 18 months. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the machine itself but alas I have hammered the poor thing's keys to death and now the space bar is sputtering out. The problem with laptops is that they have a delicate sensory pad beneath the keys, and if one section of the pad goes (like under the essential spacebar) then the whole pad needs replacing. To fix this costs (in the UK) as much as a laptop.

Anyway, the point is, I'm a writer and having a functioning keyboard is essential, therefore I need need a new one, and so I am asking you all for advice.

I'm going to the USA next month and I intend to buy one in the USA. Laptops are extremely expensive here. For $480 I can get a Dell laptop with the same amount of features as a Dell laptop has here, except it costs £470. 470 pounds is roughly 900$. See?

I would like your opinions on where would be best to get a laptop in the USA. I've investigated a bit online, and so far Dell offers the best deals (although I'm a bit relectant to get one since they've just recalled 5 million laptops after the sony batteries in them starting catching fire )
My time in the States is very short so I'd need to know where to buy it soon as I get there.

The basic specs I want are:

512MB DDR2 400 SDRAM Memory
40GB hard drive
CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive
Wireless capabilties (incl. slot for wireless Internet card)
Windows XP Home Edition
Decent battery life and a 14-15 inch screen.

>_>

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Cheetor]

Stay away from Dell for now. I work for Dell and heard all the internal racket. Right now they are trying to fix there exploding 8-cell lithium ion battery problem. So I'd wait for a while before buying a dell cause there systems are up in the air till that gets fixed and Dell deals with Sony who is the manufacturer of the batteries. Cause you don't wanna have your system combust infront of you.

If your going to buy a laptop Dell is usually the way to go but lately with all the crap going on with there batteries they've fallen off the top five. I would suggest looking into Hewlett Packard they make good decent laptops, Toshiba is good also, Acer has some good models as well and compaq has some alright models, if anything though i'd go Hewlett Packard which is the next best thing and if you have any dell questions fell free to drop me a line i'll try and answer em all to the best I can. Alienware is good but there quite pricey because they are gaming laptops with high end parts. If anything though when buying a laptop right now if you want your bang for your buck make sure you get an Intel Duo Core processor as they blow away AMD's notebook chips right now for the price.

Sugggest staying away from Gateway, Avretec because of there shotty components and problems.

If your going to buy I would suggest going to Best Buy or Future Shop etc for systems unless your going to buy a dell then it would be ordered most likely off the website.

Most setups now for what your looking also in specs you would get much more.

You'd get a 80 gig HDD cause that's the smallest now, a DVD burner most likely or just a cd-burner with dvd-rom capability, If you buy Intel Duo Core you'll also get built in Wifi (wireless card) and a 15-17 inch screen on most systems now, mostly 17 inch and probably an 8 cell battery good for a couple hours or so.

If ya have any other questions feel free to drop me a line. Hope your shopping goes well I wish I could afford a laptop right now myself but alas I make peanuts for pay at my crappy job.

[CabooseMoose7103]

I going to agree with Cheetor, check out HP. I'd especially look at their "nx" line of business class notebooks. I looked at your specs and my laptop matches it perfectly (well, when I bought it it did). I've got an nx6110 and it's served me very well. (It's not screaming fast but it runs my 3D engineering and 3D animation software very well).

Dell's are alright, but lately their notebooks seem to be getting bigger and thicker. I just set one up for one of my clients and while it was a pretty nice machine, it felt like I was holding a brick because it was so bulky.

Most new laptops are equipped with wireless, but some are not. Just check the processor label when you look at a laptop and make sure it says "Centrino" on it. If it doesn't, it probably doesn't have wireless.

Best Buy is a good place to shop, so is CompUSA. I recommend staying away from CircuitCity, they tend to raise their prices a bit.

If you have the time, check out either TigerDirect.com or NewEgg.com both of those are very good websites for computers and other computer related needs. If you have an address (for a friend or something) in the US you can have your laptop shipped to, I'd recommend taking a look at both of those websites and having them ship your laptop to someplace in the states where you can pick it up. Tiger will usually ship things in three days or less from the time you order, and New Egg is about the same.

Send me a message if you'd like some further input. I'd be glad to help.

[Sapphire]

Thank you for your help, guys! You steered me away from some laptops which, at first glance look ok, but as you have told me, have not-so-good components. As it stands, I'll either get a Hewlett Packard, or a refursbished Toshiba, or the latest Dell (according to a friend, all Dell computers released from August on are safe and minus fiery batteries). I found a Dell laptop with some really nice specs with a Dual Core processor, which according to my PC Pro magazine, is the newest processor on the market to challenge AMD. Luckily, I have a friend in the USA who is prepared to receive the laptop (so I can buy it online) and test it in the weeks before I get there.

Anyway, your advice helped, so thank you.