Bang for the Buck

[deseraligears]

I know you get this a hundred times a day but you guys are great. So with that in mind can you help me with the purchase of a new laptop ?

I am setting my budget at $700.00 if I can do it cheaper than great. I want to be able to do the normal stuff and have the abilty if possible to add a video card in order t0 watch TV (Cable) and movies from Web!!! Now if that is possible fine if not understand but if there is a syestem that can be up graded later good. Also will need wireless and will travel with it, I assume if I connect moblie phone to it I can dial up anywhere!!~! Hope i have Conveyed my wants acuratly. Finnal do I get the VIsta ? and oncw purched wher in Techspot do you go for tutorial of what to get rid of and what to download ?

I have the spyware info saved, do I download that first. Thanks and look foward to reading your thoughts and advice.

 

[Tedster]

In general you cannot add video cards to 98% of laptops except for a few VERY high end and expensive laptops $3000+

You CAN buy a PCMCIA or EXPRESS TV card (depending on what type of slot you have) to watch TV on your laptop. I know, I have one

WIFI is essential for a laptop. Almost all new laptops have at least a/b/g built in. Some have draft n.

You have purchase a cell-phone modem for your PCMCIA or Express slot from your cell phone company. This is a very expensive service with a lot of bandwidth limitations. Most cell phone companies severely limit the amount of bandwidth you can use. You can check emails and surf, but if you download and exceed the amount allowed per month, you can get hit with big fees or even have your contract cut off. It is far better to surf with your wifi.

stay away from Vista. It is still far too buggy and offers no real performance gains over XP.

when buying a laptop - 2 things are vital. MAX out the ram immediately. It will speed up your system and incresae battery life. Get the fastest hard drive you can get. Most laptops come pre-built with an extremely slow HD.

Read the Guides in the guides forum and also the faqs in each regular forum for more info.

 

[deseraligears]

laptop

MAny THanks

 

[poriggity]

Ted Just about covered everything. I gotta re-iterate, the cards you can get from cell phone companies work, but they are not cheap, and they have lots of limits, so like Ted says, use Wifi whenever you can. Also, RAM is important. I bought this new laptop on the cheap, but it only had 512 mb of ram. Its now a week old, and I have more RAM coming for it already.
Scott