HAPPY NEW YEAR from Buffalo, Everybody!
Thanks, DarkStar, but that one's out of my price range. I'm not particularly concerned about prestige other than reliability. I finally settled on this one for $449
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/9 ... 5992-15-6/ It is essentially the same as the BestBuy model but with a somewhat better Caspian CPU (Turion II 2.2 GHz v Athlon II 2.0). It has the same graphics card, RAM and I think HDD (320 GB). Will probably upgrade RAM at some point. I've looked at so many now I'm not sure whether OS is 32 or 64 bit. This one doesn't say.
<VENTING SECTION> Ignore if desired.
Had a run-in with my wife's uncle over the purchase, strangely enough. Why I felt the need to justify his comments with a response I don't know because, while we're not well off by any stretch of the imagination, it's still my money and my decision. His idea was to rearrange the living room (where my hospital bed is) and move my desktop up there and just use the wireless keyboard and mouse.
Because "while they're neat to have, what are you going to do with it after you're not confined to the bed? You built a nice quad core desktop."
I had already thought of that before I finally decided to get the laptop. There's just no way to make it work. The living room's too small and there's too much crap up there--entertainment center, etc.. Plus the only conceivable way to set it up would have my monitor at the foot of the bed. Now I have 20/20 vision but I can't see the cursor 6 feet from where the computer is currently. Besides, we have been talking about getting a laptop for a couple of years now so we can both work or whatever and be in the same room with each other.
Not to mention the fact it would have been hella-nice to have had at my mother's house when I visited for two weeks at Thanksgiving. The Buffalo Bills chose to have a friggin' meltdown and fire the head coach the
day I flew to Mississippi where I had no computer. Even with 4 channels of ESPN PLUS the NFL network I still couldn't find out a damn thing. Plus Mom would have liked to have seen all our pictures from the past couple of years.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter--it's my money and my decision. But it still pissed me off. I asked for his advice on the purchase because he knows a hell of a lot about hardware. Before he retired, he worked for Unisys and was responsible for setting up the networks for the PGA tour. He's always tinkering around now building different boxes and such. He's not an overclocker but he does know a lot. I ask for advice and I get a lecture. Why the hell is this bothering me so much?
OK, I'm officially done. Thanks everybody for your help, advice and suggestions. Hope the new year is healthy and prosperous for all of you (and me
)
Jack
I'll go through it again.
I knew for my first laptop and for my budget constraints I wasn't going to get a screamer for $400. I've looked around and I'm just leery of anything off eBay or even anything refurbished. If something goes wrong with it, I'm going to be pretty much flat of my back for at least 3 months and totally unable to strip it down and fix it.
