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Re: OT: Laptop for College Bound Student?



On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 15:50 -0400, Damon L. Chesser wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 12:25 -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 08:58 -0400, Thomas H. George wrote:
> > > The college is offering packages starting at $1,399 (Dell Latitude D630) 
> > > and $1,499 (Lenoveo ThinkPad T61) all with 2GB memory, 10/100/1000 
> > > Ethernet, Wireless, 1394 Port, Bluetooth, Vista 32Bit Business OS, 
> > > SmartCare/4in1 Media Card Reader and Microsoft Office 2007 Professional 
> > > pre-installed by certified technicians located on campus.  Three year 
> > > warranty and 1GB Flash Drive thrown in.
> > > 
> > > Money is tight, of course.  If I were the student and there is a 
> > > modest-priced laptop with Debian and OpenOffice I'd take it in a flash.  
> > > I'm not the student, I'm his 79 year old grandfather and I don't want 
> > > him to start off at a disadvantage.  There are certainly many college 
> > > students and recent grads that subscribe to this list.  I would value 
> > > your insights.
> > 
> > I've had extremely positive experiences with Budget Computers in the
> > past.  http://www.budcom.com/   They should be able to shave a few
> > hundred to a thousand off those prices if you're willing to settle for
> > two-years-ago's model.
> 
> Which, as the thrust of my email, is what I suggest and I am quite sure
> will be more then good enough to do the work.  You pay through the nose
> for "current" tech when last year is MORE then good enough for most
> needs.

Exactly.  Heck, my current laptop is a IBM ThinkPad A31.  It sold new
for 5 times what I paid for it 15 months later at Budget Computer, and I
bought it in 2004.  It's 1.6GHz, and it has plenty of RAM for a laptop
and can take a larger drive, about the only reason I'm considering
replacing it is that the OpenGL performance is absolutely terrible on it
at this point and struggles to break 0.3 FPS in Open Metaverse Viewer.

-- 
Paul Johnson
baloo@ursine.ca

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