tech computer

Microcenter commonly has winxp laptops for only $400-500, probably worth while to use. I managed to pick up one of those cheap toshibas from best buy during black friday last november and I loved being able to take it with me when working with whole hog pc.
 
Another thought is to spend some time shopping www.newegg.com

Newegg is my favorite place to buy computer parts from for all my repairs and upgrades. They also sell laptops... including Hp, Sony, Toshiba, and many others. Newegg has AMAZING customer service and the fastest shipping around. The cool thing is that people who have purchased the product go back to the site and rate it. All products have from 1-5 star ratings and explinations from customers of why. I look for products that have a lot of reviews and a rating of 4 or 5. A quick scan found these. At the low end, they've got an Acer that's $550 after rebate and has 83 customer reviews giving it 4/5 stars. There's another Acer for $1100 that has 68 reviews averaging 5/5 stars. New Egg always has one of the most competitive prices on products and they are very reliable. I've been buying from them for over 5 years and never had a problem. As I suggested before check out www.cnet.com for professional reviews also.
 
newegg.com is THE BEST when it comes to buying anything. They sent me a bad video card once, and it literally took me 2 minutes to get an RMA number, then just a quick trip to the ups store and problem solved.
 
Be careful about XP home vs XP pro... some college networks dont let you use Home on their network, but also, many colleges have deals with Microsoft to get cheap software (I can pay $5 for an XP Pro licence through my college, so it's not a big deal to force everyon to upgrade to Pro).
 
I have a toshiba laptop which I love. I do alot of recording with a Presonus Firepod (8 channels) connected through Firewire. Doing that you need a VERY beefy computer with a fast processor and fast bus speed and a fast harddrive. If you are not doing such serious recording you should be able to get away with a less serious computer.

Now... the dark side.... I kill my laptop every 5-8 MONTHS!

Thankfully, I bought it at BestBuy and bought the extended warentee I have been able to bring it back there and get it replaced each time I has broken. I am on my 5th laptop from them. I have heard lots of stories of people having horrable experiences with Bestbuy, however I have had a great experience with them.
 
First off, you want the slowest (within reason) processor (and for laptops Intel is better, more energy efficient and runs cooler). You want a butload of RAM. I suggest a gig. Most laptops have the ability to dual monitor with the built in and an external. From experience, you get a laptop to be small and portable, and you get a desktop for power. If you try to go for both, you get a brick of a laptop with no PCI slots, an hour of battery, and that weighs about seven pounds. If you are planning on getting a desktop, a CD/DVD burner on a laptop is a stupid waste of money. First off, laptop drives are slow. Very slow. Second, because there is only one drive, copying a CD takes about three times as long as a dual-drive desktop configuration.

I personally like AMD's in desktops. If you are going hardcore sound recording, get a desktop. Laptops always have latency problems with sound.

Before service pack 2, XP supported DOS programs. That is why I have not upgraded yet.

Don't get me started on an alienware rant. They are not worth the price. As for "gaming laptops," no, just no. Alienware machines are fragile, not only physically but also driverwise. If you want a hardcore system, build it yourself.

Windows XP professional is definitely worth the upgrade if you want system security. I can own a password protected and "heavily secure" home edition PC in about four minutes.
 
You can still get through pro. Just boot the BIOS.

I haven't done this, but I know how to, as one of my fellow techies did this so that we could finally access the computer that the library gave us for the booth, but they didn't come set it up. And it was XP Pro with SP2.
 
You can get an awesome laptop for recording if you have the money to toss around. Infact you can get one better then the average desktop. I have an alienware that I love. I've never been able to ask it to do something It couldn't do. As far as road ready, I've been on the road with mine since I first got it 5 months ago, traveling roughly 20,000 miles. The only thing that broke was one of the latches When I tried shutting it on my coat.
 

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