Would you buy this Toshiba, IBM, or Dell Laptop??

Rossy_3

Hello

I'm looking to buy a refurbished laptop and unsure which one to go for. I wanted a CD/RW and notice the IBM doesn't have one.
Which one would you buy?

Toshiba Tecra 9000 £399

Pentium 3 - 1GHz
Memory (Ram) 512 Mb
Hard Drive 40Gb
CD-RW
Screen 14.1" Widescreen
Mouse Nipple Style Mouse
Windows XP SP2 & Office 2003 Software
56k Modem Port For Dial Up
LAN Card Port For Broadband
WiFi Card Included !
Ports Serial, PS/2, Parallel, Infrared, 2 x USB, 2 x PCMCIA, 1 x Firewire, 1 x Kensington Lock, Onboard Sound, Speaker Port
6 months warranty pay extra £50


IBM Thinkpad T30 £350

Intel Pentium 4 M 1.8Ghz Processor
512MB SDRAM
30GB Hard Disk
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Onboard wireless 802.11b card
14.1 inch display
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 16MB Graphics
DVD-ROM (not re-writer)
1x Firewire (1394) Port
2x USB 1.1 Ports
1x Parallel Port
2x PCMCIA Slots
Infrared Port
Modem & Ethernet
6 months return to base warranty


Dell Latitude C640 £450

Dell Latitude C Series
Processor: Pentium 4 1.8GHZ
Hard disk size: 40 Gigabytes
Memory: 1024 MB Ram
CD Drive Type: CDRW/DVD
Screensize: 14.1 Inches
USB Ports: 1
10/100 Wired LAN: Yes
CRT Port (Ext Monitor): Yes
PS2: Yes
Infrared: Yes
Operating System: Windows XP Home
Floppy Drive: Yes
Modem: Yes
Wireless LAN: No
TV Out: Yes
Firewire: No
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 7500 32MB
Battery Life: Good
Warranty: 12 Months

Rossy

Little_John

Why not spend less and get one of the Dell latitude 1300 for £339? Why buy 2nd hand when you can have new for less?

I would buy a Toshiba as they are built better than the rest but the spec is really poor on the ones above. the other 2 spec's are good but nothing special, I paid £1k for a 3Ghz P4 512mb and 60GB drive over 2 years ago so for the others to be so expensive for much lower specs I think they are expensive and wouldnt pay that for any of them.

Rossy_3

Just not sure if this new dell has wifi, ones say it has, others say it doesn't and you can upgrade for it and dell will charge £32?? Does it have a CD Rewriter?
Also I was told not to buy a 'Celeron' processor, as for me I don't know?
Not too well up on technie stuff and does anyone know why you wouldn't buy a celeron?


Heres the spec

Dell Inspiron 1300
Intel Celeron M Processor 370
(1.50GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 400MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows XP Home Edition
256MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM
40GB Hard Drive
Integrated Direct AGP Graphics
Integrated 8xDVD+/-RW Combo Drive
56K Modem and LAN/Tiscali UNLIMITED Broadband for £14.99/month + First month FREE
Free McAfee SecurityCenter
14.1" Widescreen

£299 including VAT and shipping

£$&*"($£&(

At those prices I would go for something new. Don't be put of by Celeron as long as it's a Celeron-M which is very similar to the Pentium-M (not to be confused with the Pentium-M on the IBM which I assume is an earlier model). People still confuse the rubbish desktop Celerons of a couple of years ago and assume all Celerons are the same.

The Dell is a very good price. It needs more RAM and I'm not convinced by the screen size. You can find plenty of Celeron-M for £399 and some Pentium-M laptops for less than £500. Celeron-Ms tend to have slower speeds -1.3ghz or 1.5ghz while Pentium-Ms, at the cheap end, are 1.6ghz and 1.7ghz. Celeron-Ms do not have the power saving features of Pentium-Ms so battery life is less and Pentium-M laptops have built in wireless cards (which together with the Intel chipset means it will be a "Centrino" laptop).

Little_John

But out of the 3 above only the Tosh has a wifi card? so you would need to get a wifa card or USB adaptor anyway.

A celeron CPU is fine for office and web browsing the dell spec says it has 1MB of cache which in a celeron is unusual as they are normally 256kb so the main reason not to buy a celeron the low amount of cache doesnt really apply with these laptops.

IMHO

Rossy_3

Thanks for your help. Understand abit better now about the Celeron processors. Think I might order the Dell Inspiron 1300, should I upgrade to 512MB with them or is cheaper doing it myself?

Must find out what warranty is with it and if its Wifi!

Hillfly

Upgrade yourself - it'll save you for sure.

Little_John

and buy the wifi seperatly, lots of people say it is included, but dell charge over the top for wifi adaptors and the ones I have seen are external ones so not ideal for a laptop, a usb or pcmcia card are more portable.

Rossy_3

ok I could buy the wifi separate or a usb/pcmcia card. Would either of these do to go wireless?? Sorry not up on this?

Little_John

all pc's/laptops (with a USB port) can be made wireless buy using a USB adaptor. Laptops have PCMCIA slots which can be used for wireless cards LAN cards, modems and a host of other uses.

The USB adaptors just plug in like a use memory stick
There is a huge choice of adaptors available that vary in price up to about £36

The only other things you will need if you dont have them already are the wireless bits for a network like a wireless router there are loads of posts from other users regarding these.

Rossy_3

thanks little john, i'm sure this dell 1300 laptop has a usb port.