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  • From: Craig Duncan <craigduncan AT entuend.com>
  • To: cmccarthy1 AT nc.rr.com, "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Laptop Recommendations: DVD Burner?
  • Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:33:25 -0500

Colleen McCarthy wrote:

Hi Folks,

I'm going to get the Presario at Office Depot (I do have concerns about
durability, however, and wish I could justify a Latitude...), and just have
one final decision to make: Do I want a DVD burner? I don't know. I don't
have one on my desktop, but would I use one? Do many of you have one and
use it?

In case anyone else is interested in the deal that Office Depot has (today
is the last day), here's the breakdown of what you get for $400 and the cost
of the upgrades that I'm getting:

Base PC: Compaq Presario R3000Z with an AMD Athlon XP-M Processor 2400+ for
$399 (after rebates).
Memory: 256 MB DOR
Hard Drive: 40 GB
CD/DVD: 8X DVD-ROM drive
Screen: 15" XGA screen,
Graphics Card: 32 MB Nvidia GeForce 4 420 Go

Upgrades and Shipping:
Shipping $45
Wireless $30
Upgrade to CD/DVD burner $100, dual side DVD burner $120
Upgraded Graphics card to 64 MB $25

Thanks!

Colleen

Colleen McCarthy, BSMT, BSEE, MBA, PMP
(h) 460-0641


Since everyone else is continuing this thread even though Collen has made a decision, I might as well toss in my two fairly relevant cents - HP & Compaq are more or less one company.

I purchased an HP ze4800 laptop last year, and although it was not my first choice I did get it for ~$250 of my own money (plus some gift certificates to best buy I cashed in for credit card miles.) With one or two minor exceptions, I have been pretty happy. It's fairly light, the keyboard is super comfortable, and Gentoo Linux just hums like crooner on a stage in his prime. I can even use the built-in 54g wireless thanks to the ndis warpper folks.

But ..., the keyboard started generating random characters, so <ctrl-c> would not cut text from my document, instead it change the virtual screen I was on. The tilde (~) character would generate something like ~^++, so changing to my home directory became a serious pain, the delete key also change the insert mode, ...

I called support (open 24/7) and found someone *not* from Bangalore (+1). They were skeptical about me using Linux, but not dismissive and were most helpful in identifying an issue worthy of repair. They sent out fedEx the next day and I had my laptop back with a new keyboard 4 days later. Pretty cool I thought. That was until I tried tying again, and same old thing, argh! Called back, they sent fedEx again and this time replace the mobo. This time it took six days but this time everything was back to normal.

A little frustrating to be without your primary computer for two weeks, but the service was friendly, helpful and in my many years of dealing with tech support experience, pretty darned good.

I could use a memory upgrade from 512M to 1G for development work, and the 1024x768 is fine for most purposes, but all in all I am a fairly satisfied customer. If Colleen's worst experience with her Compaq is similar to my own, then I think she will also be fairly pleased. Of course, XP Home edition has got to go, no if's not but's, no maybe's, just wipe that bad boy and use something worthwhile.

Good luck Colleen,

Craig Duncan




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