New Laptop

[RedWolf]

Last week I bought a new laptop for $399.99 at Best Buy.  It's a Gateway MX3230 and it's probably the absolute best laptop you could get for that price.  I think it has a 1.5 ghz Celeron M, which is a wimpy processor compared to its contemporaries, but it's more than enough to get the job done as long as you're not trying to run crazy fast games and stuff.  It has built in wireless 802.11g card, a "Combo" drive (DVD-ROM, CD-R combination), and a wide-aspect ratio 14" screen that looks great.  They keyboard is really good, and it comes with a built-in memory stick and secure digital card reader.  The only problem with it is the 256 megs of RAM that comes with it (I recently ordered 1 gig to put in it for $70).  And of course, it has no dedicated 3D video hardware for games.  But even so,   once I uninstalled all the dumb crap (AOL, MSN, McCaffee Scareware, and some other Gateway crap that I don't need) that came on it, I was surprised at how speedy this thing is (has Windows XP Home) even with only 256 megs of RAM!  It's truly awesome.  I bet this thing would make an awesome Linux notebook too.

Anyway, the point of my story is this: the next time somebody makes fun of the sub-$500 notebooks, don't believe them!  This machine is really absolutely incredible for the price.  If you're into doing mostly web stuff, word processing, music, photos, etc, then you should really look into getting a bargain notebook like I did.  I'm extremely happy with my purchase.

RedWolf

[extrarice]

Nice score there. Yeah I bet the system runs fast without all the OEM add-on junk. Upgrade that RAM, toss Ubuntu on it, and call it good.  :lol:  It would make an excellent portable emulation system, too.

[RedWolf]

Nice score there. Yeah I bet the system runs fast without all the OEM add-on junk. Upgrade that RAM, toss Ubuntu on it, and call it good.  :lol:  It would make an excellent portable emulation system, too.

Yeah, so far it's done a great job with any emulator I've thrown at it.  Honestly, for $400, the possibilities are endless.  Anybody want to buy a dozen and deploy them as emulation bots?

RedWolf

P.S. I don't actually know what "emulation bots" are. I just made it up.

[Konata]

256 megs of RAM

  *blinkie blinkie*

[t3hfr3ak]

Aye Kitsune... we have come along way in just 2 ye...

wait a second, october 2006 i bought this PC with 1 gig stick... wth(hell) RW!

[Andrew Armstrong]

The RAM is rather low for XP.

But for £200, that's quite a steal (no way you'd find that at the same price in the UK ). I'll still stick with my Macbook however

[RedWolf]

The RAM is rather low for XP.

But for £200, that's quite a steal (no way you'd find that at the same price in the UK ). I'll still stick with my Macbook however

I quickly bought 1GB RAM for it and it runs very well with XP.

[t3hfr3ak]

sweet... RAM upgrades always get me hot! haha