"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde
Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Desperately seeking notebook PC < $1000. Thin and/or lightweight a must
Posted by Jill | 3:15 PM
Last summer I spent three days at YKos shlepping my bigass HP Pavilion around the McCormick Center in a backpack. It's a preposterously powerful machine, but I really need something smaller and lighter for travel. So I'm looking for recommendations, just to confuse the issue further. I was mulling over the $399 ASUS eee, but it just doesn't seem to quite do the trick, and it won't handle the VPN I need for work. So right now, unless someone knows of a fantastic alternative, I'm looking at the base model Dell XPS M1300 and the HP Pavilion tx2000z, which I can get for $900 with 2.2ghz AMD Dual-core processor, 2GB memory, 250GB hard drive, Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone, wireless networking with bluetooth, the HP USB TV tuner and 8x LightScribe (you can burn labels on the discs) double-layer DVD / CD burner.

The advantage of the HP is a tablet, which means I could easily use it on a flip-down shelf in the kitchen when I'm not traveling, so I didn't have to print out recipes and have all this miscellaneous paper around the house. But it's an AMD chip.

So, all you techie folks out there, what do YOU think?
Bookmark and Share
7 Comments:
Blogger Jersey Guy said...
Go for the HP. Nothing at wrong with an AMD chip. I've been using an HP Pavilion with an AMD chip for around 2 years now. No probs at all. The tx2000 gets consistently good reviews and is a beautiful little system. I plan on buying one sometime in the next couple of months. The price is certainly right.

JG.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
I know nothing against AMD chips, which is sort of a weak argument, especially from someone who knows nothing, and refuses to know anything, about Windows.

But here's the catch: No Mac fanatic here. The OS I rely on has been virtually orphaned for over 10 years, and officially for a few years. Any new hardware I get, I have to *know* that it will run an unsupported operating system that no one cares about. And I've used an AMD chip, and the scuttlebut in the eCS (formerly OS/2) community is that the AMD's work just fine with our beloved orphans. So I can't imagine they'll trip up a Windows user.

Blogger Melina said...
Nothing at all with the AMD...some gamers actually prefer them....I think the HP has better specs, no?
Just do it!! You know you want to!!
;-)

Anonymous Anonymous said...
delurking
check out Stephen Fry's posting about the triple E, and those of his commenters. Might help, can't hurt,and anything written by Fry is always a treat.
http://stephenfry.com/blog/?p=39

Blogger Phil said...
Jayzus!
That thing will do everything except yer laundry!

Blogger Unknown said...
Yes, the killer for the eeePC is that you can't run VPN, or any Windows-only program for that matter. Since I spend 95% of the time on web, email, and word processing, though, that's not a big issue for me. And I want something with few moving parts like disk drives--they have a tendency to break easily when they're moved around. So the eeePC was the ideal solution for my needs.

Blogger Unknown said...
I should add that, yes I know that you can get Windows on the eeePC. And the "bigger and better" eeePCs will have a bigger screen and more memory, which should improve Windows' performance on them. But at that point, you're paying as much as, or more than, a much more capable laptop. Is it worth it for the impact-resistance? Dunno.

Anyway, I like my 4GB eeePC for what limited things it does and for its relatively low cost.