Screw the dell outlet. It's a good deal when there are coupons. Look at the homepage of Slickdeals.net and when you see something in your price range pounce on it.
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1438351 is a good deal
Screw the dell outlet. It's a good deal when there are coupons. Look at the homepage of Slickdeals.net and when you see something in your price range pounce on it.
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1438351 is a good deal
HOFer
Slickdeals only helps me if I know what I'm looking for. I don't know what I'm looking for, I just know I don't have it now.
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
That's fair. Go with something 400-600 dollars. Trust me it will be plenty of computer for even the most demanding users who aren't doing intense 3d rendering (which is NOT adobe CS -- adobe CS is very CPU and memory intensive, not 3d graphics intensive at all). I would recommend soemthing with a smaller screen so it's portable. 15" is pretty big and 17" is gigantic.Originally Posted by MJZiggy
Anything that isn't a "netbook" and on the homepage will be plenty of computer and a very good deal. You really cannot go wrong with that advice at all.
I'm not surprised. The suggestions are all over the board. I like Skin's advice the best - treat it as a disposable purchase. Don't over buy on specs.
I bought a hard drive from New Egg about 3 months ago. I don't use that debit card very much, and hadn't used it in about 3 months. Within a week, I had $500 in unauthorized charges.
I made the purchase while at work, behind the office firewall, and on my work machine which gets virus/spyware/malware scanned daily. I have yet to find any kind of intruder on that machine.
I don't buy from New Egg anymore.
Man that is weird. I'm like Partial, and have probably bought over 100 times without a hitch. I use credit cards instead of debit specifically for the fraud protection.
What are the general differences between the different versions of Windows 7?
I'm getting Pro just for the remote desktop. That way I can do wife and kid support stuff when I'm on the road.
That's the thing. I don't give a donkey fuck about what's inside the computer anymore. When they started coming up with all their clever nicknames for the motherfucking processors and made it impossible to compare across brand much less across nicknames, I said fuck it. I'll just spend what I consider fair for 3 years or so of usage and make the numbers as big as I can without worrying about all the minute details that won't end up meaning shit to me anyway. So applying a filter in Photoshop's going to take 4.6 seconds or 3.4 seconds. What the fuck do I care when I'm farting in the fan on a daily basis?
I'm not surprised. The suggestions are all over the board. I like Skin's advice the best - treat it as a disposable purchase. Don't over buy on specs.
"You're all very smart, and I'm very dumb." - Partial
That's the thing. I don't give a donkey fuck about what's inside the computer anymore. When they started coming up with all their clever nicknames for the motherfucking processors and made it impossible to compare across brand much less across nicknames, I said fuck it. I'll just spend what I consider fair for 3 years or so of usage and make the numbers as big as I can without worrying about all the minute details that won't end up meaning shit to me anyway. So applying a filter in Photoshop's going to take 4.6 seconds or 3.4 seconds. What the fuck do I care when I'm farting in the fan on a daily basis?
I'm not surprised. The suggestions are all over the board. I like Skin's advice the best - treat it as a disposable purchase. Don't over buy on specs.
That's because you don't compare the things on names. Frequency, front side bus, cache, cores. They all compare perfectly fine.
What were you comparing, sparc to PA Risk to itanium to intel based processors? THEN it get's confusing....but intel based stuff compares just fine.
HOFer
Fine, so tell me what I should buy before this damn thing dies.
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
Did you mention anywhere in the thread how "mobile" you need it to be? You want small and light or is it going to be sitting on the desk most of the time?
Make sure you get the 64 bit version of Vista to go with whatever laptop you do buy and load it with as much ram as possible after you buy it unless the manufacturer is giving it away at the time. Get dedicated graphics for Pete's sake.
I will say I'm intrigued by the 14 inch Macbook pro at the price they are now offering it at but you can still do pretty good for less $$$ if you go with a Vista based system.
HOFer
I'm not going to need to travel with the thing. It needs to be able to get to the coffee shop and such, but I won't be traveling with it or taking it to work. We use Dells at work and the IT person told me not to get one for home use as I would like to get more than 3 years out of it and they seem to have something that decides to break after 3 years every time.
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
I think if you want to get 3+ years out of it, you'll need some quality hardware. You _might_ get that out of a dell xps laptop, I've heard a few success stores on that and I've had one myself for 1.5 years. I also got a great deal on it.
As for sure bets, I would go with a lenovo or apple. My dad's business uses idea/thinkpads and they last a long time (3-4 years easily). They only reason they've been getting new ones is because a good deal comes along.
Apple and Lenovo are sure best to last a damn long time. Dell is kinda hit or miss, but xps lapops are usually better quality.
HOFer
You've got to tell us what you can afford to spend. I can tell you all day long to buy a Thinkpad T series, but if it's out of your budget, what's the point?
HOFer
Sorry. 5-700 max.
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
Is there a Costco near you? They have a sick coupon deal coming up in a few days.
Dell outlet has a code on refirb studio 17" notebooks for the next two days, here's the post with the code and an example:
20% off Refurbished Dell Studio 17 Laptops Dell Outlet
Dell Outlet has new Coupons - 20% off Refurbished Dell Studio 17 - 1737 Laptops $599+ - use Coupon Code 19NQJBP9?W4C3S at check-out (ends 7/13 or after 1500 uses)
Studio 17 - 1737
Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 (2.00GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
4 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)
320 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
8X Slot Load CD / DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
Certified Refurbished
Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel Web Camera
64BIT Operating System DVD
Microsoft Works 9.0
9 Cell Primary Battery
90W AC Adapter
Ruby Red
17 inch Wide Screen WXGA+ Laptop Screen with TrueLife
Dell Wireless 1510 802.11a/g/n Draft Mini Card
Studio 17 - 1737 Qty 1
Studio 17 (1737) Laptop: Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 (2.00GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache) Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium Unit Price $619.00
Get 20% off any refurbished Studio 17 - 1737 price at $599 or above!
Limited time offer!
- $123.80
Additional Discounts and Coupons
Windows 7 Upgrade Program Details for Eligible System Purchases - $0.00
Expires Thursday, December 31, 2009
Free 3-5 Day Ground shipping on select refurbished systems!
Expires Friday, July 31, 2009
Total Price
Sub-total $495.20
I know you have received too much info in this thread, but Skin's rec makes sense. Its in you price range and the hardware is not bad.
I manage 4 Dell laptops at work and two of them are Inspiron 1150's. I have had to replace AC adapters, a power connector and a couple of other items. They have been in use since 2004/05, cost just under a $800 I believe and between the 2 of them had $800 in service. Both are at the end of their useful life and will not be repaired again, but each at $1200 total cost/5 years of service, they were worth the investment. And they were used by sales folks who toted them everywhere.
I have also, personally used two Sony VAIO laptops and have never needed a repair. Both were heavier than I would prefer, but each has lasted 4+ years and the one is no longer in use only because of performance. I did have an issue with the CD tray not opening on its own without encouragement, but that was a result of a wee person dropping the notebook while the CD tray was open.
With the brands mentioned, it would be hard to go wrong, but for Skin's Dells, I would recommend the following:
Get a better video card. If you are using CS3 or perhaps CS4, you need decent and fast video. On board video accelerators use your system memory (the 4GB mentioned in the specs) and processor and their performance is poor. If you were using Word or Powerpoint, you would never know it. Photoshop will know it. For $100 or less, you can wait less. The Dell Outlet will have refurbs with very similar hardware and better video cards. Or you can likely pick the item Skin has listed and request the upgrade in the checkout process.
Have Dell partition the hard drive for you. The OS will come preloaded on a single drive otherwise. While I no longer work with Adobe products daily, Photoshop uses large temp files while running and in the incarnations I used, it ran much better when those temp files were on a drive other than the one the OS was on. Off the top of my head, I don't know what Windows or Dell recommends for Vista partitions, but my guess is that a C: drive of 40 GB and a D: drive of 280 GB will work. Install CS 3 on either drive and set the scratch disk for Photoshop and Illustrator (the place where the temp files are written) for the D: drive. This will also make it easier to reload OS software in case of emergency.
Good luck.
Bud Adams told me the franchise he admired the most was the Kansas City Chiefs. Then he asked for more hookers and blow.
Untrue.
My desktop (self built hotrod about a year old, optimized for photoshop and photos) with 4 GB Ram and a quad core processor, plus 2x AGP GFX cards (I forget the name of the link for them), gets hung up at times in PS after working too many too big of files, it can take a long time to run some of the filters, a big pano stitch can take hours, an HDR rendering can take 10+ minutes.
PS can eat every processor cycle you can offer.
It has very minimal requirements, but can run extremely slow unless on a blazing fast machine.
It's one of those things, PS has a very nice workflow when operating at peak efficiency, bog it down and slow it, and it starts to seem like surfing while on dialup, and is downright annoying, especially if you are used to it being faster.
I'm posting this from a new MacBook Pro. It was a treat to myself for landing a really kick ass job.
Since I have my own side business and still qualify for a student discount (Actually, Apple doesn't even verify if you're a student, they take your DL# to make sure you only buy one edu discount desktop and/or laptop per year), I got a ridiculously good deal on this business laptop. The laptop will be used exclusively for work, and then I'm selling the current gen iPod touch that I got for free, and will be purchasing the new version that comes out in about 2 weeks (which will be cheaper, so I will break even on this exchange, and actually be ahead since the original iPod was free). The iPod Touch 3rd revision is supposed to have a camera and microphone so I will use this to record conversations with clients, also a business usage.
With that said, I also got a printer for free after rebate.
For about 750 bucks, I now have a work laptop, a work iPod, and a work printer/scanner, faxer. Bam!
In any case, this is by far the nicest laptop I've ever used from a useability perspective. It could be more powerful and have a higher resolution matte display, but those are minor gripes.
Zig, you should have bought this. The ambient light sensor and backlit keyboard are sooooo nice!
HOFer
Yes. I should have. I would have been very handy transferring files to a work and former desktop that it isn't always compatible with. That would have been fun to have files that won't open when I have to be able to work on them on my lunch hour.
Also, I use the numberic keypad. A lot. Does your Macbook happen to have one?
Ah hell, while I'm at it, I want to switch anti-virus software. Anyone got brands they especially like?
"Greatness is not an act... but a habit.Greatness is not an act... but a habit." -Greg Jennings
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