My New Toy

Shadowsilence · Posted: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:15:48 Post Subject:

I've had a compaq laptop for about four years now still running... except the battery is totally toast. I purchased my mom a cheap Asus laptop awhile ago from newegg for Christmas, it died a month after the warranty. Was a great laptop, make sure you have some kind of extended warranty though.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:29:12 Post Subject:

Battery Life - 1.5 hours or so, so far. Yikes

And I am going to e-mail Newegg, too... The price has gone down $50 in one week! Bang Head

acruxksa · Posted: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:19:17 Post Subject:

I went the other way, I'm trading in my 15.4" for a 14.1" Lenovo R61 with T9300. Unfortunately the ship date is still a month out so I wait impatiently Grin

I just don't like hauling these things around and have been steadily decreasing my laptops size. Had a 17" and then moved to the 15.4" and now will give the 14.1" screen a try. It should seem down right spacious after spending the last 2 weeks using an Asus eeepc though.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:42:07 Post Subject:

I wanted bigger because I don't really drag it around too much, but I know if I traveled often this one would get cumbersome. It actually weighs less than my old Dell, but it is like a surfboard!

How do you like the EEE PC? I was thinking of one of them, too... Maybe to keep in the kitchen for quick e-mail and web checks, and moving this somewhere that makes it more for me and less for everyone... Laughing

OH... AN my big happy news... Laughing

- Even though they don't have an official price protection policy, Newegg.com did refund $50 to me! The price dropped that much the day after mine was delivered. I asked (nicely), and they said sure, we'll credit that back to you! Grin

acruxksa · Posted: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:15:59 Post Subject:

The eeepc is pretty cool. It's small and hard to use for an extended period of time, but for quick e-mail or web tasks it works ok. I'm not really thrilled with the keyboard, but for $400 what can you expect. I have WinXP installed and an 8gb SDHC card with 5 wmv movies on it at the moment, in preparation for a hockey road trip my son and I will be taking this weekend. It gets very good wifi reception and really is a very handy appliance. The XP install took about 1.2gb of the 4gb SSD so there is some room left over for other apps if I decide to install them. I also bumped the memory up to 2gb and use a program called eeeclock to overclock it to 900Mhz (the designed speed of the processor) and it is reasonably snappy. It boots winxp in about 30seconds and xandros even quicker (although xandros only recognizes 1Gb of ram unless you install a hacked kernel)

Glad to hear Newegg is stepping up and making things right, they really are a great company.

BeerCheeze · Posted: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:56:25 Post Subject:

I saw those eeepc's and was wondering about them for the kidos. Good to hear you can change and upgrade stuff on them.

Also, hopefully you'll enjoy your Lenovo with it's embedded malware. Yes... I might be slightly paranoid but when stuff like this happens: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3904, and I'm guessing they came from China......

acruxksa · Posted: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:30:17 Post Subject:

I suppose it's a possiblility, but these days what computer isn't made in China, or made from parts manufactured in China. Nearly every computer could contain embedded malware. I'm just going to have to take a chance.
I used to buy Dell laptops exclusively, but they mismanaged my last order so badly that I refuse to ever use them again, so I looked around and ended up with what I consider to be a steal of a deal on an R61 with discrete graphics, T9300 cpu and WXGA+ screen ($995 shipped) not including an 8% fat wallet money back offer (I've never used fatwallet before so I don't really know if I'll ever see this $$ so I'm not really factoring it into the cost). I'm looking forward to the lenovo's keyboard and solid construction. I hear it's not as good as when big blue made them, but that it's still pretty good.

Theres a pretty avid eeepc fan base online and several hacks/mods have been developed for these mini-laptops.