Laptop Computer Advice
 

I will be taking the family to Key West this summer. I have found that the DoubleTree Key West hotel where I will be staying has free high-speed internet access in most (all?) of its rooms. Since I am bringing my AOL-chatting teenage son and his friend, as well as my other teenage son, I thought it might be nice to have Internet access in the room, if for no other reason than checking maps, printing coupons (www.myclipper.com) and other vacation stuff. It might really come in handy if we get a rainy day.

This may push me over the edge to buying a new computer in addition to my Compaq 450mhz desktop.

In a reply to my e-mail the tech person there said all I needed was an Ethernet-card equipped PC. He also stated no laptops have ever been stolen from a room, but I'm bringing a security cable anyway.

Now I have priced used 400mhz laptops at Second Source for $400 and a used 900mhz laptop for $799.

With rebates I can get a new laptop with XP for $999-1099! Of course, if I can get a $300 or less laptop, I won't worry about leaving it in the room as much.

I was considering spending $300 and buying the following laptop and upping the memory and installing an ethernet card. What do you think? I have licenses for Windows 95 and Windows 98. I can borrow a CD-ROM for Dell.

The main use of this PC would be Internet and word processing. I would install Winamp, AOL chat, and possibly Kazaa. It might not have enough RAM to support a virus scanner, but I would load ZoneAlarm.

An additional use would be to upload digital pictures. I only need enough of a battery for a powerup at the airport for security, although I'm sure I could find a plug with only a minor hassle.

So, $300-$400 for 300 mhz mail-order used or $999 for a new 1.8 ghz model with XP and ethernet.

Any ideas?

It's been a long time since I used a 300 mHz computer, but if I recall correctly, that's a bit underpowered for playing MP3's. It'll probably peg your CPU utilization near 100% the whole time you're using it.

I'd definitely go for the $999 model with 1.8 GHz. Or the 900 mHz for $799 should do you fine. Either of these prolly already includes an ethernet port so you wouldn't have to buy one.

I have a Dell Latitude CPia, 366 PII with 128 Mb, and 12 Gig HD. I paid $400 for it a year ago. It works fine for what you're describing. I installed Open Office, Winamp, the Gimp, and a few MP3 ripping utilites. I always have Winamp running, and have had Open Office running at the same time with no problems.

The real key is keep things from running at startup. There's a lot of crap that sneaks in. Real Player, MS Office, and Quicktime are particular offenders.

[mostly off-topic]

Key West? It's definitely on my list of places to see before I die. Any advice on where you did you travel booking, or how you're getting there?

Please post a trip summary when you get back. I'd love to read more about it.

Will do. I got one USAir ticket free for being bumped on a business trip. I got the second one free on frequent flier miles. I only had to pay for two round trip to Ft Lauderdale, about $400 for the two, which means it averages out to $100 per person round trip for the four of us. The bad news was that because of restrictions on the free tickets I had to adjust my schedule. I never intended to take the smaller plane direct to Key West anyway, but would have preferred flying into Miami and drive the 4 hours to Key West across the causeway, which I hear is beautiful.

Instead it is about a 6 hour drive from Ft Lauderdale to Key West, which is about the same as Philadelphia to Boston. I will be putting my son's drivers license to use and making frequent stops.

One of many things I like about AirTran over USAir is the ability to cheaply fly round trip from different airports.

Still, it should be a lot of fun.

I just got an offer from a used PC dealer for a 300+ 128MB PC with CDROM and ethernet for $360 shipped. Its tempting.

Rich, a friend of mine just got back from the Keys two weeks ago.
He flew into Lauderdale instead of Miami. He said it was orders of magnitude easier. Security is pretty tight at Miami because of all the flights coming from South America and the Islands and that's a big hassle.
Also Lauderdale is only about 30 miles from Miami by Interstate so I don't think you've got acurate travel times. As a matter of fact I don't think it will take more than 4 hours from Lauderdale excluding pee stops. Have a good trip.

Thanks for the heads up. I will probably be making a few stops to stock up with water bottles, snacks, etc. One good thing about Florida is that you can pick up sunglasses and sunscreen cheap.

I'm going to try to set a leisurely pace down. I am bringing my new digital camera and photo stitching software, so if I get a laptop and connection expect some panoramic views from Florida.

300Mhz Laptop
 

I run one of these.

My secondary laptop is a IBM Thinkpad 770X, PII-300 with 320MB RAM and an 8.1GB HD with DVD-ROM.

It has MPEG decoders in hardware, so Fight Club's intro comes out very slick on DVD. I use the Fight Club introduction to test DVD players, since it is the most demanding intro I have seen.

Currently I am running Windows 2000 Professional, Service Pack 3 on it. Up until I got my current ThinkPad, I used this laptop as a daily work machine for database development. I even ran XP Pro on it for a while.

It worked excellently, due to the 320MB RAM. I imagine that Windows 98 would work just as well.

Mitch