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Pete - he said he's restricted to Best Buy due to credit card benefits. That said, waiting is cool - there are tons of "back to school" sales in late July/early August and some even give combo packages for those promotions (laptop+printer or laptop+MP3player, etc).
Oh - one more thing: 2 hours claimed battery life generally works out to be roughly 1.25-1.5 hour actual battery life .. which turns into 30 minutes actual battery life after a year of steady use. Trust me on that - my old Toshiba A65 had the same advertised, and my PowerBook had five hours claimed which today (almost four years later) is roughly 45 minutes to an hour.
So if you want to use it in classes a few years from now, either buy a laptop with better original battery life (best is to find a laptop with extended battery or dual battery capabilities, like the Lenovo Thinkpad models or my old Sony Vaio) or be prepared to replace the battery by then.
Last edited by Rouar; 07/02/06 03:21 AM.
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Originally posted by Rouar:
Pete - he said he's restricted to Best Buy due to credit card benefits.
I noticed that, but in reality 1 year "no interest" (which is a popular deceptive tactic, but that is another story) is fairly common among retailers. I know Circuit City was running 18 months "no interest" and I believe CompUSA has simimar deals (although she would have to get an account with them). I tend to imagine that if you could get a similar computer for say $150-200 less going through a different retailer that might outweigh the "no interest" financing.
"Bros before Hoes" <-- More men need this mentality.
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It's not deceptive... it's a great way to use their money while gaining interest on yours.
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Rex: 1988 Mazda RX-7 Vert, Harbor Blue.
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my last laptop i made sure was a Centrino for this very same purpose. my classes averaged about 20 people using laptops and people would get there extra early to sit near the outlets (some people brought power strips). our classrooms had about 6 outlets which to me is a lot for a classroom. anyways, my Centrino would barely make it through the four hours of class, when i first got it. but sometimes class would run over, and id be sitting there sweating, wondering if my computer would shut off before we were done. so if you think the Celery laptop will last two hours, just remember that. nothing like having your laptop shut off while taking important notes or having to get up in class and run with it to the nearest outlet. the library, and other spots, were even worse when we had to do group work. having battery life really comes in handy. if you can find any laptop in your price range that uses two batteries, go for it. 5lbs is definitely cool though. it sucks having to carry around books and a heavy ass laptop, especially if you have to walk far!  if you do, invest in a bag on wheels.
Originally posted by Tourgasm:
Sometimes you can mess up a word so bad that spell check doens't know what the hell you're talking about.
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thats the thing, Im going to eastern next semester, I know battery life is important, and thats why performance really isnt to me, I mean yes I love a fast computer as much as I love a fast car... but this is a laptop we are talking about, I have my desktop to be built for speed... Oh and get this, the laptop I was looking at just went on sale for 499.... Now im seriously thinking about it... My only real concerns for it is the memory and the battery life, which I can get a 512 stick of memory for nothing almost... and If the battery that comes in this laptop is the 4 cell, then I can upgrade to an 8 cell and double my battery life... which would well be worth it... BTW the 2 hours is not claimed, I witnessed it while using the computer, I did all of my daily computing on it with the power cable unplugged and it said "Time Remaining: 99% 2:10 hours"
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Originally posted by AliasJerkââ??¢:
"Time Remaining: 99% 2:10 hours"
Those "indicators" are often inaccurate. My laptop these days shuts off when the indicator says 57% remaining (the indicator seems to think I'm good for 3.5 hours when on a full charge too). I'd look at the claimed battery life and then round it down a bit. FWIW.
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Originally posted by Rouar:
Originally posted by AliasJerkââ??¢:
"Time Remaining: 99% 2:10 hours"
Those "indicators" are often inaccurate. My laptop these days shuts off when the indicator says 57% remaining (the indicator seems to think I'm good for 3.5 hours when on a full charge too). I'd look at the claimed battery life and then round it down a bit. FWIW.
how old is your battery though? I mean, a battery really only lives a good solid year. Then it wont hold much more then an hour charge.
98 Corolla LE 1.8L DOHC 1ZZFE
TEIN H.Tech Springs
Tokico HP series Struts
Short ram air intake
Tsudo Axel Back Exhaust
... if a jelly fish stung me.. would you pee on the wound?
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Originally posted by ZoomZoom Diva:
It's not deceptive... it's a great way to use their money while gaining interest on yours.
It's deceptive in the sense that they use it as a tactic to get customers to spend more (money they don't have) while realizing that most of theses customers won't have it paid off by the end of the interest-free period, and will take a huge hit in their rediculous interest rates.
Back on topic, there are some other decent deals this week. Check out Office Depot and Circuit City if you have them near you, here's what I found.
Office Depot:
Toshiba Celeron M 390
-512 RAM
-80 Gig
-CD-RW/DVD-ROM
-802.11g
-15.4" Widescreen
$679-$200MIR=$479
Compaq Persario
-AMD Turion 64 ML-34
-512 RAM
-Dual-layer DVD burner
-802.11g
-14" widescreen
-80 Gig HD
$779-$230MIR=$549
Circuit City
Toshiba Celeron M 390
-DVD Burner
-512 RAM
-80 Gig HD
-802.11g
-15'4" widescreen
$699-$150MIR=$549
Acer Celeron M 370
-DVD-ROM/CD-RW
-256MB RAM
-40gig HD
-802.11g
-14'1" widescreen
$549-$150MIR=$399
Circuit City is running "no interest" until 2008 too.
I think Compusa has some good deals, but we didn't get their ad.
"Bros before Hoes" <-- More men need this mentality.
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Originally posted by AliasJerkââ??¢:
Originally posted by Rouar:
Originally posted by AliasJerkââ??¢:
"Time Remaining: 99% 2:10 hours"
Those "indicators" are often inaccurate. My laptop these days shuts off when the indicator says 57% remaining (the indicator seems to think I'm good for 3.5 hours when on a full charge too). I'd look at the claimed battery life and then round it down a bit. FWIW.
how old is your battery though? I mean, a battery really only lives a good solid year. Then it wont hold much more then an hour charge.
See above post:
Originally posted by Rouar:
my PowerBook had five hours claimed which today (almost four years later) is roughly 45 minutes to an hour.
Battery indicator never ran right to begin with - sometimes overestimated and other times it would indicate 0% for 20 minutes before dying. Goes the same for my old Vaio and Toshiba as well (and yes they are my travel buddies; generally run on battery more often than on A/C).
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Ok, if you're dead set on that 1.5GHz Celeron, look to see what chipset it has...
If it's got the Intel 915, you can buy a 400MHz FSB Pentium M (make sure it's one of these: 715/725/735/745) and pinmod that sucker to run a lot faster... pretty much you're going to trick the computer to run the 400MHz processor in 533MHz FSB, effectively overclocking it.
Like I took out my Pentium 730 (1.6GHz, 533MHz FSB), threw in a 725 (1.6GHz, 400MHz FSB), and pinmodded that (to trick it into running at 533MHz), which netted me a 25% gain in clock speed. Ended up getting 2.13GHz without a significant decrease in battery life.
Oh, and the "Centrino" thing... A "Centrino" is just a word Intel used if the computer houses an Intel chipset, Intel processor, and Intel wireless card. Say your laptop's manufacturer put in a FAR superior wireless card (i.e. an Atheros one)... the laptop is no longer "Centrino."
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