Alex, what problems did you have with Presarios? I had it for under a year now with no problems.
-- Chris Hallsworth E-mail: christopherhallsworth71@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx MSN: ch9675@xxxxxxxxxxx Skype: chrishallsworth7266----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex Midence" <alex.midence@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 4:30 PM Subject: Re: Labtop
I use a ThinkPad on a daily basis at work and I have found that it is a good computer. I have no complaints on it thus far. (knock on wood) Jaws works just fine with it, no video card conflicts or anything. I'd stay away from Compaq Presarios. Nothing but trouble, in my experience. my two cents, Alex On 9/23/08, Chip Orange <Corange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:it's a line of laptops, which used to be made by IBM, and which have been sold to the company which was manufacturing them for IBM, lenovo. they have a reputation for being of the highest quality and durability, and being pricey, meant for the business world. lenovo has lowered the price, and I don't know about quality changes. they had a lot of unusual options back in the days when other laptops were out only to keep the price down, and so offered few options. I got my thinkpad for instance with a device bay on each side, and you could hot-swap various drives and other devices in and out of the bays as needed. one option I bought was a numeric keypad which popped out from the right side bay, giving you almost a full-size keyboard. I had thought at the time it would be important to my use of a screen reader. I've since learned the laptop layout, of jaws at least, is just as easy to use as the standard jaws keyboard commands. I could if I like, remove the keypad and put my floppy drive in that bay, or an additional hard drive if I had one; they made a lot of accessories. If my wife hadn't wanted a white computer, I probably would have bought a thinkpad, because of their reputation for ruggedness. One of my relatives owns a "T" series thinkpad, and it's small and light, with a nice keyboard, and nothing has broken on it for many years. it's by far their most popular line of laptops. I believe office depot carries thinkpads if you want to try and see one hands-on, but usually they were a mail-order only company. hth, Chip ------------------------------ Chip Orange Database Administrator Florida Public Service Commission Chip.Orange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (850) 413-6314 (Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.) ________________________________ From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Randy Campbell Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 9:56 AM To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Labtop Thank you for your input. That helps a lot to know and I know more now than I did. What is a thinkpad? Thanks again and have a great day. Randy ----- Original Message ----- From: Chip Orange <mailto:Corange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 8:43 AM Subject: RE: Labtop you'll get a lot of opinions, probably all of them right in some way. I just bought a Dell inspiron, one reason is that it has a relatively full keyboard, which includes alt and control keys on both sides of the space bar (not a given with laptops), and it has all six keys of the traditional six-pack grouping (some laptop keyboard require you to make these keys by pressing a special fn key plus an additional key; when you're trying to make control-shift-home, and you have to press fn+ something else to make the home key, this can become a pain). try to ask questions about the keyboard, as it will end up influencing how you feel about your purchase more than say the processor speed. In this case, the heavier the laptop the likelier you are to be pleased with the keyboard, as the larger the laptop is likely to be. I bought a 14 inch screen inspiron, that weighs about 15 pounds. I never price shopped, I was interested in many other things besides price. I simply tried to bring the price down as much as I could by choosing the cheapest screen size, which is today around 14 or 15 inches. smaller and larger screens usually cost you more. I'd recommend you get built-in bluetooth and wifi, as these don't work nearly as well if you have to use add-in devices later on. built-in from the factory means special built-in antennas as well. Try to get the cheapest graphics card and sound card you can; this is usually the one built into the motherboard. I don't believe you'l benefit from upgrading either, and even the cheapest sound cards today are multi-channel. If you ever want to do complex audio things you'll end up doing them at some home desk setup, and it won't be an inconvenience to buy an external high-quality usb sound card if you ever needed something better than you got. Complexity when upgrading the sound card sometimes causes confusion with drivers that have too many options or features which interfear with speech synthesizers. still, if sound processing is what you live for, and you know it, go ahead and get something high-end built-in. Dell offered me a choice of 3 sound cards, much different in price, but I had no real idea how they differed in capabilities. If your money is tight, you can put off buying things like a dvd burner til later, they can be moderately expensive. the exact model of what I bought is the Dell 1420 if you're interested. It's available in your choice of colors, including color matched accessories if you buy any. speaking of accessories, don't buy a leather case; they're heavier, cost more, and are no more durable than the regular ones. I'm also impressed with thinkpads (now from Lenovo). I still own one which is 5 years old. I am very unimpressed by Sony, and wouldn't recommend them. hth, Chip ------------------------------ Chip Orange Database Administrator Florida Public Service Commission Chip.Orange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (850) 413-6314 (Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.) ________________________________ From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Randy Campbell Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 11:48 PM To: jfw Subject: Labtop I am looking to buy a new labtop but I'm not sure what to buy. Could somebody on this list reccomend what they think is the best labtops out there. Thank you. Randy-- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.comJFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxTo unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfwIf you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
