More help picking something again

[Jaegar]

It's a slippery slope eh?

I'm realizing that I suck at organization and note taking. Unfortunately, being bad at those things is very bad in college and also when you're trying to create entire worlds and type/write them up. My paper filing system is especially atrocious and having my own PC to move my old files to and organize files between two OSed and junk has made me realize I need to pick a medium. I'm muuuuuch better with digital so I should probably scrap paper notes... but the flaw in my plan is that I have no laptop D=

See where this is going? Through the magic of rationalizing that it's going to be very helpful with school I've instantaneously acquired a budget to get whatever's necessary. My problem is that after college the money would be mine anyway so I really don't want to spend much at all. I've been looking at online retailers and plan to check out the local computer stores tomorrow (I'm a lucky man if I find anything suitably cheap there though ._. ) I'm not sure what'll be the best bang for my buck though and it's really hard to figure it out. Here's what I need

Requirements
Wireless internet: I <3 the internet and cannot live w/o it. It's freaking useful.
Good battery life: </3 hauling around an adapter to use it. I need to be able to use it intermittently most of the day ideally.

Unnecessary
Large screen: I like my screen space, but in this case I prefer portability and battery life
Huge HD: see above, replacing screen with storage. I also don't need another HD to pack with extra anime (too much already)
High powered Processor/Graphics: It's for word processing, web browsing, and similar stuff.
OS: If it's XP I'll keep it, if it's Vista I'll replace it. No biggie.

I'm looking at the Eee PC and I found some dirt cheap deal on Newegg that I'm not sure if I should bite at. The only thing keeping me away is the hope I can find something cheaper than a new PC/itty bitty screen (in the case of the Eee) and the whole thing seeming a little too good to be true (the other one, anyone ever heard of Everex?).

[Yoon]

The Everex laptop that you linked to seems to have been deactivated, but it should be avoided anyway. The VIA C7-M 1.5 GHz CPU runs horribly slow and has the performance equivalent to a eight year old 1.0-1.2 GHz Pentium III CPU.

The Asus EeePC's have been popular recently, as they are extremely portable laptops for affordable prices. From a lot of reviews, the battery life on the EeePC seems to be pretty good, thanks to the low power Intel Atom CPU and the solid-state drive it uses. However, the EeePC's performance leaves a lot to be desired, as it really is only good for basic tasks such as word processing, Internet browsing and e-mail; you can forget gaming or media encoding on the EeePC.

As for the OS, the cheaper EeePCs come with Linux variant OS, but you can load a Windows OS by using a bootable USB. On a low performance system like the EeePC, I would suggest getting XP over Vista, as XP runs better on systems with a low amount of performance/RAM.

The EeePC loses the price advantages once you go past the $500 mark, as you can get significantly more powerful laptops such as the TOSHIBA Satellite A205-S5871 and the Acer Extensa EX5620-4020 NoteBook for $549 USD. They are much larger than the EeePC, but it's something consider if your budget is around that price range.

[Jaegar]

Thanks for the input, that's what I was seeing with my research as well. I checked every store in town and found a Compaq on clearance at Staples (for some reason I have good luck with their clearance items, that's also where I got my desk.) I did some more quick research, determined that it did what I wanted at I price I could pay then went back and bought the last one.

To be exact it's a Compaq Presario F761 [link for specs). I got it for waaaaay less than what's listed there. The processor is more than I was hoping for but I'm worried about the battery life and the OS. I should be fine if I do some optimization for the battery based on all the guides I can find. I'm wondering if I should even bother starting up Vista on this though. 1 GB memory for Vista? Isn't that rather low? Meh, I'm off to open it up and install Ubuntu.

[Yoon]

That Compaq Presario F761 has some nice specs. It's got a A64 X2 dual-core CPU, large 160 GB hard drive, and the integrated nVIDIA GeForce 7000 graphics card is okay for some light gaming. The 1 GB of RAM would be kind of slow on Vista, but that can be easily rectified by getting one of the cheaper 2 GB DDR2 SODIMM laptop modules, like the $34.99 G.Skill 2 GB DDR2 667 SODIMM at Newegg.com and installing it in the Compaq Presario. Vista runs a lot better with 2 GB RAM or higher.

You also might want to check out the Dell Outlet store, as they've got some great deals on Dell laptops. A lot of the laptops listed there are laptops that were either: previously ordered, but order canceled at the last minute; refurbished laptops; cosmetic details (a scratch or dent on the case somewhere).

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSale ... l=en&s=dfh

I've ordered quite a few desktops and laptops from Dell Outlet for the company that I work at and nearly all of them have worked well out of the box (only 1 was problematic and was shipped back). If you do find a problem with the laptop/desktop, you can ship it back immediately and get a full refund. The basic warranty is 1-year, but you can get a longer warranty at a higher price. Be warned though, a lot of the listings can disappear fast, since a lot of people tend to swarm Dell Outlet looking for some great deals.

[Jaegar]

Cool, another spot to look for cheap PCs. Oddly enough I see no laptops for less that what I paid (one for the same price but lower specs). Like I said, Staples clearance items seem to love me.

Yeah, I tried to run Vista long enough to make some recovery disks (it came with no software or disks of any kind in the box). There was 30 GB worth of something on the HD and the HP bloatware was actually popping up advertisements or something O.o The menus had load times and the mouse over buttons were noticeably slow to respond. I don't feel like getting another part to eat power just so I can run the included OS. In short it wanted 16 CDs to make the backup disks (only 2 disks if I use dual layer DVDs which I don't have >.<) so I gave up on that and just shoved Vista in a tiny partition in the corner and installed Ubuntu (which seems to run just like my desktop including more wifi irritation, but I can fix that).