I need some advise regarding the purchase of a PC laptop for my daughter who will be a college freshman in the fall. I know nothing of the Dark Side...so I need specific names and models to consider. Thanks...and I hope my fellow MacMavens will not hold this against me...:-)
Our family (my wife and mother-in-law) has had 3 Toshibas which seem to be really rugged. My wife had a Pentium-100 (it still works and I use it some in my business, after 8 years) and my mother-in-law had a Pentium-125 for 6 years before upgrading to a newer Toshiba, a Pentium4, 8 months ago.
Models don't really matter, but in my opinion it should be a Pentium processor, it should have WindowsXPPro if possible, it should have a DVD-recorder (these devices also handle cd-r and cd-rw media easily), and it should have 512MB ram at a minimum and if possible boost it to 1GB ram. It should also have at least a 60GB hard drive, and many models come with 80GB and nowadays even 100GB drives. It should have a 15" screen at a minimum. It should have built-in wireless networking and should also have a 10/100 networking port for those places where she'll need to be tethered to the network. The USB ports should be USB2. It most likely won't have a floppy drive, so consider buying her a USB thumb-drive for transporting files when she doesn't need her notebook with her or she can't bring it.
Buy the extended warranty plan and be sure to list it on your homeowner's insurance policy, paying extra if you need a specific computer floater added, since college kids and pranks seem to go hand in hand, to say nothing of the rough handling it might receive while traveling between the dorm and the classrooms or the library.
Buy her a small digital camera as well, so she can take pictures of pages from reference works when she needs, rather than paying 25-cents-a-page to make a photocopy.
Since you called it the "Dark Side" it's obvious you really do know nothing of it, as you admitted. It's not all that Dark, (with the help I have to offer the friends I know who own Macs, it's also true that isn't all that much of a "Light Side") and it's a hell of a lot cheaper and works just as well and can do everything your more expensive Mac can do except make Steve Jobs richer. :-)
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
