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Sony laptops?
"Jim" wrote in message ... wrote in message ... On Aug 2, 10:30 pm, "Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq." wrote: John H. wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 17:14:41 -0400, "D.Duck" wrote: "John H." wrote in message . .. Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? Unless she likes laptop keyboards and pointing devices I would suggest an external keyboard and mouse, either USB or wireless if you don't mind fooling with batteries. I don't have a wireless keyboard but have wireless mice on two computers. The one that is used extensively gets 2~3 months from a set of quality alkaline batteries. She's never had a laptop, and neither have I. We'll see how she does with the built in stuff. I'd have to have the external mouse, as I can't stand that rubbing the pad stuff. The keyboard and mouse just plug in via USB cables. While a 16" wide screen, you don't really need it, but if you want you can also use a larger monitor and use the laptop as a CPU when she is at her desk. I am a few years away from buying a new computer, but I am really leaning towards buying a Mac and MacPro laptop. My son and my youngest girl will buy a Mac Laptop in the next month. You can get a 10% discount and a Ipod Touch for any students or teachers, so your wife would qualify. I think they are both leaning towards the 13" laptop to make it easy to carry, and then use a larger monitor and keyboard in their dorm. Vista is so awful that I cannot reccomend any machine with it. The new ASUS EE 9" has a larger keyboard and screen and comes with Windows XP or the Linux OS of the older 7" EE. My 7' EE is the best computer I have ever seen for travel. The various utilities seem to be compatible with most things and it is cheap (a little over $400 including a 16 GB SD card). Take a look at it. It has been so simple to use that it amazes me when I go back to a Vista machine. It is also small compared to these monster so-called laptops other people use and it boots up in 25 seconds compared to over 4 minutes for a Vista machine. Shut down is less than 12 seconds.. I picked up an Asus eee Surf 2G the other day. Out of the box, it was easy to connect to the wireless internet. It came with Open Office which seems to be quite robust. Most of my data files are in Microsoft Works and open office wouldn't recognize them without first converting them to Microsoft Office formats. File Manager is similar to XPs. It had a light on features media player. I couldn't find a driver for my printer but my wife's installed easily. There were some quirky issues with the screen, and touch pad sensitivity, particularly with tapping. There was no mail/news client so I tried to download and install Thunderbird. I didn't have any luck with that, even following various installation methods I found on line. The Linux distribution is a highly customized version of Xantros and I think Asus messed with it to make it difficult or impossible to install software. That's not good fore someone who is a complete newbie to Linux and all of the terminology used in linux is completely foreign to me. I couldn't even reset the computer to out of box state as the manual describes. I am going to return this thing on my way home from camping today. My question is. Do you think the eee900 is more user friendly in terms of ability to customize and add software? Is the touch pad any better than on the 7" version? I need an excuse to try the 9in Asus but my intuition tells me that I won't be happy with it. I know it can come with XP and that will eliminate familiarity issues but I would like to try out linux and break my dependency on Mickysoft. OpenOffice is grossly under rated. I too recommend it for everyone. http://www.openoffice.org/ For those that don't know where to get it. |
Sony laptops?
On Aug 3, 10:15*am, John H. wrote:
On Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:05:50 GMT, "Canuck57" wrote: "John H." wrote in message .. . Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? I have had 3 Sony systems 2 of which I still have, 2 desktops and 1 laptop. Liked them all. *But it likely comes with Vista and not all people are happy with Vista. *The only problem I had with any of them is the laptop battery started to loose it's mojo in about 2 years. *But this is a common problem with PC laptops. It comes with 3GB, there is no need to add RAM to it if you are using Vista 32 bit, which it likely is. *If it is, Vista can't use much more than 3GB without being upgraded to Vista 64 bit which will add to you cost and setup time. For domestic users I never recommend "upgrading" anything else but disk storage (if needed) as it will be a waste if not done right. *Too many pitfalls and issues, incompatible memory modules, drivers or perhaps you need a $250 upgrade to Vista 64 and all of it's putzing around. *Best to buy it as you will use it. *For PCs with 3GB is a good amount for Vista provided usage is typical home stuff. That being said, if it is for home personal use you should really spend some few hours going into Best Buy and look/play seriously with a MacBook series option. *Most who buy those for home and personal use never come back to the PC world. I buy PCs, only because I need PCs for work. *When I retire for home use, I will dump them and get a MacBook Pro like machine in a heart beat. Comparing to cars, Sony laptops are like a upscale Taurus; compared to a MacBookPro is like a Mercedes. On the low end for kids, seriously look at the EeePCs and don't rule out using the OEM Linux with them. Thanks for the input. But, it's now a done deal. We went back last night and my wife made her choice. This one:http://tinyurl.com/6445y6- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Good choice. It should do everything you need it to do.. |
Sony laptops?
"John H." wrote in message ... On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:30:29 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq." wrote: John H. wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 17:14:41 -0400, "D.Duck" wrote: "John H." wrote in message ... Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? Unless she likes laptop keyboards and pointing devices I would suggest an external keyboard and mouse, either USB or wireless if you don't mind fooling with batteries. I don't have a wireless keyboard but have wireless mice on two computers. The one that is used extensively gets 2~3 months from a set of quality alkaline batteries. She's never had a laptop, and neither have I. We'll see how she does with the built in stuff. I'd have to have the external mouse, as I can't stand that rubbing the pad stuff. The keyboard and mouse just plug in via USB cables. While a 16" wide screen, you don't really need it, but if you want you can also use a larger monitor and use the laptop as a CPU when she is at her desk. I am a few years away from buying a new computer, but I am really leaning towards buying a Mac and MacPro laptop. My son and my youngest girl will buy a Mac Laptop in the next month. You can get a 10% discount and a Ipod Touch for any students or teachers, so your wife would qualify. I think they are both leaning towards the 13" laptop to make it easy to carry, and then use a larger monitor and keyboard in their dorm. My wife's never taught, but she doesn't want an Apple. We put the money on the Sony last night, before the sale went off. So she'll learn to be happy with what she's got. Right now she thinks it's a pretty cool birthday present. The big disadvantage to the whole thing is Vista. I saw a little demonstrated by the guy in the store, but I wasn't too impressed. Very flashy though. New users to Vista generally fair better than seasoned users as many of Vista's defects you would not know without previous experience with at least XP. For example, record a 4GB video file and copy it around in XP goes about 6-10 times faster than Vista. But never having done that on a computer, you are more likely to find 20 minute copies of big files acceptable not knowing XP can do in 2m30s and Linux in under 2m. Mac, I don't know but never heard of copy speed complaints. Similarly with Vista premium on a high speed home network. |
Sony laptops?
On Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:27:44 GMT, "Canuck57"
wrote: "John H." wrote in message .. . On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:30:29 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq." wrote: John H. wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 17:14:41 -0400, "D.Duck" wrote: "John H." wrote in message ... Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? Unless she likes laptop keyboards and pointing devices I would suggest an external keyboard and mouse, either USB or wireless if you don't mind fooling with batteries. I don't have a wireless keyboard but have wireless mice on two computers. The one that is used extensively gets 2~3 months from a set of quality alkaline batteries. She's never had a laptop, and neither have I. We'll see how she does with the built in stuff. I'd have to have the external mouse, as I can't stand that rubbing the pad stuff. The keyboard and mouse just plug in via USB cables. While a 16" wide screen, you don't really need it, but if you want you can also use a larger monitor and use the laptop as a CPU when she is at her desk. I am a few years away from buying a new computer, but I am really leaning towards buying a Mac and MacPro laptop. My son and my youngest girl will buy a Mac Laptop in the next month. You can get a 10% discount and a Ipod Touch for any students or teachers, so your wife would qualify. I think they are both leaning towards the 13" laptop to make it easy to carry, and then use a larger monitor and keyboard in their dorm. My wife's never taught, but she doesn't want an Apple. We put the money on the Sony last night, before the sale went off. So she'll learn to be happy with what she's got. Right now she thinks it's a pretty cool birthday present. The big disadvantage to the whole thing is Vista. I saw a little demonstrated by the guy in the store, but I wasn't too impressed. Very flashy though. New users to Vista generally fair better than seasoned users as many of Vista's defects you would not know without previous experience with at least XP. For example, record a 4GB video file and copy it around in XP goes about 6-10 times faster than Vista. But never having done that on a computer, you are more likely to find 20 minute copies of big files acceptable not knowing XP can do in 2m30s and Linux in under 2m. Mac, I don't know but never heard of copy speed complaints. Similarly with Vista premium on a high speed home network. I'm keeping XP on the desktop, and will get XP on my next desktop, if possible. My wife will have to suffer with the Vista problems, but she may not know the difference anyway. |
Sony laptops?
John H. wrote:
On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:30:29 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq." wrote: John H. wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 17:14:41 -0400, "D.Duck" wrote: "John H." wrote in message ... Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? Unless she likes laptop keyboards and pointing devices I would suggest an external keyboard and mouse, either USB or wireless if you don't mind fooling with batteries. I don't have a wireless keyboard but have wireless mice on two computers. The one that is used extensively gets 2~3 months from a set of quality alkaline batteries. She's never had a laptop, and neither have I. We'll see how she does with the built in stuff. I'd have to have the external mouse, as I can't stand that rubbing the pad stuff. The keyboard and mouse just plug in via USB cables. While a 16" wide screen, you don't really need it, but if you want you can also use a larger monitor and use the laptop as a CPU when she is at her desk. I am a few years away from buying a new computer, but I am really leaning towards buying a Mac and MacPro laptop. My son and my youngest girl will buy a Mac Laptop in the next month. You can get a 10% discount and a Ipod Touch for any students or teachers, so your wife would qualify. I think they are both leaning towards the 13" laptop to make it easy to carry, and then use a larger monitor and keyboard in their dorm. My wife's never taught, but she doesn't want an Apple. We put the money on the Sony last night, before the sale went off. So she'll learn to be happy with what she's got. Right now she thinks it's a pretty cool birthday present. The big disadvantage to the whole thing is Vista. I saw a little demonstrated by the guy in the store, but I wasn't too impressed. Very flashy though. I always tell my wife that all purchases come on a rubber band, they can be returned if she wants. -- This NG post is a natural product. The slight variations in spelling and grammar enhance its individual character and beauty and in no way are to be considered flaws or defects |
Sony laptops?
John H. wrote in
: On Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:29:00 +0000, Larry wrote: John H. wrote in m: Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? Too much....Buy a Gateway and get more computer for half the price. Too late. What does Gateway have that's better for $500? http://www.buy.com/prod/gateway-m-67...duo-processor- t5450-3072-mb-250/q/loc/101/208033962.html $1300 computer, refurbished, for $579. This isn't a laptop, it's a mainframe in a laptop case....an amazing machine. I like refurb'd computers because their parts are already burned in. Any failures have ALREADY happened and the REFURB shop has already replaced them. They are better than new.... read the reviews....there's 57 of them at Best Buy, alone and it gets over 4 stars out of 5. Computers this fast should come with seatbelts....(c; |
Sony laptops?
"Canuck57" wrote in message news:lbjlk.54430$nD.974@pd7urf1no... "Jim" wrote in message ... wrote in message ... On Aug 2, 10:30 pm, "Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq." wrote: John H. wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 17:14:41 -0400, "D.Duck" wrote: "John H." wrote in message . .. Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? Unless she likes laptop keyboards and pointing devices I would suggest an external keyboard and mouse, either USB or wireless if you don't mind fooling with batteries. I don't have a wireless keyboard but have wireless mice on two computers. The one that is used extensively gets 2~3 months from a set of quality alkaline batteries. She's never had a laptop, and neither have I. We'll see how she does with the built in stuff. I'd have to have the external mouse, as I can't stand that rubbing the pad stuff. The keyboard and mouse just plug in via USB cables. While a 16" wide screen, you don't really need it, but if you want you can also use a larger monitor and use the laptop as a CPU when she is at her desk. I am a few years away from buying a new computer, but I am really leaning towards buying a Mac and MacPro laptop. My son and my youngest girl will buy a Mac Laptop in the next month. You can get a 10% discount and a Ipod Touch for any students or teachers, so your wife would qualify. I think they are both leaning towards the 13" laptop to make it easy to carry, and then use a larger monitor and keyboard in their dorm. Vista is so awful that I cannot reccomend any machine with it. The new ASUS EE 9" has a larger keyboard and screen and comes with Windows XP or the Linux OS of the older 7" EE. My 7' EE is the best computer I have ever seen for travel. The various utilities seem to be compatible with most things and it is cheap (a little over $400 including a 16 GB SD card). Take a look at it. It has been so simple to use that it amazes me when I go back to a Vista machine. It is also small compared to these monster so-called laptops other people use and it boots up in 25 seconds compared to over 4 minutes for a Vista machine. Shut down is less than 12 seconds.. I picked up an Asus eee Surf 2G the other day. Out of the box, it was easy to connect to the wireless internet. It came with Open Office which seems to be quite robust. Most of my data files are in Microsoft Works and open office wouldn't recognize them without first converting them to Microsoft Office formats. File Manager is similar to XPs. It had a light on features media player. I couldn't find a driver for my printer but my wife's installed easily. There were some quirky issues with the screen, and touch pad sensitivity, particularly with tapping. There was no mail/news client so I tried to download and install Thunderbird. I didn't have any luck with that, even following various installation methods I found on line. The Linux distribution is a highly customized version of Xantros and I think Asus messed with it to make it difficult or impossible to install software. That's not good fore someone who is a complete newbie to Linux and all of the terminology used in linux is completely foreign to me. I couldn't even reset the computer to out of box state as the manual describes. I am going to return this thing on my way home from camping today. My question is. Do you think the eee900 is more user friendly in terms of ability to customize and add software? Is the touch pad any better than on the 7" version? I need an excuse to try the 9in Asus but my intuition tells me that I won't be happy with it. I know it can come with XP and that will eliminate familiarity issues but I would like to try out linux and break my dependency on Mickysoft. OpenOffice is grossly under rated. I too recommend it for everyone. http://www.openoffice.org/ For those that don't know where to get it. Do you know of a good email client that incorporates a calendar that is similar to Outlook? |
Sony laptops?
"John H." wrote in message ... On Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:27:44 GMT, "Canuck57" wrote: "John H." wrote in message . .. On Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:30:29 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq." wrote: John H. wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 17:14:41 -0400, "D.Duck" wrote: "John H." wrote in message ... Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? Unless she likes laptop keyboards and pointing devices I would suggest an external keyboard and mouse, either USB or wireless if you don't mind fooling with batteries. I don't have a wireless keyboard but have wireless mice on two computers. The one that is used extensively gets 2~3 months from a set of quality alkaline batteries. She's never had a laptop, and neither have I. We'll see how she does with the built in stuff. I'd have to have the external mouse, as I can't stand that rubbing the pad stuff. The keyboard and mouse just plug in via USB cables. While a 16" wide screen, you don't really need it, but if you want you can also use a larger monitor and use the laptop as a CPU when she is at her desk. I am a few years away from buying a new computer, but I am really leaning towards buying a Mac and MacPro laptop. My son and my youngest girl will buy a Mac Laptop in the next month. You can get a 10% discount and a Ipod Touch for any students or teachers, so your wife would qualify. I think they are both leaning towards the 13" laptop to make it easy to carry, and then use a larger monitor and keyboard in their dorm. My wife's never taught, but she doesn't want an Apple. We put the money on the Sony last night, before the sale went off. So she'll learn to be happy with what she's got. Right now she thinks it's a pretty cool birthday present. The big disadvantage to the whole thing is Vista. I saw a little demonstrated by the guy in the store, but I wasn't too impressed. Very flashy though. New users to Vista generally fair better than seasoned users as many of Vista's defects you would not know without previous experience with at least XP. For example, record a 4GB video file and copy it around in XP goes about 6-10 times faster than Vista. But never having done that on a computer, you are more likely to find 20 minute copies of big files acceptable not knowing XP can do in 2m30s and Linux in under 2m. Mac, I don't know but never heard of copy speed complaints. Similarly with Vista premium on a high speed home network. I'm keeping XP on the desktop, and will get XP on my next desktop, if possible. My wife will have to suffer with the Vista problems, but she may not know the difference anyway. You might want to consider ditching Vista and installing XP on the new laptop. |
Sony laptops?
D.Duck wrote:
"Canuck57" wrote in message news:lbjlk.54430$nD.974@pd7urf1no... "Jim" wrote in message ... wrote in message ... On Aug 2, 10:30 pm, "Reginald P. Smithers III, Esq." wrote: John H. wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 17:14:41 -0400, "D.Duck" wrote: "John H." wrote in message ... Am considering this laptop for my wife's birthday in a couple weeks. Best Buy has it on sale for $999. I'll add another gig of RAM and router. http://tinyurl.com/59yons Thoughts? Unless she likes laptop keyboards and pointing devices I would suggest an external keyboard and mouse, either USB or wireless if you don't mind fooling with batteries. I don't have a wireless keyboard but have wireless mice on two computers. The one that is used extensively gets 2~3 months from a set of quality alkaline batteries. She's never had a laptop, and neither have I. We'll see how she does with the built in stuff. I'd have to have the external mouse, as I can't stand that rubbing the pad stuff. The keyboard and mouse just plug in via USB cables. While a 16" wide screen, you don't really need it, but if you want you can also use a larger monitor and use the laptop as a CPU when she is at her desk. I am a few years away from buying a new computer, but I am really leaning towards buying a Mac and MacPro laptop. My son and my youngest girl will buy a Mac Laptop in the next month. You can get a 10% discount and a Ipod Touch for any students or teachers, so your wife would qualify. I think they are both leaning towards the 13" laptop to make it easy to carry, and then use a larger monitor and keyboard in their dorm. Vista is so awful that I cannot reccomend any machine with it. The new ASUS EE 9" has a larger keyboard and screen and comes with Windows XP or the Linux OS of the older 7" EE. My 7' EE is the best computer I have ever seen for travel. The various utilities seem to be compatible with most things and it is cheap (a little over $400 including a 16 GB SD card). Take a look at it. It has been so simple to use that it amazes me when I go back to a Vista machine. It is also small compared to these monster so-called laptops other people use and it boots up in 25 seconds compared to over 4 minutes for a Vista machine. Shut down is less than 12 seconds.. I picked up an Asus eee Surf 2G the other day. Out of the box, it was easy to connect to the wireless internet. It came with Open Office which seems to be quite robust. Most of my data files are in Microsoft Works and open office wouldn't recognize them without first converting them to Microsoft Office formats. File Manager is similar to XPs. It had a light on features media player. I couldn't find a driver for my printer but my wife's installed easily. There were some quirky issues with the screen, and touch pad sensitivity, particularly with tapping. There was no mail/news client so I tried to download and install Thunderbird. I didn't have any luck with that, even following various installation methods I found on line. The Linux distribution is a highly customized version of Xantros and I think Asus messed with it to make it difficult or impossible to install software. That's not good fore someone who is a complete newbie to Linux and all of the terminology used in linux is completely foreign to me. I couldn't even reset the computer to out of box state as the manual describes. I am going to return this thing on my way home from camping today. My question is. Do you think the eee900 is more user friendly in terms of ability to customize and add software? Is the touch pad any better than on the 7" version? I need an excuse to try the 9in Asus but my intuition tells me that I won't be happy with it. I know it can come with XP and that will eliminate familiarity issues but I would like to try out linux and break my dependency on Mickysoft. OpenOffice is grossly under rated. I too recommend it for everyone. http://www.openoffice.org/ For those that don't know where to get it. Do you know of a good email client that incorporates a calendar that is similar to Outlook? They are working on Thunderbird 3 which be both a calendar and email product. From Mozilla's web site Thunderbird 3 will include calendaring, better search, and better overall user experience, much like Firefox 3. We’re hoping for a release in late 2008 -- the exact timing will depend on who joins this collective effort. -- This NG post is a natural product. The slight variations in spelling and grammar enhance its individual character and beauty and in no way are to be considered flaws or defects |
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