Going to buy a laptop today....

[moregrip]

I'm headed to the military exchange as they offer no tax and the same discounts as electronic stores.

any suggestions? I'm looking at AMD Athlon or Intel P4.

not many laptops come with serial ports these days

[Magic_Chicken]

I personally hate AMD, never had one that was worth it's weight in *censored*. Intel P4 all the way.

[arthansen]

I agree, P4!

[moregrip]

ah man, the sale doesn't start till Sept 4, labor day weekend, what a buzzkill.

Anyway, the have a 3GHZ, P4, 60gig, 512 memory, 17" widescreen, full keyboard, 800mhz FSB, HyperThreading, wireless, for 1499 no tax.

What do you think?

[Magic_Chicken]

I think that is an insane deal. If I had the money I'd be all over it. What brand is it?

What branch of military?

[moregrip]

I think that is an insane deal. If I had the money I'd be all over it. What brand is it?

What branch of military?

I'm USN (8yrs).

It's a HP, seems to be pretty sturdy too.

I've been waiting to buy one for about a month, what's another week :-[

[moregrip]

Oh, Is there any particular advantage to running a 17" widescreen display when viewing the scanner or other data?

[Magic_Chicken]

Wider screen = more room to view everything. I have a hard time squeezing all my views on my screen.

I'm USNR now, was active duty in the mid 90's. What's your rate?

[moregrip]

OS (Operations Specialist), E-6.

I was originally going to go with a smaller and less $$ model but I believe the larger sceen would be of some benifit. Only thing is, I'll have to buy a serial port PC card, any idea who makes the best ones?

This will be a nice upgrade for me, coming from an iMac 400mhz G3.

[arthansen]

Check out this USB to Serial converter from CompUSA.

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...amp;pfp=SEARCH

[Magic_Chicken]

Going from a Mac to a PC is always a good upgrade. ;D

I'm an IT3 now that I'm reaffiliated, was a deck seaman back when I was active.

[chicane]

There is nothing wrong with AMD....it's just that some dont know what they are doing with the hardware they have. It has to do with the other related hardware that is connected to it. As a hardware engineer myself, it all comes down to weather or not you have happy parts. The new laptop is an Intel, but my desktop is an AMD with the "thru-put" that Intel could only dream of......but like I said, it comes down to the integration of all hardware components. It is simple architecture and how you match it all up.

I have just ordered a new lap for the shop:

HP Pavillion ZX series Notebook
Win XP Pro
3.20 P4 w/HT (800 FSB)
15.4 WSXGA
128MB 9600 Video
1.0 GB DDR
80 GB 7200 RPM hard drive **
DVD/CD/RW
54g(TM) 802.11b/g WLAN w/ 125HSM/SpeedBooster
Built in 3.5" floppy
HP xc1000 Notebook All-in-One Media Cable

$1842.99 no tax

For $240.00 more......and you get near twice the previously stated laptop from the above post.

It may seem a little overkill, but I am running 34 channels of Data acquisition on this laptop (in a product development chassis) but I am planning on the purchase of VCM Pro for the shop. I am also running the laptop as my music source......so the computing requirements are a little more strenous than most users need. But it is a great price, HP direct.

Hey at least if the girlie gets board, she can watch a DVD during the drive..... or I can check my e-mail in-route.

[moregrip]

Going from a Mac to a PC is always a good upgrade. ;D

I'm an IT3 now that I'm reaffiliated, was a deck seaman back when I was active.

Excellent choice, IT = .

yeah, I tried the Mac thing, not very compatible for the things I do.