LAPTOP FORUM

Hi,

A friend is looking to buy a laptop and asked me for advice.
Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about laptops so maybe someone
here might be able to help.

Essentials...:
PC based (ie not Apple)
Running Windows XP or later
USB ports (at least 2)
Serial port
A touch pad controller (as opposed to a little stick controller -
which can be quite slow and fiddly to use)
As light as possible - a sub-notebook rather than a laptop would be
ideal (I mean a thin, slightly smaller and lighter style of laptop,
rather than a mini machine of the size of the old Psions).
Rugged/all environment opperation
New enough for us to obtain a second battery for

Would be nice...:
Recordable CD/DVD drive
built-in Bluetooth
Very long battery life

Any recommendations?
Any models/makes to avoid?


Thanks!

Kit

kit wrote in message
news:280320061143513800%kitzyme@yahoo.com...

I use a lightweight Dell laptop for work which is quite good. Take a look on
their website.

Martin

On 2006-03-28, kit wrote:

Rugged/all environment may conflict with lightweight - and Serial
sockets are rare these days (but USB-to-Serial adaptors are available).

Panasonic and Toshiba both make Toughbooks, and some are advertised as
used or reconditioned in eg Micro Mart magazine. I have never used
one so I cant comment on performance or portability.

I have a Toshiba Libretto which is rather smaller than a sub-notebook
but bigger than a Psion; the keyboard is challenging to type on but quite
useable, and it came with Windows XP-SP2 installed - but I find the 7
display is very difficult to use with Windows (Mandriva Linux is easily
configured to work well on such a small screen though). That machine is
certainly light-weight, and seems to be pretty tough for a laptop (already
been dropped at least once with no apparent impairment), and the battery
life is quite good (more than 3 hours easily). But the pointing device is
the sort of stick you dont want, and there is no Serial socket. It
also seems to have been discontinued in this country and there arent
many about.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

kit wrote:

This is going to be your main limiting factor.
You can get USB to serial adaptors for under a tenner , but they are not as
reliable as the real thing when used to connect to networking kit.

Ive got a Dell latitude D810 which meets all your requirements apart from
the small and light. It really is a very nice bit of kit.
The D610 and D510 are more in the right direction for you in terms of weight
and do still have the serial port.

The other manufacturer Im aware of that make laptops with COM ports are
Samsung. The P29 is a current model that will do the job but its not tiny
Im afraid
--
Alex

Piece by piece the penguins have taken my sanity
www.drzoidberg.co.uk www.ebayfaq.co.uk

kit wrote:

Lidl are offering an ultra -compact Targa 12 TFT laptop with 1280 by 800
res, 60-Gig HD, DVD and CD burner (dual-layer), 512 Nb ram, 3-yr warranty,
and a host of extras from Monday 3rd April. Ł699.00.

Worth a look.

Dennis.

Hi Kit

I have recently bought a Toshiba Portege M300. It is small, light, has a
ultra low voltage processor and does everything I expect from a portable
notebook. Highly recommended.

Regards

Ernest

In article , kit
wrote:

Hi all,

Just a quick thank you to those who responded to my request for advice
- I passed the comments on to my friend who says they are very helpful.
He is currently following up on the recommendations by getting some
more details from suppliers.

Thanks again,

Kit