I need a laptop

[Mag-Mower]

I need a laptop for when I go off to college. Im taking a Business Administration course through Algonquin College in Ottawa, and they say that it is mandatory that I have a laptop for the course. Im looking to spend around the $800/900 area. It should have vista, and Office 2007. Any suggestions on a good system?

[Rbstr]

for a laptop on the cheap Dell is a good bet.

EDIT: Looking around, the "vostro" notebooks they have under the small business section are really cheap and decent performers.

[Hamma]

Hey I've been to that campus before :D

[Infernus]

If you want a notebook with vista, dell is not the way to go.

I can promise you that.

[Giovanni]

Dell/HP is pretty much all I can see. Algonquin is the best at what they do, making you spend alot of money. Of course it'll probably be an easier course then in a regular college if it's even offered in one.

I know cit� coll�giale (wich is basicly the same thing) offered a police class. Same thing as other classes except the certificate you got wasn't valid in quebec and the class cost twice if not ten times more then regular college.

The whole "Come play in our sand, it's the same as the other sandbox except ours cost twice as much and it's private!" kinda thing....

Good luck in your studies though! I truly wish you the best of luck.

[Mag-Mower]

Gio, Im confused by your post. Business Admin is offered at almost any college in canada, and the expenses arent that ridiculous, I dont think. They are just a normal college, nothing private or special about it. But I didnt really follow what you were talking about, so I could be wrong. Anyways, I might be able to get a bit more cash, so im looking at something around $1250 now.

[firecrackerNC]

Id go with Dell, they have some nice Laptops for decent price. Their computers I dont suggest tho.

[Giovanni]

Don't mind me I'm drunk about 75% of the time... all I'm saying is private colleges charge way more then normal ones for the same program.

[Mag-Mower]

Algonquin isnt private, but I forgive you.

[Giovanni]

It's not a government institution. It's privately owned thus the private part.

[Hamma]

Gio, Im confused by your post. Business Admin is offered at almost any college in canada, and the expenses arent that ridiculous, I dont think. They are just a normal college, nothing private or special about it. But I didnt really follow what you were talking about, so I could be wrong. Anyways, I might be able to get a bit more cash, so im looking at something around $1250 now.

I think Gio just got on his soapbox to give a rant on something that happened to him :lol:

[Giovanni]

Nah it's just that those colleges frustrate me. It's the reason why our education system is weird in canada and our fees for university and college are getting raised because the government cuts back on their budget... ANYWAYS! :P

[I Hate Pants]

I spent just over $1200 dollars (Canadian) on my Lenovo ThinkPad and it's doing well for me so far.

Half my class and I play Halo during breaks and between classes. We're hopefully gonna have a non-steam version of TF2 soon because our school has Steam blocked.

Oh and learn from my mistake. Order your laptop ASAP. I ordered mine less than 2 weeks before classes started and I didn't get mine until the third week of school, and since im in a programming/Linux course (fuckin hate Linux) I fell pretty far behind. Order your laptop at least month before school.

[Mag-Mower]

How does intels GMA 3100 hold up against a Radeon X300SE Hyper Memory? The radeon is what I have in my computer now...

[Rbstr]

Integrated sucks if you plan to do any gaming.

You need at least low end dedicated graphics.

[Infernus]

Integrated sucks

'nuff said.

You see when your system does all of the work that would normally be assigned to a GPU, apparently you have less cycles dedicated to other calculations.

Or, instead of buying a video card, you can do all of the vector math by hand and input it into your computer - that would still probably work better then integrated.

[Rbstr]

There is a time and place for integrated.
If your not planning on doing graphics-accelerated type things(games, rendering ect.) with the notebook integrated will suit you fine.

You'll get better battery life and it will be cheaper or smaller.

[Baneblade]

If you get an actual graphics component integrated (as in not that Intel Extremely Poor Graphics shit) into the board, it will just share memory and suck battery life down so fast you will call your notebook a vampire, but it will perform relatively nicely other than that.

[Rbstr]

sobe - have a graphics chip outside of the south bridge is called having discrete graphics; generaly made by AMD or nVidia.
"Integrated" is reserved for systems that are integrated with the south bridge.

Muddying the words is only ever going to confuse people.

Aside from that, having a graphics chip doesn't necessarily mean your battery life is going to suck. If I'm not doing gaming I can get 2hrs. and 30min. with wifi on. That's quite decent.