OT: Laptop for all uses!

[Fairlight]

I thought that while I wait in queue for World of Warcraft to let me in,
I'd share a great laptop recommendation.  As some of you know, I've had a
Digital HiNote VP P100/48MB for years--one whose UARTS wouldn't even handle
higher than a 14.4 modem.

The other night, we got a new notebook.  I was looking for something that I
could use to work faster, yet get in some good recreation with as well.

What I got was the Compaq Presario V3000.

I have to say, it rocks.  Bigtime.  Built-in everything, basically.
802.11b/g, v.92, 2 USB ports, S-Video, I think there's a parallel somewhere
(didn't matter to me...never use printers), DVD burner, media slots, a
-great- touchpad with scrollwheel zones for both axes, handles an external
USB keypad and mouse for gaming without blinking...totally PnP with XP
Home.  Nice thing being, you can also turn the pad on and off manually
while the system is powered.  The wireless is bloody painless, too.

And speaking of gaming, I'd asked the tool at Best Buy if WoW would run on
it and he said he wouldn't.  I didn't buy it since his argument was that
the NVidia 6150 was inline and using shared memory, and he said it would be
-slower- than the Celeron 2.4GHz with an ATI RADEON 9200 that my wife uses.
He couldn't be more wrong.  Actually, the framerate numbers read lower, but
it's -consistent-, since the CPU cache is the bottleneck on the Celeron.
This runs it quite smoothly in widescreen format at 1280x800, with good
sound on Altec Lansing inline speakers.

It's an AMD Turion 64 X2 1.6GHz (or was it 1.78?) based system with 1GB of
RAM, incidentally.  80GB HD.

Everything but the kitchen sink, lets me work a -hell- of a lot faster from
remote, and it lets me game with modern games as well.  Gorgeous display,
btw.  And it was reasonably priced considering it was the -only- system
with an NVidia graphics unit in it (or any except Intel's crappy ones).  It
was $1079 at CompScrewSA.  The idiot there wouldn't go $100 lower to make
the sale.  Went to Best Buy and got it for $799 without having to haggle.
For the money, it's a great, solid multi-use laptop, both business and
pleasure.

I'm happy to say that Compaq has erased part of my prejudice against
them--at least in laptops.  :)

Anyway, for those so inclined and on a budget, I have no hesitation
recommending this baby.  The next nearest gaming-spec rig was $2300 and
that just was NOT going to happen.  But this system totally rocks!  For my
money (and budget), it's a steal.

mark->
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