Advice on laptop

[jimzap]

I need to purchase a laptop for my kid at school as a 2nd pc. She doesn't need anything fast like a p4. Needs it mostly for Word, Excel etc. and needs wireless capability. I like the manufacturer and price of the Dell Inspiron 1100 but is the 20 gig HD enough? How about the 14.1 screen size? Big enough?

Also I read that you should have a lot of RAM. Is 256 enough?

Is there anything else I should know about laptops that would be helpful in making a decision?

Never owned a laptop so any advice will be greatly appreciated!

TIA,
Jim

[GroundZero3]

20 gigs should be perfect for her, 14.1 might be a bit small espically if she will be staring at it all the time to do her homework What windows will come on it? I assume winxp? 256 will work, but more ram never ever hurts

most laptops are coming with wireless already built in, im not familar with that model but im sure you can get one put in cheap by dell.

the question is how much are you wanting to spend?

[muno]

20gb is huge. Word, excel, will take 150years to fill up that space.
14.1" screen is standard size, there are 15" but 14.1" is the standard. It's fine too

256 is enough, more doesn't hurt, and if you can bargain double that for a little price, go for it. It's the cheapest upgdare you can have.

What to consider... Battery life is something, and expandability. Nowadays you can get pretty fancy laptops for a little money, integrated dvd-rom/cdrw devices, gaming graphics cards.. Whatever

[John Prophet]

Ive got a brand new Dell Inspiron for sale (two of em actually)..Ive already bumped the RAM up to 384 and it has a 15" screen and I have a new wireless card to go with it.

Inspiron 1100-Celeron 2ghz
384Mb DDR
20gd hard drive
15" screen
24x CDRW
Internal NIC and Modem

Corel WordPerfect Productivity Pack (Corels versions of "word" and "excel" plus their "wizard" for other tasks)

Encycl Britannica
Quicken New user edition
Norton antivirus 90 day trial (trial period not started until you start it)
Dell Picture studio Image expert
Dell Picture Studio trial (not started yet)
Reak One player
MusicMatch 7.1 basic

6 months Earthlink Dialup access
6 months AOL (though I wouldnt recommend it, lol)

I have added some nice game demos and cool stuff like a personal info manager, spyware detector,adobe pdf reader, etc.

I have done all the nice configuration work that Dell or Microsoft should do but they dont...such as turning off all the junk background programs that XP has on by default...so basically this thing is lean and mean and running clean.

All windows updates done. (no, Dell doesnt do that either, a factory fresh Dell comes about 3 months behind on updates, lol)

Warrantied thru Dell till 9/5/04..warranty will transfer to you.


Inspiron1100
15"screen
384Mb RAM
Wireless PC Card

$800 shipped to your door


My heatware is listed under "John Prophet"


PM me or respond in the thread if interested....thanks, JP