[leavitt1]

Hello all:

I am a high school teacher looking to upgrade my six year old desktop to a notebook/laptop (is there a difference?). I will be using the computer primarily at home but sometimes at work and elsewhere. I would like to stay in the $1200 range and have had two systems recommended to me: the Dell Inspiron 6000 and the HP ZV6000. The HP seems to offer quite a bit more for the money. Cons I've noticed about the HP so far: It's about 1 1/2 lbs heavier than the dell. HP customer service doesn't seem to be as good as Dell's (though Dell's seems to be more expensive). I'd appreciate any thoughts/opinions about the two systems. I've listed the specs of each below.

Thanks in advance for everyone's help with this!

Michelle


The HP system that I have "created" for $1119 is as follows:

HP Pavillion ZV6000 w/
Microsoft Windows XP Home edition
AMD Athlon 64 3200 (2.0GH/512 L2Cache)
15.4" WXGA Brightview Widescreen
128MB ATI Radeon Xpress 200M w/Hypermemory
1.0GB DDR SDRAM (2 x 512)
80GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
DVD+/-RW/R & CD-RW Combo w. double layer support
54g integ. broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth
12 cell Lithium ion battery
Microsoft works/money (I have Office, so I'll upgrade on my own)
Free HP PSC 1410 All-in-one

The Dell System would be $1668 and would be:

Dell Inspiron 6000 w/
Intel Pentium M processor 730 (1.66GHz 2mb)
Microsoft Windows XP Home edition
15.4 inch UltraSharp WSXGA+ LCD Panel
1GB Shared DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms
80GB Hard Drive
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer write capability
Integrated Intel® Media Accelerator 900 Graphics
9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery (80 WHr)
Corel WordPerfect word processor
Intel® PRO 2200 and Dell 350 Bluetooth Internal Wireless Cards

[leavitt1]

Bump

[Rollin' Rog]

I can't offer you any personal comments on these systems, but here's what I usually do before making a purchase:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ew&btnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...ew&btnG=Search

One bit of advice I will give you, if you have never used a laptop, is to go to a store that sells them try your hands out on the keyboards.

I have a Dell Dimension 8200 desktop and an Inspiron 1100 notebook. Now the notebook is "ok" for what I use it for -- but I positively hate using the keyboard. It requires a dainty precision that just runs against my normal keyboard usage skills -- and mistakes are many and more aggravating to fix.

So if you haven't had any practice using a Notebook computer, you really should do some personal testing on different models and see if the keyboard is acceptable to you. Be sure to practice typing in Notepad or Wordpad and see if your typing skills suffer much with the crowded keyboard.