Product Review

[Voice Recognition and eMachines M5310] [Canon 6.3MP EOS Rebel Digital Camera] [Voice Over IP] [HP Pavillion ZD7000] [Radio Shack 6-in-1 Remote] [Palm Zire 71] [Perfect Notebook Part 2] [Perfect Notebook] [Do LCD's make a difference?] [Digital Camera Binoculars] [Maxtor Backup] [Apple iBook Part 2] [Apple iBook Part 1] [Sony Vaio Laptop] [Panasonic’s KX-TG4000B 4 Line, Multi-Cordless Handset] [Brother MFC-9700] [E-Machines] [Dual Monitors] [Sony Clie PDA] [IDE Raid Controllers] [Olympus C700 Digital Camera]

Sony Vaio Laptop

Not all computers are created equal.  I know that you all know this, but we need to be reminded  from  time to time.  The other thing we need to remember is that name brands are not always what they used to be.  I remember the day that E-Machines released their first PC.  Needless to say, they were less than stellar.  Now I’ve got 2 of them in my office that we use as our primary development systems.  Conversely, I recently bought an HP Pavilion with a flat panel display for use at the house to replace my Sony laptop.  I really bought it only because it was bundled with a 15” display but also figured that HP makes good printers so their computers should be ok.  Nope I was wrong.  Not only was the unit over priced and short on features, it started having problems in the first couple of days.  I decided to return it and start over.  During the same time, a friend of mine purchased a Compaq notebook at Staples and was experiencing multiple problems with it.  The only resolution to it was to format the drive and start over with the recovery disks.  By the way, the HP did not come with ANY recovery CD’s.  You have to call tech support for them to ship a set out to you .

I decided after much thinking, to replace my Sony Vaio with a notebook instead of looking for another desktop.  I was not looking for something super fancy.  I wanted at least a 14” screen, 256 megs of ram, 20+ gig hard drive, DVD/CDRW, and a fairly fast processor.  I paid about $1000 for the HP with flat panel display so I was hoping to stay as close to that price range as possible.  Impossible you may say.  To my great delight I did find exactly what I was looking for from Toshiba and Circuit City.  I purchased a Toshiba Satellite 1415-S173 and after rebates the price was exactly $999.00.  I’ve had the notebook for about 3 weeks and I’m thrilled with it.  Some of the best features are: 15” screen, 30 gig hard drive, DVD/CDRW, 256 Megs of Ram, Nvidia Graphics Controller with 16 megs External Video Ram, and a 1.8 Ghz Celeron processor.  I was a little leery of getting a Celeron, but so far I’ve been very pleased.  It is a full 1 Ghz faster than my Sony and I can really see the difference.  I did upgrade it to 512 megs of ram and that made a big difference as well,  as XP likes more than 256 megs.  One big point of note....  I was shocked to see how many new notebooks do not have a floppy drive!  Almost all of the HP and Compaq units did not come with one.  The Toshiba,  thankfully did.

I know that I mentioned above that name brands don’t necessarily mean anything anymore and I basically still hold to that , however, Toshiba seems to have kept up their standards while the others have lowered them to cut costs.  I believe that because of their history in building for the corporate marketplace, the quality translates down to even their entry level systems.  Take a look at Toshiba if you are looking to purchase a new notebook in the near future.

Please send any questions about, or ideas for product reviews to Staff@dogriverdesign.com.