Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Think again before buying that less than $500 laptop

I recently purchased a Compaq notebook with Intel Celeron processor, 512 mb ram, and Windows Vista Home Basic. I had the option to purchase the $229 Toshiba laptop (Best Buy) last month at the price of $399, but decided to get the open box Compaq instead for $50 cheaper at $349.

And it's a decision I must say benefited as well as a stupid mistake. It was a mistake because I didn't need to purchase one, but because the deal was so great at the time I was tempted to buy it. I picked the right notebook because recently I converted it to XP Pro and upgraded the ram to 2 gb. Before the conversion (but with the 2 gb already installed), the computer ran OK with Vista, with minimal crashes. But after, with XP, my computer runs as fast as my girlfriend's Gateway with AMD Turion x64 processor and 1 gb of ram, and up until now hasn't crashed on me one bit.

Here's the article that advises not to purchase cheap laptops with Windows Vista:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2222308,00.asp

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