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General discussion

Looking for an affordable new laptop for school

Aug 17, 2004 1:52PM PDT

Thanks anyone who looks at this for me, I need a laptop for school this fall, but I'm on a budget and I have never bought a laptop before, and I would appreciate any help you can give. I have so far seen few new laptop in my price range (under $600) but I do have a couple of possables. the first is at walmart.com for $598 and its made by ECS (a company I have never heard of) http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=3163026&cat=3951&type=19&dept=3944&path=0%3A3944%3A3951
or a Refurbished IBM thinkpad from Microcenter
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0176990

Any help anyone can give I would appreciate it, Thanks

Discussion is locked

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My money would be on the IBM. Thinkpads are well
Aug 18, 2004 12:58AM PDT

regarded.

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Re: Looking for an affordable new laptop for school
Aug 18, 2004 1:26PM PDT

still unsure, but the Ecs looks like the more powerfull machine, does anyone know about ecs? are they crap ect.

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Re: Looking for an affordable new laptop for school
Aug 18, 2004 3:25PM PDT

Well, the ECS is a Wal-mart brand, that's why no one has heard of it.
I've looked over both machines, and there are several glaring differences.

The thinkpad comes with win2000, while the ECS comes with XP.
The thinkpad only has 10gigs of hard drive space, the ecs has 40.

However, I am unsure of the expandability of the ECS machine...it would be vvvveeerrrryyy wise to invest in a stick of 256 or even 512 mb's of ram to upgrade either machine. The ECS has integrated video which, with the limited installed RAM (128mb) is going to make doing about anything on it a pain in the ***.

Research more about the ECS, and it's upgradeability, and I would suggest to get it. The IBM brand name alone is going to cost you a bucket of money, and this laptop is simply not worth it.

Another suggestion would be to search EBay for some used laptops...you will get more bang for your buck and will have a better built machine (than the sort of "ECS" $599 Wal-mart laptop I have in mind).

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Re: Looking for an affordable new laptop for school
Aug 18, 2004 3:43PM PDT