[kwlug disc.] looking for techie thoughts on laptops

[Robert P. J. Day]

  not strictly speaking a linux question but, given the abundance of
HW expertise out there, i thought i'd ask, anyway.

  a friend is sending her son off to college this fall, and needs to
get him a laptop.  i pointed her at tigerdirect.ca and told her to
poke around.  she came back asking about an acer celeron-based laptop
for $640. celeron.  gack.  so i suggested she check out a refurbished
gateway, of which i have a number and all of which have behaved pretty
well so far.

  it appears that you can get pretty decent deals on refurbed gateways
these days.  i mean, there's this:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3945800&CatId=3444

  and this:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3887566&CatId=2289

  and if the son is willing to accept a smaller screen, this with
64-bit AMD CPU:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3901460&CatId=1902

  thoughts on, say, the tradeoff between an intel duo core, and an AMD
turion?  beyond that, getting at least 2G of RAM and at least 160G of
HD seems adequate.

rday
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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry:
    Have classroom, will lecture.

http://crashcourse.ca                          Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
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