SUB $1K Notebook--Acer or ABS? Need Advice

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ceolstan

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 19, 2004
Messages
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My husband wants me to get a sub-$1K notebook. He'll need one for traveling, as his company is likely to send him out of town for an extended trip. He also wants one so that he can work remote while we're visiting relatives over the holidays.

The machine would have to be able to run basic Office functions well. Now, since I'm apparently going to be allowed to use this notebook as well, I'd love to have graphics that would allow me to run older games, but a dedicated graphics card puts the cost over $1K. ;)

We'd like at least 512K to start, but later upgrade to a gig. We'd like at least a 40gig HD, and minimally a combo drive.

After looking through the different websites, I found the following deals from newegg.com:

Acer TravelMate TM4021
CPU Type 1 x Pentium M 725(1.6GHz)
Screen 15.4" WXGA TFT
Memory Size 512MB DDR2
Hard Disk 60GB
Optical Drive DVD±R/RW Drive
Graphics Card Integrated Intel GMA900
Video Memory shared memory
Communication Modem, LAN and WLAN
Card slot PC Card slot for one Type II card
Screen Size 15.4"
Display Type WXGA
Resolution 1280 × 800

ABS Mayhem F-15 A30 Turion 64
CPU Type AMD Turion MT-32 1.8GHz w/ 512K L2 Cache
Screen 15.4" Wide screen
Memory Size 256MB DDR (I'd have to increase this to 512K)
Hard Disk 40GB
Optical Drive CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive
Graphics Card Integrated Mirage 2 Graphics Engine
Video Memory shared memory
Communication Modem and Lan
Card slot 1x Type I/II PC Card Slot
Screen Size 15.4"
Display Type WXGA
Resolution 1280 × 800

Prices are comparable. The Turion 64 is attractive, though with the integrated video chip, I'm not sure that the Turion 64 has any real advantages at this point. The Acer has a bigger HDD and the DVD burner is a nice extra.

The outstanding difference is the warranty. ABS offers only a 90 day warranty; Acer offers a 1-year warranty.

My husband is in IT. He takes great care of his electronics. He is careful about handling them gently. He's also incredibly overworked. Getting a notebook that would be a PITA at the beginning would be a Very Bad Thing!

What are people's experiences with these two brands? Would one be recommended over another in terms of overall reliability? Is there another option I should be looking at?

Thanks very much.

--ceolstan
 
No idea on the battery life for the Mayhem. The G4 series has about a 2.5 hour life. For most of our purposes, battery life is probably not an issue. We'll run it off of the adapter, either at home or in the car.

--ceolstan
 
Well like.. Does someone know how the vent system works on the ABS Mayhem F-15 A30 Turion 64 ? Also, I want to know if anyone knows how long the batt is on that laptop.. I currently own a Sager 9860 and I only get around 45 minutes of batt.. Thanks.
 
If you want to run games at all, go for the Acer. The GMA900 will at least run older games, while the SiS Mirage thing is basically worthless.
 
have you checked HP? You can configure a ze2000z notebook with a Turion and Radeon Xpress 200m (I have no idea how that stacks up to Intel integrated), 512 megs of RAM, and a 60GB 5200rpm HD for less that $1K.
 
Whats the best batt time you can get for around 1k without takin away ghz? like a 1.6?
 
You can get an Acer 5002WLMi for $999, comes with a Turion 1.6, 1 gig of ram, 100 gb hard drive @ 5400 rpm, glossy 15.4" and dual layer dvd writer...


for that money, i dont think u can get any better specs, it has twice as much memory as those other 2, much larger hard drive, and a dvd writer
 
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