that holiay wish meme

[arethinn]

I could probably think of 10 things if I wanted to sit here and ponder, but really there's only one thing I particularly wish I had: a very ordinary little laptop so I could sit out in the living room with a fire, yet still be online to chat with enotsola and stuff. When I say "very ordinary" I mean it needs to be capable of running OE, Firefox and AIM. Prefer being able to run Win2K but not absolutely necessary as I have Win98 laying around somewhere. Must have 56K modem (we have no DSL or cable setup in this house).

I figure something in the 600-700 MHz range with 128 MB of RAM should hack it since that's what I use at work and it's capable of running what I need. Anyone happen to have one of these laying around or know where I could get one for a few hundred bucks?

Comments

[soundwave106.livejournal.com]

I checked a couple sites. What you are talking about goes on sale for about $500 (see USA Notebook (http://www.usanotebook.com/) and Off Lease Computers (http://off-leasecomputers.com/laptops.html)). You can get 32meg, 200mhz notebooks for about $300. I would also check the IBM certified used equipment site (http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=1&catalogId=-840&langId=-1&categoryId=2576396) -- refurbished Think Pads in some ways look like better bargains.

The cost of the notebook made me go for the super-PDA route, eg PDAs with web-capable (640x480) screens. It looks like the $380 Sharp SL-6000L (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001W17H2/103-2600228-6606261?v=glance) deal is over, but some other folks were contemplating the Dell Axim X50V (http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/axim_x50v?c=us&cs=&l=en&s=dhs&) or another PocketPC as alternatives. Not sure about Firefox, but you can run Opera for Windows Mobile (http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2004/08/31/), and Agile Mobile (http://www.agilemobile.com/agile_messenger.html) or similar for IM. Mail's a little tricky, you can use Intellisync for mail syncing I guess, plus whatever's built in. And there's no keyboard (Dell Bluetooth keyboard seperate) brings it up to the cost of a refurbed IBM Thinkpad. Hmm. :)

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

Umm... they have PDA's with modems in them? AFAIK PDA's expect wireless connectivity. We have none, nor cell phones. We don't even have a wired network - only the phone line.

Anyway, I want a real keyboard, even if it is a compact laptop one. Heh.

The Thinkpad site is promising, although a bit more than I was hoping to spend. I really should just go to the local computer/electronics surplus and look around. heh.

[soundwave106.livejournal.com]

They make PDA modems, yes -- they make CompactFlash modems for laptops after all. Of course its not built in usually so it costs a little more, wireless tends to be the default. You're probably better off finding a good refurbed laptop with that built in.