[Ric_Knight]

A good choice in laptop would be one of the HP dv series. I bought a dv9205 for use at university and I have been very happy with it.

I chose this one because, as a graphic designer, I needed the the 17" screen and an extra hard drive for the large files I generate. This model comes with one hard drive and one gig of memory, but the price was right. I have since added a second gig of memory and a second 120 gig hard drive, both made very easy by the design.

It has a 1.6ghz AMD dual core proccessor, 1 gig of DDR2 memory, expandable to two, a 120 gig SATA Hard drive at 5400 rpm and a NIVIDA GeForce Go 6150 graphics card with upto 288 MB of shared video memory.

This is older model, so you will most likely find much better HP computers in this price point, but it is an example of why I buy HP.

If you want a good desktop replacement for entertainment and work, you could do far worse then this HP.

[JackalsNose]

What was the price on it? The university system sold me my T60 with a lot of software and a warranty for $1600 in august 2006.

Also, did you do the RAM and hard drive upgrades yourself or did you get them done by "professionals"

[Sheerdal]

Usually you can do that yourself. If you look on the Bottom of the laptop there is usually a couple of areas that you can unscrew and replace or add things as necessary. We had some old nx-9008s at one of my old jobs and we added memory to those by basically turning the laptop over unscrewing it in the ram area. Inserting the additional Ram and that was it. Screw the cover back on and fire it up. just make sure the memory is matched and what not.

[Larrabee]

For more information about the HP Pavillion Serie, please read my topic: http://forums.notebooks.com/notebook...ion-serie.html

There's some information inside about all HP Pavillions.

[Ric_Knight]

Originally Posted by JackalsNose

What was the price on it? The university system sold me my T60 with a lot of software and a warranty for $1600 in august 2006.

Also, did you do the RAM and hard drive upgrades yourself or did you get them done by "professionals"

I did the upgrades myself, pretty easy with these models but you have to order a special bracket for the drive in order to install it.

I paid $1300 for the computer in 2007, the day after Vista launched, but I have seen computers with better specs for under $1000 recently.

[JackalsNose]

Originally Posted by Ric_Knight

I did the upgrades myself, pretty easy with these models but you have to order a special bracket for the drive in order to install it.

I paid $1300 for the computer in 2007, the day after Vista launched, but I have seen computers with better specs for under $1000 recently.

Well, those price drops must make you either really proud of the progress the industry is making or really sad that you lost your money back then. It all kind of depends on how satisfied you are with the machine, but from the sound of your review, you like t he Industry.

[movvadinesh]

Thats a great system you have got there Ric_Knight since I think this system is really cool because you're a graphics designer and got really great specs and as you said since you are agraphics designer, you have to upgrade it.

And you are right that, Hp is the greatest laptop or computer producer in the world.

[djeuro]

well its hard to get a new computer nowadays. once you get a new computer which you think the specs are great, out of nowhere a better computer or laptop comes out with a better even price. at that time you get mad and want the new one even more but everything is in the persons money range

[Larrabee]

Originally Posted by JackalsNose

Well, those price drops must make you either really proud of the progress the industry is making or really sad that you lost your money back then. It all kind of depends on how satisfied you are with the machine, but from the sound of your review, you like t he Industry.

This is not realy lost money. If he bought it and the day after that there is a 25% OFF promotion, then that's what I call "lost money". The computer industry is going fast, very fast!

The costs of the current GPU-series are low, simply because a new one is coming soon.
And about the memory story. The factories overproduced it => too many DDR2 memory is created this lead to
very low prices. You can get 4GB just for $150 or less.

[DeAnnaCochran]

My husband recently complained that he could upgrade 1 laptop's memory for under $100 for 4 GB's...but another one, about the same age, it cost just under a $100 for 1 GB of memory upgrade....so alot depends on your memory that is in your system. Remember, unless your machine is 64 bit, it only recognizes just over 3 GB anyway, so don't feel like you need to max it out at 4 GB.