PCA Forums

Okay, I m off to college in September, and I want a new system. I m considering something like

P4 1.6A
Asus P4S533
512 DDR
WD 80 gig Special Edition w/ 8 meg cache
ATi Radeon 8500
SB Live (from my current rig)
Antec SX1030
Pioneer 16X DVD (current rig)
LG 32x writer, or just pull my 16 I have right now since it works just fine
MS Intellimouse Explorer (current rig)
MS Natural Keyboard (current rig)
Altec Lansing ACS56 (current rig)
17" LCD, probably the LG 782Le or a Samsung 171S or NEC 1700V or something

OR

a laptop, either P3 or P4 since performance should be around the same, 20/30 gig HD, DVD, 15" SXGA at least, Geforce2go, USB, firewire, built in lan and 56k modem

and i'd just buy a firewire/usb enclosure, and put a HD in that for more storage, and swap that with a CD writer if i need to burn something

is a laptop actually useful in college? I m going in EE at Waterloo btw

I'm in Purdue Engineering (EE and Spanish).
Here is my setup:

2.26 P4 - first 533 FSB processor i think
Gigabyte GA-8IHXP (intel 850e chipset)
512 RAMBUS (about to go to 1 gig)
IBM 80gig HDD with 8meg cache
radeon 8500 128mb
audio on mobo
antec PLUS660 case (full temp/power monitoring, fans on thermostats)
internal MSI 40/12/48
internal 4/4/32
external 24/10/32 (USB)
Dell quietkeyboard
Dell mouse
sound - component stereo... around $1200+ =-)
19" CRT and 25" TV (dual monitor support from Radeon)

i like laptops, but i wanted something more high end. my friend is at Rose Hulman and he got a laptop... just a difference in opinion.

let me know if you want to know anything else (feel free to email me)

My brother is in college (sophomore at Berkeley) and he went the desktop route and likes it. His system is a low-end P4 with a GF2. It plays most of his games alright but it's no speed demon.
We got him a Handspring in place of a laptop and he likes it a lot. He takes notes on it with no problems, and it beats carrying around a 5+ pound laptop. I'm not sure how notetaking on a handheld would go for you engineers though, with all the calculations and symbols you'll probably be doing, but it's worth looking into.
Also, you are right about going for an LCD. Even though my brother stayed in the nice dorms at Cal, desk space and living space were still at a minimum.

when i started college in 97, i had a P200MMX with a 2mb video card.

seriously, take that radeon out. don't let games get in the way of your studying... you only get one shot. make it count.

laptops are good.

i dont plan on gaming really...in fact i have alot of spare time right now and i dont game. FPS's generally make me dizzy.

last games i really got into were Diablo 2 and Starcraft. If I could find my Starcraft CD I would still play it

hmm...i've been doing some research and it seems that with Pocket PC based devices I have the option to leave my writing as is, which makes it easier to take notes

anyone know whether palm has that feature?