The task is a difficult one. Like I told you already, I am about to finish my PhD and now I will go to another stage of my life. This is when I need to make serious decisions and take charge of my life, so to say. People seem to perform this task of decision making much in private. But I am going to use this forum effectively to make certain important decisions of my life. It goes without saying, suggestions are most welcome. And more importantly, your views and opinions do carry a lot of weight and I am willing to listen to any suggestions, from anonymous or known readers.
Having said this, let me tell you my criteria.
Having said this, let me tell you my criteria.
- cost: about 35,000/-
- ram: 2 gb
- hard disk space: about 200gb
- dvd drive
- weight: about 2 kg (lesser the better, but budget is also important)
- support anywhere in India.
- drivers readily available
- Is there any parameter I have forgotten to add?
- Which company is better?
- Do you know whether any offers for students are on?
- Are there any useful links? (other than first 5-6 in Google when searched buying laptop etc)
Comments
2. I thought you really didn't need to call support every now and then?
3. Surely, you have enough publications to possibly get a job right away. But you could still experience the western civilization for a while, with a foreign postdoc position. In that scenario, you could be more relaxed about the money criterion for laptop.
5. Glad to know that you attach value to the opinion of your humble anonymous readers.
@sunithaudaykiran: No Vista, sure.
http://xkcd.com/528/
Getting a non-mac laptop without vista would not be easy. Just live with the fact. If you succeed in without-ing Vista, I would certainly like to hear the report.
My experience with HP service has been horrible. And I have heard the
same from others after my episode started (well, to cut a long story
short, i gave it to HP for a motherboard change and they've been
telling me I'll get my laptop back in 2-3 days, for the last 1.5
months! There is another who has been waiting for 2.5 months). My
friends tell me that the service in Dell is just fabulous. They even
come to your place and fix the laptop.
One laptop by Dell that caught my attention was: Dell Inspiron Mini 12
http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-12?c=in&l=en&s=dhs&cs=indhs1
The laptop very light (1.5kg), cost is low as well (some website said
Rs 31k) but there are some things you would want to add
* the laptop comes with 1gb ram. But usually laptop memory is
expandable to twice what is put initially so you can upgrade to 2gb if
required.
* the laptop comes wiht just a 80gb harddisk and I do not know if you
can choose a larger harddisk if you want. But I would also like to
advice you to not go with very large harddisks. For your work, you
definitely won't be using 80gb. Assuming you are going to run ubuntu
or something, have some 25gb for / partition and the rest for /home
where you can put your music. Movies is what takes up most of the
space but store them on some external drive. So I'd say it is better
that you go for a light laptop but have an external harddisk to store
your movies.
Okay, lets address your checklist and see where all this fails:
1. cost: about 35,000/- -- Done
2. ram: 2 gb -- Can be done
3. hard disk space: about 200gb --Hmm... external harddisk?
4. dvd drive --- Done
5. weight: about 2 kg (lesser the better, but budget is also
important) -- Done
6. support anywhere in India. -- Done
7. drivers readily available --- Ubuntu doesn't usually have
problem with drivers so this is done as well.
Okay, what other companies are there? HP and Compaq have horrible
service. Lenovo, Sony and IBM are usually very costly so I don't think
they would fit your budget. Acer, ... I somehow don't have a good
opinion about it (actually mainly because of the stupid Hrithik Roshan
ads they have!). Asus... EEEpc!!! :-P But I'm not sure if you would be
excited by it. Well, it is just a tinnnny laptop with not so large
specs but extremely cheap (less than 20k).
http://eeepc.asus.com/in/index.html
Anyway. Whatever laptop you get, see if you can get it wiht a blank
harddisk. Usually they put some windows on it and that adds quite a
bit to the cost. The Dell US website seems to even let the customers
ask for the laptops with ubuntu preinstalled! But I am fairly certain
that this isn't possible here.
Most importantly, see if there are student offers! I remember, when
Meena was in kanpur, someone was talking about offers that come in
Chennai. Just find out. This would greatly reduce the price of
laptops, and perhaps even let you get some more funkier ones within
your budget.
I've just suggested one, but look out for others. This is just one
laptop that one of my friends wanted to buy and I happened to look at
the specs and so on. I'm sure there are quite a few others that meet
or beat the performance and price.
RP