Advise me on buying a laptop for Oolite?!

[Cody]

Update... it does indeed include Win7 Home Premium (I presume that Home Premuim is all 64bit), and that price is VAT included.
It's about £60 cheaper than Amazon (how/why, he asks himself).

[snork]

The price seems fine.
But in the previously linked to page it said sth. about no return unless notebook is faulty or broken.
What if your friend only then notices he would prefer a bigger-screen notebook, or something ?

Hm, I do not like that shop -
1 ) I am spoiled in being used to be only 1 click away from exact and complete specifications.
Like - does it come with a matte or glossy display ? Is that important to your friend ?

2) "introductory price" - errm, that notebookseries is almost 2 years old.

---------------------------
over here for notebooks Amazon is seldom the cheapest seller.

[Cody]

But in the previously linked to page it said sth. about no return unless notebook is faulty or broken.
What if your friend only then notices he would prefer a bigger-screen notebook, or something ?

Hm, I do not like that shop -
1 ) I am spoiled in being used to be only 1 click away from exact and complete specifications.
Like - does it come with a matte or glossy display ? Is that important to your friend ?

2) "introductory price" - errm, that notebookseries is almost 2 years old.

Yep, I agree with you snork! We shall see what my brother decides to do... I have advised him of all that.
It might cost him more, as I need to have Win7 on my machine (in order to become familiar with it) so I can help him through it... heh!

[Cody]

Final update - went to the store with my brother today. The poor in-store 'expert' was somewhat taken aback and bamboozled by my questions, but eventually I got what I needed to know, and the laptop has been purchased (after I'd had a good play around with the display model). It seems fine to me, well-made, smart-looking and the spec is genuine. Now we await the results of my brother's first experiences of Win7 - I am on standby!

Alas, no discount for hard cash - those days are sadly gone, it seems.

[maik]

I need Win7 Pro badly, so I can slap a whole load more RAM into my machine while it's still dirt-cheap.
But at about £100 for the OEM version, it'll take some saving.

By the way, why don't you buy on ebay? Whenever I find myself in need of a windows license, I buy an OEM version there. Just looked and saw Win 7 Pro for 20 GBP "Buy It Now" price.

[Cody]

Well yes, I could indeed do that, o wizardly one (or install a completely 'free' version, to which I do have access - that is Plan Omega)! But for certain things in life, I prefer if possible to buy an actual genuine product that I can hold in my hand. Old-fashioned, possibly - but that's how I operate, often to my own cost, but hey!

[maik]

Hmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but it is genuine and physical media and official and all that...

[snork]

genuine and all win7pro, for 20 PS ?

so, medium AND license sticker ?

I did not look in ebay for this myself, should there be genuine win7pros at roughly the same price here, that'd be a nice surprise.

I am inclined to buy a laptop with win7home, because it is ~150€ cheaper than the same model with win 7 pro (that comes with slightly lower CPU / harddisk specs).

Then if whatever virtualisation alternative to "XP mode" doesn't work well, such ~25€ would not be such a problem.

[maik]

Yes, medium and license sticker. On ebay.de I found similar ones in the range of 50€. They are OEM versions but that doesn't make them less complete nor less legal.

[snork]

Yup. same here about the legality - MS long ago tried to have the resale of individual OEM or SBE version illegalised, but some major court ruled where they could stick that idea.

I still hope that whatever free virtual machine with my existing XP will do the trick, though.