Originally Posted by ShuttleBug
I'm in the position of needing to purchase a new laptop that must meet the following minimum specs: (1) 512 MB RAM; (2) 56K v 90K modem; (3) 802.11 b/g compliant wireless card; (4) 10/100/1000 Etherneet PC Card; (6) 40+ GB HD; (7) PC card slot; (8) 1 GB MHz processor speed.
These specs are impossible. Corrections:
56k v90 modem.
1Ghz processor.
1) How important is it to choose a system with IEEE 1394 (FireWire) interface? What exactly is it and how does it work?
It could be very useful if you have a firewire device you want to hook up. Likely candidates are video cameras. Otherwise you'll probably never use it.
2) Is it absolutely necessary to have a digital media reader? 4-in-1 or 6-in-1? What do laptops w/o readers use?
Again, do you want to read digital media? You have to answer this based on what you expect to do with it. Note that you can get inexpensive external readers. Obviously this adds bulk to you bag.
3) What would be the smallest number of 2.0 USB ports
reasonable? Since I know that I will need at least one for (a) parallel port toUSB printer connection) and another for occasional use with (b) external 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive, should I assume that a system with a total of 3 ports would be adequate?
How often will you use that external floppy??? For most purposes thumbdrives are superior. I'm in the laptop market myself right now and the unit I've almost settled on has no internal floppy. I expect to use my external *ONCE* during setup.
4) I note that on some laptops video memory is shared DDR (128 MB or 64 MB). Is this good?
Bad.
5) I also see that the network card in most systems in my price range (+/- $1K) is integrated 10/100. Should I be able to get along with this? It appears that systems with 10/100/1000 are in laptops with faster processors and llarger hard drives; this kicks prices out of my price range.
I wouldn't worry about the /1000. It's rare that it's going to make much difference, and the /1000 is a bit of a misnomer anyway. While the wires handle that there's no ordinary PC that can actually do that, the best you get is the equivalent of about /300. Gigabit is total overkill compared to the rest of what you speced.