If legacy connections and long Latitude D600 battery life are what you need in a business laptop, the Dell Latitude D600 is exact the one. The slim Wi-Fi-ready unit weighs 5.4 pounds and has parallel and serial connections for old office peripherals. For typists, the D600 provides both a low-profile pointing stick in the center of the keyboard and the more popular touchpad. The two sets of mouse buttons cater to polar-opposite tastes: The pointing stick’s buttons are squishy and deep-depressing, while the touchpad’s buttons are extremely stiff. In facts,the Dell D600 battery lasts over 4 hours, about an hour that is longer than the average of  most laptops.

The keyboard feels springier than most, though the nice layout includes a set of press-and-hold volume buttons. The stereo sound emitted from the front speakers is powerful enough for small presentations or close-quarters entertainment. Its 14-inch wide-screen has a 1024-by-768- or 1400-by-1050-pixel resolution.

More importantly,the Latitude D600 is an upgradable laptop, it offers a hard drive that can be removed from the front of the case, as well as a modular media bay. The latter can hold an optical drive, a second battery ($50 extra), or a second hard drive. The variety of available docking stations makes the D600 a viable primary PC. Selections range from simple monitor stands to the $279 D/Dock Expansion Station, which provides four USB ports and a DVI flat-panel port.

Other convenient touches include an external latitude d600 battery gauge and battery release latch. Also, a button on the optical drive pops out when pressed, making it easy to remove the drive, and status lights are placed prominently in the right-side screen hinge. Finally, though the cards and security software aren’t included in the price, the Dell D600 comes with an integrated Smart Card slot for protecting files and making Web logons more convenient; Dell sells the optional OtaniumSuite PKI software with two Smart Cards for $60. In keeping with its business orientation, the D600 has no FireWire port or multiformat DVD burner option.

The Dell Latitude D600 computer is a bit disappointing on the speed. Not an aggressive performer for a 2-GHz/600-MHz Pentium M 755-equipped laptop, it earned a WorldBench 5 score of 81 in our tests, compared with a score of 89 earned by a similarly equipped Acer TravelMate 8000. The difference, however, should not be overly apparent when using mainstream applications.

To access the D600’s documentation is unconvenient. There is not a complete printed users’ manual, and electronic information is scattered throughout the Windows Help and Support Center. However, the answers are there if you don’t mind searching.

Though not quite a go-getter in the performance department, Latitude D600 offers a nicer design than many thin-and-light business laptops, including dual pointing devices.

The weak spot with the Latitude D420 is its optical storage. In order to save space on the system, Dell has opted to use an external drive unit they call the D-Bay to house the optical drive. To make matters worse, many of the versions do not include a CD or DVD burner capability. As a result,the system does have a fairly sizable 60GB hard drive for its small 8mm sized drive. Performance is reduced for this though do to its 4,200rpm spin rate.

One of the nice things about the Latitude D420 is the keyboard layout and specifically the mouse pointer. Lots of other notebooks now use a trackpad pointer, but they can be very difficult to use, especially on smaller ultraportables. Dell has decided to include a pointer stick in the middle of the keyboard that is a welcome addition to make mousing on the system much better.

Since the Latitude is targetted at businesses area, consumers should not expect much in terms of included software. Expect to pay extra if you need any productivity software.

Like its predecessor, the Dell C610 caters to companies seeking a light portable suitable for sharing. It boasts a removable hard drive, both eraserhead and touchpad pointing devices, and a modular bay on the front that can hold any of a range of devices, including a travel module that drops the notebook’s weight to 5.3 pounds (4.9 pounds if you order a unit with a four-cell battery instead of our review unit’s eight-cell). The color icons that identify the rear connections make attaching peripherals easier.
Aside from an S-Video port you can use to attach the laptop to a TV, the Dell C610 offers few multimedia bells and whistles. The stereo speakers sound not so good,and no dedicated audio controls available for playing music CDs.
The Latitude C610 battery wears a slender dark case with a no-nonsense design. At this price, you get a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination drive that uses the same modular bay as the floppy drive. You can use both at once by attaching the floppy drive externally to the parallel port, using the included cable. Other bay options include a second 20GB hard drive, a Zip 250 drive, or a supplemental battery for stretching the C610’s already impressive run time.It’s easy to reach parts, especially the hard drive, which slides out of the notebook’s side with the removal of one screw.

The C610’s keyboard is quieter than the Latitude C600’s, and its eraserhead mouse buttons are more comfortable than the hard-to-press concave buttons on Dell’s new all-in-one, the Latitude C810. Unlike most laptops these days,which bristle with quick-launch buttons, the C610 offers just one for jumping to your favorite Web site or application. The C610’s PC WorldBench 4 score of 99 is in line with the scores achieved by the other three notebooks we’ve tested with a 1-GHz Pentium III-M processor (733 MHz under battery power) and 256MB of RAM.
The Dell C610 should satisfy corporate buyers, as it offers just about everything a company needs in a highly flexible portable. It gives you built-in wireless readiness along with more-traditional networking connections; both eraserhead and touchpad pointing devices; and the ability to rotate multiple add-in devices, including a backup Latitude C610 battery.

Ah, but not so fast! You may have read a great deal about what to look for when buying a laptop computer, but you may not know what to avoid. This is at least as important, as there are a surprisingly large number of landmines throw in the path of consumers

You opened up the Wal-Mart advertisement and – my God! They have a laptop for just $200. You rush out the door, buy it, and bring it home. All is well until you open Windows Task Manager and see just one graph bobbing along, spiking violently whenever you open a web browser.

Multi-core processors are so common that Intel dropped the “Duo” and “Quad” names from the company’s new processors entirely. Some single-core processors do still exist, however, and they’re built almost exclusively for the $200 and $300 doorbuster deal laptops. Although a single-core processor is adequate for some basic tasks, it will choke on processor intensive tasks like HD video playback. Even flash-heavy webpages could prove challenging.

Laptops with AMD processors almost always boast the number of cores the processor contains with a “X2″ or “X4″ label. This label is only forgotten when the laptop has a single-core processor. Intel no longer has a quick-and-easy label, but the majority of single-core Intel laptops sold use a processor called the Intel Celeron 900.

Note that netbooks are an exception to this – it’s OK for them to have single core processors. The performance will be poor, but speed isn’t a netbook’s niche.

Laptops are great, but they have disadvantages compared to desktop computers. For example, you cannot upgrade components that are easily switched out on a desktop. The display, for example, can’t be changed. This means it is important to check a laptop’s display quality before buying.

Open a text document or all-white web page and take a close look at the display. Can you see small lines that appears to cross the display both vertically or horizontally? This is known as the “screen door effect.” It’s surprisingly common on modern laptops, and can be annoying.

Also take a look at the display resolution and compare that to the display size. Most 15.6″ laptops sold today have a resolution of 1366×768. That’s not great, but it’s acceptable. However, there are some laptops now sold with 16″+ displays that have this same  resolution. This often results in large pixels and sub-par image quality.

If you walk into your local Best Buy you’ll be hard pressed to find laptops that offer less than three hours of inspiron 640m battery life. The only ones that are labeled with two hours or less are gaming laptops. The same is true if you search laptops online. You’ll even run into some laptops that offer ten hours of battery. Sounds great, right?

There’s just one small problem – those claims are exaggerated. There is no agreed-upon industry standard for testing battery life, so laptop manufacturers can advertise anything they manage to obtain, no matter how (un)realistic the conditions were.

My advice? Simply assume that laptops will be able to obtain 75% of the battery life claimed. That’s in light usage – if you’re intending to watch video or run any processor intensive application you can expect inspiron 640m battery battery life to be half the claimed amount.

The extended warranty plays upon the fear that occurs whenever a person shells out a lot of money for a product. Even a $500 laptop is nothing to sneeze at, and a $1000 laptop may be a substantial portion of a person’s yearly income. It’s easy to succumb to the pressure of the salesperson pitching the warranty to you. “Hey,” they’ll say, “this will protect you if something goes wrong. What if you spill a drink on your laptop?”

It’s true – disasters occur. However, the statistical rate of disasters isn’t high. Warranty company Squaretrade has found that the three-year failure rate of a laptop (including both accidents and hardware failure) was just over 30%. And remember – in three years your laptop will be woefully outdated. You may be wanting a new one anyway.

Extended warranty service isn’t prompt, either. Although some companies are better than others, most companies try very hard to find a reason not to honor an extended XPS M1330 battery warranty. Even if the warranty is honored, your laptop may need to be sent away for repairs, a process that can take weeks. Does that sound like it’s worth $150 to $300 to you?

Another common sales tactic that trips up laptop buyers is the bundled accessory. It’s incredibly common for a store to offer extras as part of a laptop deal. These can include everything from USB and HDMI cables to printers and external hard drives. The store makes these offers attractive buy listing huge discounts of 50% or more.

What the stores don’t tell you, of course, is that the original price of the item was absurd. HDMI cables are the most famous example, and one relevant to laptops now that most come with HDMI-out. Stores often sell HDMI cables for $50 to $100, nevermind the fact that great cables can be purchased online for $5 or less. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that 50% off a $100 HDMI cable is still a terrible deal.

Buying a laptop computer can be a great experience, but you always need to be careful. It would be nice if manufacturers didn’t exaggerate claims, and it’d be great if sales representatives always directed customers to laptops that are truly the best. This is not the case, however – you need to stay informed to obtain the best deal.

Did we miss anything out?   Is there something else we should bear in mind when buying a laptop computer?   If so, let us know in the comments.

Original story: 5 Things To AVOID When Shopping For A Laptop

Pricing and release dates are expected to be officially announced toward the end of March,such as BT.00603.006. Here’s to hoping for something under the $700 mark.

The Taiwanese vendor said it had been made aware that the AS3410, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3810TZ and AS3810TZG models built before 15 September may be at risk of burnout.

“In the affected units the microphone cable may overheat when extreme pressure is applied repeatedly to the left palm rest. As a result, the unit case of aspire one battery may become deformed and the system may malfunction,” said Acer.

Consumers and SMEs can determine if their models are affected by entering a serial number of SNID on a section of its site aspire 3610 battery.

Jeremy Davies, senior partner at analyst Context said Acer was right to be upfront about the issue.

According to the news story, “The Dell inspiron 630m laptop computer seen bursting into flames in photographs on the Internet was being examined as part of the company’s probe of the incident.” The laptop in question exploded at a conference in Osaka, Japan. Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden said that it was too early to determine the cause of the explosion, but ”it did not appear that the incident had anything to do with the battery issues related to the recall [Dell in December 2005 issued a inspiron 640m battery recall for some of the batteries in its laptop due to overheating issues].”

I’ve heard of spontaneous combustion, but I don’t think laptops burst in flames for no apparent reason. Was it a setup? Perhaps there was an HP pavilion dv1000 representative at the conference who rigged the Dell explosion. You never know how tough the competition can get these days…. sheesh!

The Acer Aspire 3000 laptop computer offers best in class performance, compatibility with all the applications, flexibility with all features that meet the needs of your mobile lifestyle and takes full advantage of AMD PowerNow! Technology. It features everything for rapid access to online information both in the office and when located elsewhere.

The Aspire 3000 uses a 4400mAh,14.80V standard Acer laptop battery to power the laptop,usually,the battery lasts almost 3 hours and is compatible with aspire 1690 battery.

Acer Aspire 3000 Specifications:
AMD Sempron 3000+ Processor
256MB DDR SDRAM
40GB Hard Drive
CD-RW/DVD/DVRW Combo Drive
15″ XGA TFT Screen
SiSM760GX Graphics
Integrated Fast LAN and 56k v.90 data fax modem
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Pre Loaded
3 USB 2.0 Sockets
15″ TFT Screen
On Board 56K Fax / Modem
Integrated 10/100 LAN Adaptor
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Pre Loaded

Step 2
Locate the hard drive compartment and remove the cover. Most Acer laptops store the hard drive in its own compartment near the battery for easy removal and installation. Check the user guide that came with your laptop to be sure which compartment contains the hard drive on your specific Acer model(Aspire 3020 battery). Use a laptop screwdriver to remove the two screws that secure the cover to the laptop, then lift the cover to remove it.

Step 3
Replace the old hard drive with the new one. When you open the hard drive compartment, you will see a removable metal cage. This is not the hard drive, but a protective compartment in which the hard drive is mounted. Carefully lift and pull the right edge of the hard drive cage to disconnect it from the motherboard. Use a laptop screwdriver to remove the screws securing the hard drive to the cage. After you remove the old hard drive, insert the new one into the metal cage, and then replace the screws. Slide the hard drive cage back into the compartment to connect it to the motherboard. Replace the hard drive compartment cover and secure its two screws to complete installation of the hard drive.

Step 4
Install Windows, software, and Acer drivers and utilities. Insert the battery back into its compartment and reconnect the laptop’s power cord, cables and peripherals. To use the new hard drive, insert the recovery disk that came with your Acer laptop(say Acer aspire 3610 laptop) to begin the installation of Windows and the drivers and utilities you need to operate the laptop. This includes drivers and utilities for the modem, sound card, touchpad and video card. Install any programs and transfer any files you want stored on the new hard drive.