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Its been a long time since ive had a laptop, 3...4 years. I have my reasons for never getting another one, mainly because a desktop pc made more sense. But now things are different, its not that practical for me to drag around a CRT, Mid-atx case, keyboard, mouse, power strip etc everywhere I go.
I mainly use autocad 2007 in 2D only, sometimes truespace 3 for *simple* things, open office/microsoft office, Opera browser, VLC for the occasional video or music. In the past, I was outside with my laptops quite often, rarely in any shade.
Latest laptop: 2004 : It was an 800Mhz P3 toshiba satellite, 800x600 screen, 10GB drive, 128mb ram, with a Ralink RT2500 802.11g wifi card. It could play simcity 3000 and a few other older games, browse the internet, play DVDs through its dvd drive, worked fine for word processing and just about anything.
Unfortunatley:
*The screen was slow to the point where anything moving smeared like wet paint.
*Ran hot... It was either designed to make me sterile, or keep that area warm in the winter... either way, 70-75C is a bit warm for me. The fan did not turn on till around 65C
*Flimsy... It is not something you would want to drop, sit on, or have it bounce around on the floor of a car, unless the goal is to break it half.
*Coppermine P3 was a gutless turd, far slower than my K7-500 desktop pc for anything intensive, like compressing MP3s, zipping large files.
*could not see a damn thing in its screen, if it were in direct sunlight, or even in a brightly lit room.
I will be working outdoors, sometimes its required, sometimes I do it because I dont always enjoy locking myself into a dark room for 10+ hours a day. This isnt a main work-pc, I have a desktop for that. Its something, that I can at least do things away from my desk, in my crappy apartment. Autocad 2007, 2d only. Open-office or Microsoft office, Internet browsing with opera... possibly watch a .AVI video.
My main concerns right now, are the battery life and screen. The last time ive seen an LCD which can work without a backlight, in sunlight was in a laptop from the late 1980s.
Battery life, any used laptop almost always has a dead battery which seems to cost more than the actual laptop itself, to fix. 2-3 hours at the very minimum, when doing work.
I would like to stay under $200 if possible, considering the majority of use from the laptop would be just word-processing. Ive even considered buying a used laptop, such as a pentium-200mhz or so... replacing its hard drive with a compact flash... Im starting to run out of options.
Can anyone suggest a laptop, avalible for under $200 used, which will work in sunlight?
I mainly use autocad 2007 in 2D only, sometimes truespace 3 for *simple* things, open office/microsoft office, Opera browser, VLC for the occasional video or music. In the past, I was outside with my laptops quite often, rarely in any shade.
Latest laptop: 2004 : It was an 800Mhz P3 toshiba satellite, 800x600 screen, 10GB drive, 128mb ram, with a Ralink RT2500 802.11g wifi card. It could play simcity 3000 and a few other older games, browse the internet, play DVDs through its dvd drive, worked fine for word processing and just about anything.
Unfortunatley:
*The screen was slow to the point where anything moving smeared like wet paint.
*Ran hot... It was either designed to make me sterile, or keep that area warm in the winter... either way, 70-75C is a bit warm for me. The fan did not turn on till around 65C
*Flimsy... It is not something you would want to drop, sit on, or have it bounce around on the floor of a car, unless the goal is to break it half.
*Coppermine P3 was a gutless turd, far slower than my K7-500 desktop pc for anything intensive, like compressing MP3s, zipping large files.
*could not see a damn thing in its screen, if it were in direct sunlight, or even in a brightly lit room.
I will be working outdoors, sometimes its required, sometimes I do it because I dont always enjoy locking myself into a dark room for 10+ hours a day. This isnt a main work-pc, I have a desktop for that. Its something, that I can at least do things away from my desk, in my crappy apartment. Autocad 2007, 2d only. Open-office or Microsoft office, Internet browsing with opera... possibly watch a .AVI video.
My main concerns right now, are the battery life and screen. The last time ive seen an LCD which can work without a backlight, in sunlight was in a laptop from the late 1980s.
Battery life, any used laptop almost always has a dead battery which seems to cost more than the actual laptop itself, to fix. 2-3 hours at the very minimum, when doing work.
I would like to stay under $200 if possible, considering the majority of use from the laptop would be just word-processing. Ive even considered buying a used laptop, such as a pentium-200mhz or so... replacing its hard drive with a compact flash... Im starting to run out of options.
Can anyone suggest a laptop, avalible for under $200 used, which will work in sunlight?
