Octopus Overlords

I have a question about Laptops. My mom wants to buy one, but I want her to save money. I spent more than I had to on my PC, thinking "I'll just get an Alienware and everything will be fine." I know I could have saved money.
But that is a desktop computer, and hers is a laptop.

She doesn't game. She doesn't do too much photo editing. What she will be doing is running civil engineering software on it. Do you have any recomendations on what to get? What brand and also if we can skip out on buying things and do it ourselves for cheaper?

What about battery? The three biggest things to consider with a laptop are gaming power, battery performance, and portability.

If your mom will be using the laptop at her desk most of the time, you can just go find something as cheap as possible with a decent screen. If she will be travelling with it a lot, you'll need something a little more portable. If she'll be using it on battery power a lot, that is important.

Anyway, there are a lot of choices out there. E-machines makes great laptops at a good price. Dell makes some excellent laptops as well. Heck, Toshiba, Compaq, HP, Sony, and IBM also make good laptops. Sony and IBM are overpriced, though.

If battery power is important, make sure to get a Pentium M processor. If size is important, look at Dell, Sony, and IBM. Toshiba, HP, and Compaq's general purpose laptops are a little big.

For a general purpose laptop, I'd say something in the 6-7 pound range would be good. Something with a pentium m, Athlon Mobile, or Athlon 64 mobile would be good. Pentium 4's are bad (horrible battery life). Celeron M's are decent but not outstanding.

Also, look for something with at least a 14" screen. Anything less is too small for someone who is older (I'm assuming your mom is close to middle age). The 15.4" widescreens are pretty nice, too.

Also, make sure it has at least 512 meg of ram and wireless g (or at least a mini-pci connector).

If you can come up with some uses and a price range, I think people could be of more help.

Also, check out www.techbargains.com.