I am going to look into buying a new laptop, and 1 of my main reasons for doing this is so I have something useful for me to bring to Amsterdam. Rather than bringing DVDs and CDs and notes on girls etc, I was thinking I could put it all on a laptop and then also be able to go on-line in my hotel or around about the city...

however I am NEW to laptops entirely

do I get a Mac... or a PC... I usually use a pc

and then how about this whole going on line thing...
it sure would be nice to be able to do it anywhere

and lastly hows about storing movies and music...
on the plan and while cooking etc I listen to music
when I get back from whatever adventure we have been on
then I usually like to end the night with a movie

what do you guys think? what laptops do you use?
any help would be great
thanks
J

Do a Dell with XP. It should be DVD and CDRW compatable and have wireless builtin. Many hotels have highspeed and wether it's wireless of Ethernet the laptop will work fine. Sometimes there is a extra daily fee for highspeed internet. Fact is most any brand will do the job these days I would get wireless builtin and DVD compatable. Although you won't catch me hanging in the room watching movies on Vacation..lol At the Airports or on the plane will be nice.. You may want to get the longer battery life or even a second battery for extended time without a power outlet.. You will need to get a power adapter to use it in Europe.. My hotel provided one.. it's no biggie.

You should be able to get a laptop for around $1000.00 US. Get an extended warranty so you will be guaranteed to have it for a few years otherwise if the display goes bad you may as well throw it out.. I like 1 GB of memory as well for upgrades..

A Mac is great and will do everything as well.. but if your use to Windows go XP. imo

Wireless WiFi Internet access is free at the Golden Tulip Centre Hotel, everywhere in the hotel. ( at least that's what they say, I did not try it ).

I also read about a hotel that provide safe in the room that are big enough for laptop, that could be usefull for a 1,000 euro device ! ( I don't remember which one, but it was a 4 or 5 star central hotel )

Excellent I will be at the Golden Tulip in October. The Renaissance charged around 10E a day for access.

Actually, the point's moot - get a Mac and you can run OS X *and* Windows XP on the same machine, as fast as any PC, simultaneously. Best of both worlds, and the new Macbooks are getting great reviews. There's a new app coming that even lets you run Windows apps in the Mac OS without having to run Windows!

I dumped Windows 6 years ago and I've never looked back. My Mac does everything, and I use it to make my living...

What is your budget? If you're travelling with it a lot then I would suggest you consider the weight. You don't need a 15" screen to surf the web, but very light weight costs money.

I would like to stay as close to say 1200 as possible, but I am ready to go up to say 1800 or even 2000 if it is really worth my while, that would of course have to have all the bells and whistles I am looking for... like that PC to TV thing... as I am a huge UFC fan I can't imagine missing another live event...

the Mac sounds REALLY nice and I have liked some of my friends laptops
the size is good and the amount of memory seemed good too

remember I want to put a couple movies on this bad boy, and they can take up space

and how does limewire work with a laptop? doesn't it always have to have a on-line connection?

and where is a good place to GET a Mac...

Alot of it depends on what you want to do, of course. For me, a decent-sized harddisk (80GB) and ram (1gb) was all I needed. If you want to wait a few weeks, Apple is having their yearly Worldwide Devcon and there's talk of upgraded Macbooks & Macbook Pros in the pipeline. If so, that means the older units will on sale.

Another neat trick is heading to your local Apple store (Galleria?) and seeing if they have any refurb units. Same 1-year warranty, remanufactured so there's no defects so it is for all intents a "new" machine, but you can save hundreds.

Buy the harddisk upgrade - it's like $50 to go from a 60gb drive to an 80. Buy the RAM elsewhere - otherworld computing sells a 1-gig single dimm for the MacBook for the same price as Apple's 512MB upgrade. I don't know if you can mix memory, but going the single dimm route means you can add another dimm in the future, otherwise you have to throw some ram out (there's only 2 slots for ram). Price - $110. TransInternational in Anaheim had a 1Gb for $85, so shop around (or just go to Frys and have them beat the price)

A 2Gb Macbook, 512MB ram, 80GB, superdrive dvd option - $1350. It's not the cheapest option but it's got all the cool toys, 802.11b/g, bluetooth2, yada yada yada. It's not a cheap, empty box - it's a good deal.

You can buy them here: http://www.apple.com/buy/

I can confirm that wi-fi is indeed free at the Golden Tulip Amsterdam Centre. Or at least it was last May. I do wonder about how many WAP's they have scattered around the place, tho, as the signal strength was very weak in my room which was not near the front desk area. You might try to ask for a room near a WAP when you check-in. FWIW, if you arrive early as I did and there is a room available they will check you in when you arrive. Unfortunately when I arrived at 8:30 there were no rooms ready and none opened up until about 14:00. Hope you have better luck!

http://www.wififreespot.com/europe.html
http://www.waag.org/waagsite/
http://www.debalie.nl/
http://www.lloydhotel.com/

Good on ya, Woofiee! There's also http://www.hotspotamsterdam.com . I was actually hoping to tap into the hotspotamsterdam network when I stayed at the Golden Tulip Amsterdam Centre because it looked like it might be within their footprint and I didn't trust the idea of free wi-fi at a hotel. I mean this is a revenue stream for the buggers so why would they turn it off? I can't answer that but I'm glad they did. Also there was no sign of hotspotamsterdam or other commercial networks from my room. There were a couple of open local wi-fi nets that I could see but, of course, I would never logon to them. Ahem. Anyways, I think the hotel's free wi-fi network might have multiple WAP's on its premises because the place is quite spread out and that some rooms will naturally be closer than others to the source. My advice is to ask the desk when checking in for a room that has a strong wi-fi signal and hope the clerk understands wtf you're saying.

I never understood the problem with tapping into open wifi networks - it's not stealing in any sense of the word.

Change the paradigm to another resource that needs to be paid for from a limited source and flows - let's use water.

You buy water. It's metered even, so you're paying for what you use.

If you turned on the taps and allowed the water to flow out of your house, through the windows and doors, down the stairs to the street, would the people out front with buckets be criminals? Terrorists?

No - any normal society would blame the homeowner for not minding the flow of the resource. They'd be labeled an idiot and anyone on the street could claim it as fair game.

Not convinced? Change the metaphor to garbage. The police even use this as a means of collecting evidence out of the possession of the spewer. If they allow this to enter public space, then it's fair game and you'd be in court quicker than you can say "habeas corpus".

This "stealing wifi" argument is nonsense. If I were a lawyer, I'd spend my life arguing against it.

DELETED

Your argument is completely fallacious. While a unsecured point is simply radiating, it isn't costing the owner anything; it only costs when someone accesses it and starts uploading & downloading, assuming it's a metered connection.

A more accurate analogy than the ones you suggest is if your water is metered and you have a tap outside your front door. If, while you're out, your neighbour decides to attach a hose to your tap and water his lawn, it's cost you money. Do you still regard that as not stealing?

Logging on to someone else's wireless point is theft of resources. Don't try & defend your own flexible morality by claiming that because you don't think it costs anything it's ok to steal. It's not your connection. End of story.

No - what I'm saying is that if you allow something of yours to flow from private space into public space, the public can have a right to access it. it depends on your interpretation of the stream as property.

Most people see the stream as a utility - shared and divided, but never individually owned.

Garbage can still be owned and out of the jurisprudence of the law if it remains on your property - ownership, not intention, is the key here.

The analogy to water is quite valid - the wifi owner can turn off external access by encoding the stream (like shredding your bills before dumping, to mix in the garbage analogy), or can limit the nic's that are able to connect to the system, or even make the network private so it isn't seen by wireless cards.

And if you're going to argue that the usual wifi person doesn't know how to do this, don't bother - it doesn't matter. That's an argument for better wifi software not wifi access. Airport users can do this easily (I do) and i have a heavily saturated apartment that no-one sees. I use 128-bit keys, WPA2 and 802.11g exclusively, so as far as I can see, my "water" stays in my house.

Now if someone decided to poke holes in the wall to get to it, *that* is stealing.

let's not get too far away from the topic of this thread, which barely qualifies for inclusion in the first place, shall we?

Well, as I said, light is expensive but you might like to consider this review of a Sony Vaio. This might be the UK version but i suspect that there must be a US equivalent.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=3210

Think about what you plan to do with it. If you're travelling with it a lot then you're much more likely to take it with you if it doesn't weigh you down and you know the battery won't run out when you're browsing while sipping coffee in a cafe.

OK. No more on this from me..

Quite right, quite right... (but damn - I was having fun)