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Desktop replacement Dream Machine II

Ouch. Weight is listed in the full specifications. Only 2 hours of battery life too. That's not too bad for all that's in it, though, and CDN$2999 doesn't seems too unreasonable a price.

Eurocom has a 2.4 GHz laptop. And for your americans, it might be a really good value. Of course, I know nothing about them.

Sakhmet.

Right now my laptop is a TTX. Without getting into a long discussion about how much their laptops suck, suffice it to say that their claim to quality is that their laptops are manufactured by the same company as Dell or some other big hardware firm.

On the other hand, from my experiences and what I've seem, Eurocom seem to be pretty solid laptops. Linux friendly too. =)

Eurocom has had these for years, they're probably not as advanced as the Gateway, but still...

Oh, if you think those are a little pricy, keep in mind that the prices are quoted in Canadian Dollars.

They even have a 17" model. Beat that, iMac!

Disclamer: I like macs. I'd like to see a 17" iMac, but something tells me I'm not going to.

Eurocom Does. Also one of their laptops has a built in memstick / sd card reader

Gateway actually had a PC with a monitor with a built in PC about 4 years ago (I don't think it was LCD). Anyhow, same time the iMac was coming ou,t or even before.

Take a look at Eurocom. They've had the LP260 All-in-one LCD PC for over a year now. They beat Apple to it, and I think it's a very cool design.

Point is, everyone's 'ripping' everyone elses ideas off in today's industry, to the point that you can't really have an original product without hinting other products.

I ran into the same problem last year - I wanted something that I could take around with me, I didn't even care if it had a battery, AC power is fine as long as it had a NIC and large screen.

I got lucky and found a off-name brand laptop (Eurocom, a Canadian company who sells high-end laptops to education/government types).

Being a low-income student, I had two choices - a $300-400 pentium (P200ish) laptop with tiny screen or start up another loan and go for an off-lease $1000 machine that was far more than I needed. I feel your pain!

I got lucky on eBay - found a Eurocom (14" TFT / 350MHz AMD / 128MB) and paid relatively little for it (similar laptops at the time were over $1000). Off-name laptops have been good to me - do a few searches before hand though, as there may be some problems with embedded sound/video cards and linux support. No problems for me though.

The shameless plug: I lost my job recently and I had to choose between rent and selling the laptop. The upside is in a few months, I hope to have a better paying job (graduating in a month!) and will probably buy an off-name again. Maybe even new.

The auction is up here.

Other tips: Buy a mini keyboard, optical mouse and a few other trinkets for it too - I tried for a while to use the original keyboard, but when surfaces are too high, it gets uncomfortable REAL quick. It's a little more hassle, but bending your wrists in awkward angles for a few hours at a time is *not* a good idea.

A laptop would never replace my home machine but like my Palm VX, it complements wonderfully.

Good luck!