Hi m8s

This will be an unusual post.
I have been offered to get 3 devices payed by the company and I have to choose them soon (we will buy the three products). They are: A laptop, a PDA and a big LCD screen.
The most important factor in all of them is the graphics. The budget is not the big factor this time, but it is not unlimited. I appreciate your help here. Thanks in advance.

The laptop:
I actually own an Acer laptop with Nvidia Geforce2Go 100 graphics but the screen is really bad, the angle of view is really limited and the colors are really bad. I need the laptop screen with nice crisp colors and with good response time. It must be easy with the eyes. Must be at least 15'', preferably Centrino powered (for the battery benefits) and a nice fast graphics card can be a plus (that let me play some games) but not necessary. It must have firewire and DVD-ROM (better if it is a DVD+RW).
I have heard that DELL, Toshiba and Compaq laptops are good quality.

The PDA:
I don't know so much about this, but it must communicate nice with my Windows XP systems. Screen is again the main factor, it must be easy with the eyes and it must be color. Have heard that the Ipaqs have nice screen. I have almost bought a Casio Cassiopeia some years ago. Battery here is a plus and it would be nice if I can connect good storage (like those IBM micro hard drives). I really don't know if going for last Windows or a Palm based PDA. I think I could prefer the Windows one (because I administer lots of windows machines) and I think that the amount of PDA Windows software has grown in the last years. Nice games is a plus also here (for that moments of long waiting times, like airports). It must be easy to connect via wireless standards.

The LCD monitor:
The words here are big, crisp colors and as less ghosting as possible. I already own a NEC LCD2010X 20'' screen. It has nice colors and contrast but it has terrible ghosting in games! I am looking for something in the 23-25'' range. It must scale down well to low resolutions like 800x600 because I use some special external devices that only work at this resolution. The NEC that I have scales well here from its native 1280x1024 to 800x600.

That's it. I hope I can find some help from you m8s. Thanks again.

I would recommand you to get the new dell inspiron 9100, the one with mobility 9700 and 15.4" UltraSharp LCD. The graphic card of this notebook is upgradable if i am not mistaken.

I recommend getting a Compaq R3000
AMD 64 w/ mobility 9600Pro

Or it comes in p4 @ 3.2 w.ht

I personally do not know anything about up to date PDAs but I would recommend a Palm PDA ... my father bought some really old Palm 5000 (its years old) and its an awesome thingy ... he still uses it nowadays

The Compaq R3000 recommanded by NIKEMARINE is sweet too.

Thanks guys. Is the Compaq R3000 better than the last DELL Inspirons? The Inspirons use Centrino that can give advanyages on the battery field.
The must difficult item until now is been the screen. It is difficult to pick up a good big (24'' for example) model with good response times.

As far as the laptop is concerned go for either a compaq or a dell DON'T GO FOR TOSHIBA. I have had three toshiba laptops over the years and they were all exceptionally poor in build quality. With the last one it had to return it four times before they got the screen working on it.

PDA's Go with an ipaq or anything that's Pocket PC 2003, as this uses the .NET compact framework, and is fully compatible with windows and easily configurable with bluetooth and wi fi.

Finally the monitor I'd recommend NEC LCD's. I'm currenty running a 18" NEC Multisync 1830 and have never had a better monitor. Also I've read a few reviews lately that say the current model NEC's are both good quality as well as good value.

They tend to have high res and refresh rates considering how cheap they are (19" for about £550 - £600)

The inspiron 9100 is not using the centrino, but pentium 4. Go to http://www.dell.com and find out the model you want and you can customize the notebook through their web page too. I have the Inspiron 5100 (customized) and i have to tell you that this notebook of mine is good in build quality. I like it very much. Thanks Dell.


I heard that the compact is not bad too, maybe you can go to their site and find out. Ohh.. and one thing, Dell's notebook is not very nice looking, but not ugly either.

NEC monitors are good, my actual LCD NEC 20'' has nice colors but it present ghosting in games and that is terrible. I have the 2010X model, 3 years old. Maybe some new models have fixed this problem?

Sony make good LCD too.

I know what you mean about the ghosting I youst to have that when i first had my monitor but i turned vsync on and have never had a problem. Just make sure that you turn vsync back off before you benchmark.

Nice advice that one of Vsync. Thanks! I think new monitors have better responce times. This NEC one that I have now sure is not new at all.