Also, what exactly is Centrino, and why are laptops with half the processor speed twice the price? I was an AMD girl, so I haven't been paying attention.

Centrino is an Intel marketing term for the combination of a Pentium-M and their wireless chip. If you don't care about having an Intel wireless chip, a "plain" Pentium-M based laptop would be just as good.

As for processor speed, the Pentium-M is more efficient (does more work, consumes less power) than any other Intel Pentium.

I'm curious because I got a Tivo yesterday and the phone jack is nowhere near the TV.

I got the DWL-120 wireless card from newegg. More expensive than ita's ($35) but I can confirm that it works great -- it gets a really strong signal. Unfortunately, newegg doesn't have it anymore. Just a refurbished version for $30 which I wouldn't recommend (too risky).

Mine is refurbished too -- 1 month parts, 1 labour. I'm hoping it'll fritz early if it fritzes at all.

As for processor speed, the Pentium-M is more efficient (does more work, consumes less power) than any other Intel Pentium.

Okay, but, sufficiently more efficient to justify buying 1.7ghz vs 2.8 for Pentium 4? I saw the nifty details like, it cycles power based on what processes are running and such, but I couldn't work out if there was a comparable level of performance against older cards with faster run speeds.

It's moot now, 'cause I bought this Toshiba. I still really wanted the Vaio, but couldn't justify the extra cost for lesser specs. My really big waffling was over this Toshiba over this one, which doesn't have the widescreen, but is a 3.2 and has a DVD burner, but for $100 more.

In the end I went with the cheaper one, but I still feel waffly about it.

The 1.7GHz Pentium M is probably a lot faster than a 2.8GHz P4. Seriously.

The P4 was specifically engineered to simply have a fast clock, because that's what the marketing department wanted. The engineers ended up with a chip with a very fast clock speed, but one that doesn't get much work done per clock cycle. It also, incidentally, puts out a huge amount of heat.

The Pentium M, on the other hand, was correctly engineered, so the tradeoffs between clock speed, heat, power consumption and throughput were all taken into account.

Not coincidentally, the P4 is a dead end. All of Intel's future chips, both desktop and mobile, will be based on the Pentium M architecture.

Okay, that's what I wanted to know. I just didn't know where the economies of proper engineering crossed.

It doesn't matter, anyway, 'cause I can't afford the M's, but still. For the future.

I swear I looked online, but didn't find anything useful. Here's the deal: My newish laptop has being saying the battery was 96% charged, and currently charging, most of the time for weeks. I keep it plugged in all the time. So I just unplugged it, to run the battery down. Does this even make sense? I am going off of old, half-remembered, cordless phone instructions.

I would offer to help you, but the reason I am in laptop buying hell is that my laptop claims it is fully charged, all the time, but won't actually run off the battery. Which was okay, but now the power adapter jack has crapped out again.

So. On to hell.

I cancelled my order with Tiger, 'cause I noticed that a) they had a short warrantee period, and if I bought the extended, it would raise the price to where I could buy an equally nice Sony with a year's warrantee; and b) they told me when I called to make the change that I couldn't ship to a hotel. I should have just lied and said I was an employee.

So then I went direct through Sony; they had some nice, if slightly more expensive, stuff on their clearance pages. I called the guy up to see if I could get a non-profit discount (I can, but it's less than the clearance discount). In the end, I said, fine, let's just buy the clearance item. Guess what? Out of stock!

Great.

Now I'm back to square one, scouring the web. If anyone wants to play along, here's what I'm looking for.

Edited, 'cause I always forget my breaks.

- $750 to $1150, incl. 1 yr parts & service
- P4 2.8 Ghz or PM 1.6 Ghz, not Celeron
- refurb, clearance or demo stock is fine, open box is not
- in order of pref; Sony, Toshiba, Dell. Not Compaq, Gateway, emachines, Systemax, or HP.
- 512 RAM
- 40 to 80 gigs HD
- 15.4 WXGA
- CDRW at minimum, DVD+-RW ideally
- 805.11b-g wireless
- RJ11 & RJ45 ports
- USB at minimum, firewire ideally
- XP Pro, prolly, Office is nice, but not necessary

Oh, and it needs to be able to be shipped 2-3 night to a hotel room. I think I'm giving up hope shortly.

My newish laptop has being saying the battery was 96% charged, and currently charging, most of the time for weeks.

My brother, who is an IT guy, told me that newer batteries never charge to 100% now - supposedly saves battery life. However, mine usually goes to 98 or 99. 96% seems a bit low.

I cancelled my order with Tiger

Good. If you plan on using the laptop unplugged, the Pentium-M based ones are really the way to go. The regular P4's will drain a battery very very quickly, in addition to running hotter than Faith in leather pants *ahem*

I'm posting as a distraction from work, but I'll dig around a little tomorrow.

eta - um, I needed more distraction. Any chance you're willing to compromise on any of those specs? If so, which ones?