Hi Victor,

I received a Dell catalog in the mail today at work. Given that I do all of my computing on laptops, I took a look at those. Seems as though Dell is eliminating a lot of stuff from their laptops, or making them add-on options that you have to plug in somewhere somehow. ...and if you need to plug in more than two things, you gotta get more stuff to do that, not a desirable feature for any computer system.

...examples, no serial or parallel ports. If you want to hook up an existing printer or mouse that requires a serial or parallel port, you have to buy a peripheral device. ...reading a couple other responses in this thread, I hadn't thought to look for an internal floppy drive, but having to use an external drive for floppies is the manufacturer taking an unusual step in trying to cut costs. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Using files written using Win 98 and XP should be no problem. The only problem I've found with XP Home edition is, it is not networking friendly. You have to add some files from XP Pro to get the system to network easily.

Go with the Pentium chip over the Celeron. The difference in speed is definitely noticeable

I use a mouse instead of the touch-pad on the keyboard that came with my newest laptop. It is an optical mouse (no ball, will work on any surface, usually rolling around my knee on an airplane 'cause there isn't enough room on the fold down tray). It plugs into a USB slot.

...bottom line is, I can tell you what I have on my newest laptop. 2.0 gig Pentium processor, 40 gig hard drive, 256 meg memory, combination DVD/CD/CD read-write, 3.5 floppy, 2 PCMCIA slots for adding exotic hardware like a wireless network card, three USB slots, a serial port and a parallel port, an S-video connection so I can use my TV set as a monitor (handy for DVD's), 56k modem, 10/100 network connection and a 15" active screen. It's a Toshiba that I bought last February, my fourth Toshiba laptop.

I've been told quite a few times that Dell has great customer support. I've never had to call Toshiba customer support, so I don't know how good it might be. My personal experiences with their machines has been flawless. I have had to replace two keyboards though the years. One that I wore out and one that had a Coke spilled on it...

Bob :)