Buying a notebook

[RaisinKane]

I am in the process of purchasing a PC notebook exclusively for graphic and web design. My budget is 2000-2600. I found a seemingly great deal in the HP zd8000. I would like some recommendations/critiques on the system listed below. I greatly appreciate the advice.

Specs:
HP Pavilion zd8000 customizable Notebook PC
- Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2
- Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 540 w/HT Technology, 3.2GHz
- 17.0" WSXGA+ BrightView Wide Viewing (1680x1050)
- 2.0GB DDR2 SDRAM, 400MHz (2x1024MB)
- 80 GB 4200 RPM Hard Drive - will I need a higher RPM??
- FREE Upgrade to 8X DVD +/- RW/R & CD-RW Combo
- 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) X600
- 54g(TM) Integ. Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth
- 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

 

[Brian]

only recomendation would be get XP Pro on it instead of XP Home

 

[Scott]

I am in the process of purchasing a PC notebook exclusively for graphic and web design. My budget is 2000-2600. I found a seemingly great deal in the HP zd8000. I would like some recommendations/critiques on the system listed below. I greatly appreciate the advice.

Specs:
HP Pavilion zd8000 customizable Notebook PC
- Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2
- Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 540 w/HT Technology, 3.2GHz
- 17.0" WSXGA+ BrightView Wide Viewing (1680x1050)
- 2.0GB DDR2 SDRAM, 400MHz (2x1024MB)
- 80 GB 4200 RPM Hard Drive - will I need a higher RPM??
- FREE Upgrade to 8X DVD +/- RW/R & CD-RW Combo
- 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) X600
- 54g(TM) Integ. Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth
- 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

4,200 RPM drives suck. On my laptop (Pentium 4 2.8ghz, 512mb sdram) the disk is a major bottleneck (along with the sdram), simply because read & write times are too slow when doing anything major. Try to get at least 7,200 RPM.

 

[RaisinKane]

Thanks for the recommendations!!

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

Yeah, you'll want a faster hard drive. If you do plan on doing a lot of large graphics, 80 GB may not be enough... Also I would recommend getting an external harddrive or to back up to another computer so if the laptop fails, you don't lose all of your data.