is this a good idea?

hey guys,
well my macbook just gave out and i need somewhat of a portable system with a decent kick to it with a decent price... from what i have seen i was looking at the Compal JHL90 barebone... it has the montevina system in it so i can upgrade the cpu to a faster speed if i need it later but for now i have an extra T8300 laying around so im gonna put that in there... on to the questions:

is it a good idea to start wth a barebone (since i have a tight budget) and addon as i go on?

is it better for me to build it or to have a company build it?

how is the screen on the JHL90 compared to a mac?

how portable is the system?

how many hours of battery would i get?

well anyother info you can give me would be great ... thanks alot guys

 

Does Montevina even clock down to 800Mhz FSB? I don't think you can use T8300.

I do not see advantage to barebones unless you already have the parts lying around. Even buying from newegg costs more other than RAM.

 

well its costing me 780 for the barebone and everything and then i just have to pay for ram and HDD and i have a 320GB HDD sitting around and ram is pretty cheap from newegg. yea im pretty sure it supports 800 FSB.

lookin the chipset section of compal's JHL90 page here

it says:

"800 MHz and 1066MHz FSB support"

so i think it does support it hopefully someone can answer my questions

 

You might actually find it cheaper to have a company build it. Look here and here. Those are both built on the Compal JHL90.

If you want a cheaper Montevina, check this out. It's about the same price as the barebone, but with everything on it.

 

well i dont want a cheaper montevina and since i am taking it overseas a warranty really does not matter to me... i have seen both those systems but when i put everything together it comes together for a GOOD chunk of change the barebone is costing me 850 since i have everything but the ram for this system...but with the built systems i have to pay for the CPU and the ram and the HDD... which adds to the price and i was thinking why pay for it when i i have spare parts laying around... but my main uestions are up there and i wanted to know how heavy the system is i see 6.5 with battery pack some places and others i see just 6.8lb so that doesnt make sense to me and has anyone built a whitebook before how hard is it and (for someone who has built computers) would it be hard??

 

well i did it... i just ordered the compal JHL90 with a P8600 (Thank you Nirvana and MKang25 for your help)... this laptop really attracted me because its such a great system for the price... i payed $1k for it and it has the latest motherboard and is a pretty strong 15.4" laptop... here are the specs:

Compal JHL90 Notebook Computer 1
Display: 15.4" WSXGA+ Glare
Video Card: nVidia 9600 GT 512MB
CPU: P8600
Memory: None (ordered 4GB(2x2GB) OCZ DDR800)
TurboMemory: 2GB
HDD: None (320GB Samsung)
CD: 8x DVD+/-RW DL
External FDD: None
Battery: 9-Cell Li-Ion Battery
AC Adapter: Standard
Network Adapter: Integrated GBLAN
Bluetooth: Included
WLAN: Intel 5100N
TV Tuner: None
OS: None (Windows Vista Home Premium 64 - bit)

cant wait for it to arrive since my macbook died its been weird that i cant take a laptop out to the lounge or any where i want since the m17x is pretty heavy well cant wait and i will keep you guys posted on the situation and i will have plenty of pics of me putting the system all together