Laptops: the good, the bad, and the ugly
 

We are getting ready to upgrade our laptops. Naturally, what we paid $3k for two years ago now has more RAM and larger drives for 1/3 the price today.

Any recommendations from those that have purchased a laptop in the last 6 months, excluding Mac?

Weight and performance much more important than price.

TIA

i was just about to open the same thread... i will jump in if you dont mind :)
i want battery life!

Well, I have to admit, I am still running the same battery on my Toshiba that it came with. I got the external battery backup which gives me about 4 hours.

Admittedly, I rarely run on battery alone, mostly when flying, but I have no complaints.

But feel free to jump in.

Headed off to Circuit City and whatever other stores there are out here to see what's what.

I feel silly about that, I tried to get a laptop with long battery life, and now the only time I use the battery is when moving from one outlet to another in the house.

Look out for specials the Vostro 1400 series. They're basically just a black Inspiron. The hardware is decent mid-grade and the price is "ramen noodles". If you get the largest battery, it sticks out of the back roughly an inch, but it gives you about 6 hours.

I like the lenovo machines myself. You can get good deals on them by watching dealnews.com

Toshiba laptop for real work and play.

I am using an old HP Pavilion and it has been great and bought a new hp pavilion the other week

another great thing about them is all the ports that they come with... I am using the newest style of aircard for wireless and the xpresscard port that it uses comes with all the pavilions, whereas alot of the other brands don't have them in the price range

been really happy with my old one and it looks like the new one is built even slicker :2 cents:

Baddog .. I know you aren't interested in the MACs .. but Battery life and performance are retarded .. I had been a PC guy since 96 .. and the fear of the learning curve was painful .. but it's been a year and I am still amazed almost daily by the performance or reliability .. sorry to chime in, but I haven't been happier ... and haven't throw a laptop across the room since my purchase ..

i will never buy a non HP laptop again.. i have had a few of the top other brands..

HP has been the best by far... :thumbsup

me and dean have done real well with fujitsu

http://shopfujitsu.com/Consumer.php?...27&W T.srch=1

I had an HP which was great, now I am on a Toshiba for 2 years and it still runs perfect. Battery can be upgraded to a higher cell unit I believe. Their support here in The Netherlands is just perfect if there is a technical failure. They will pick it up and bring it back to you fixed for a fair price. I would pick Toshiba or the professional HP range.

Good luck !

It's true... no laptop casualties since last summer...

Personally I always have been a big Dell fan...

Their studio laptops are looking pretty clean right now. I would personally go for an XPS machine, but somehow I'm not pegging you as a heavy gamer, so may not need some of the extra bells and whistles.

yep toshiba

I use a HP Pavilion dv9000, works fine :)

If I were to ever go back to a PC and forsake apple, I'd go with a Toshiba. The last non mac notebook I had was a toshiba, and I've owned 2 others, plus an HP and a sony. The HP had lots of little problems, and I'm not a fan of them or Compaq. The sony was a brick out of the box, that I returned, got another brick, and moved on to a toshiba, which lasted me a long time for a lot less expensive machine.

I'm not a fan of gateway or dell, mostly because of their shitty business practices. I'm not sure if it's the same now, but they used to make peripheral companies pay them to license drivers, or they would block them on their computers. Canon printers for instance, would never work on a Dell, and to replace the ram in a Gateway my mom owned, I had to ship it back to them, and they had it forever. Proprietary only works on internal hardware, and you have to have better access to it then mailing it in to get it fixed.

Def no the case, at least anymore, with Dell... I swap parts in and out, constantly of my Dells... and never have any driver issues.

dell inspiron are very good 1521

Sony Vaio FTW!

Get a Mac! Ahem...if you really don't want to, go for a Sony Vaio or something from Lenovo.

Primary problem with that is the $1,000's in software that would have to be replaced.

We were just talking about that.


Just got back from a few hours of shopping and no buying. Looks like we will have to get it online since stores don't seem to have crap in the way of selection.

Looks like our requirements are going to be suitable for an extreme gaming machine.

7200 RPM HDD
4 GB RAM
Duo core processor(s) (over 2.0 GHz)
Under 7 lbs
14-15" monitor

I guess we will get docking stations for the external drives, monitor, speakers.

On-site (in store) repair mandatory.

Biggest hassle with stores is it is all Vista. I heard we can get XP if we order online. Otherwise I am thinking we can partition the drive to keep Vista on a small portion and use XP for the rest. Has anyone tried that?

Anyone have anything like this?

take a look at the thinkpad t series should have everything you need.

i got a t-60 myself :)

I kind of like the power of a tower system over a laptop, however, for business purposes I would get a mac.

That's good. The first dell I ever worked on, had specially made memory that was a certain size, so you had to send it in to upgrade it even, lol.
Gateway was the king of driver bullshit, but I doubt they'd be able to exist in a market like we are in today if they still did it.

I did, but had to use a full version of windows to do it. The upgraded version crashed over and over again.

Sony laptops are only good for looking cool and being extremely overpriced which mac users are used to so mac people that want a PC laptop usually go with the Sony ones.

Personally I'm still using a Dell E1705 and have had a few Dell 15" both before and after that. Before this 1705 I had a big compaq which had a 17" screen and weighed quite a bit more, ran hotter, less better and was more expensive. My wife has a 14" HP with the touchscreen, webcam, thumbprint thing and all kinds of other shit and honestly its a POS.

stick with a 15" monitor and avoid the glossy screens if you work in bright areas.

The monitor is the least of my concerns.

I bought a new HP last october, it works well. Got the docking station for, I run dual monitors, and it has space for a hard drive. Wireless fullsize keyboard & mouse, and I just pop it off the docking station and take it with me when I go out of town, or toss it in my backpack when I leave on my motorcycle.

Use Windows Parralels and slowly migrate to MAC progs as time goes by.

Dont forget that you can still run any Windows Program on a MAC

It's funny that all the Mac-tards can't accept the phase "excluding Mac".

It's GFY.

Thinkpad/lenovo makes some great laptops

I have two compaq's and they have both been solid never a problem and I beat the shit out of them, if you paid 3k in the past and if you budget is still in that area Alienware is the way to go

Alienware M15x FTW!

That's one we are looking at. Kind of heavy, but not too bad I guess.

How long have you had yours? Ever have to contact their support?

Had it since February 1st (pre-ordered) and haven't had a single issue. If you are worried about battery life though, I would get the extra battery. This thing gets like 1.5 hours in stealth mode.

:thumbsup

My Toshiba Satelite is in its 4th year - and not a single problem. It stays on 10-12 hours everyday on average.

But I also got a new Acer laptop recently. Its faster, of course...bigger HD, etc. But the Vista sucks donkey balls.

macs are nice to use and dont get bogged down with shit

but if your not an OSX user, it would be a pain in the ass to use

i do designs, so i second my opinion, 2 lamps screens Vaio deliver. And I saw no better choice.