Please help me buy a laptop

Good call on Toshiba Satellite Pro. I have had two myself and purchased two more for friends. My current one is a widescreen Multimedia machine in a red case with Harmon Kardon speakers! I have been pleased with them all, even one that failed on first boot. It was replaced fast under warranty and has been fine ever since.
 
Match your requirements with the machine. Although an HP fan I picked up an Acer 2500 with great screen passing through. Sod all frills etc used for general office and small photo clean ups. Magic.

Our office is all HP and when ever there is a problem with speed it has always been a combination of incompatibility of user, location, application and specification.

Moved PAs & administrators onto cellerons, CAD technicians onto dual processors & loads of graphics and the boss onto a PDA.

Oh and blocked all games.
 
who ever said stay away from acer and recomended ibm must of been drunk, ibm for computers is like coldsteel for knives. acer's computers are much better.
 
ArcofDescent said:
Apple Macbook. You can run Windows and OSX, very compact, great design, etc.
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Why choose, get an Apple (best engineered anyway) and run either system as a native application as you see fit. Can't do better than that!

Cheers.
 
durbanposion said:
who ever said stay away from acer and recomended ibm must of been drunk, ibm for computers is like coldsteel for knives. acer's computers are much better.
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Is there a particular reason for your assessment? I surely would have ranked IBM Thinkpads at the top, though it remains to be seen whether the Thinkpads stay there now that they are made by Lenovo. Mind you, I am not saying anything against Acer - I have no experience with them, maybe they are at the top as well.

But I certainly don't regard IBM as the Cold Steel of computers. They may be mediocre gaming machines and offer little immediate bang for the buck (slower computers at higher prices), rather they are/were business machines with good long-term reliability and customer support. Our computer science research group here at university uses mostly Thinkpads and two or three Macs, and the same goes for the network admins. And last year we had an IT conference here with hundreds of computer scientists visiting from all over the world. As I was about to purchase a private notebook I had a good look at what the people were using during conference breaks - again, three out of four were IBM, the rest mostly Macs and occasionally something else. All of these people are essentially professional computer geeks who tend to be picky about hardware.

Kristofer
 
To wrap up: I bought him a Toshiba Satellite Pro A100-SK8. Mainly because I already own two Toshiba laptops (so if he has small operating problems, I might be able to help him a little bit); it was discounted very nicely and came with a bonus of Office 2003; the tech guy who built his desktop recommended Toshibas because he said parts are cheaper and they're easy to work on.

The Apple vs. PC question was never an issue for him: he's simply not willing to make the switch. He is barely comfortable using a PC.

As for me, I probably WILL switch from a PC laptop to an Apple in a year or so. My son just adapted his boss's Apple to use Windows and he said the new software does a fantastic job.

Thanks all! :)
 
Grey Area said:
Is there a particular reason for your assessment? I surely would have ranked IBM Thinkpads at the top, though it remains to be seen whether the Thinkpads stay there now that they are made by Lenovo. Mind you, I am not saying anything against Acer - I have no experience with them, maybe they are at the top as well.

But I certainly don't regard IBM as the Cold Steel of computers. They may be mediocre gaming machines and offer little immediate bang for the buck (slower computers at higher prices), rather they are/were business machines with good long-term reliability and customer support. Our computer science research group here at university uses mostly Thinkpads and two or three Macs, and the same goes for the network admins. And last year we had an IT conference here with hundreds of computer scientists visiting from all over the world. As I was about to purchase a private notebook I had a good look at what the people were using during conference breaks - again, three out of four were IBM, the rest mostly Macs and occasionally something else. All of these people are essentially professional computer geeks who tend to be picky about hardware.

Kristofer
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I couldn't agree more. I'm a network engineer, and can pretty much have any notebook I want, at any price. I chose a Thinkpad, and have not looked back. The reliability and durability of the Thinkpad line is legendary, and also quite true. Unless you buy a specially hardened laptop, you‘re generally not going to get something as bombproof as a Thinkpad. Service and support is very good. You can also dump a software image from 3-year old Thinkpad, onto your brand new Thinkpad, and it’ll work with minimal problems. That’s huge in my business. The packaged software is also very useful for the technically oriented user. The hardware encryption is a big plus. The Thinkpad isn't exactly necessary for a home user. But for a business user, the total cost of ownership is much less with the Thinkpad line of laptops.

I have played with some of the recent Lenovo branded Thinkpads and PC’s. To tell you the truth, they look even better than the IBM branded stuff. I was very worried there for a while, when the change was first made, but the change seems to have been a very good thing for the consumer.
 
Buzzbait said:
....Unless you buy a specially hardened laptop, you‘re generally not going to get something as bombproof as a Thinkpad....
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Oh yea? ;) I have an almost new Gridcase 1550sx. Now THAT's bombproof! :D

(Want to fix it for me? The motherboard is burnt out and NO ONE has found a way to turn this (very) expensive "anchor" back into a computer! )
 
Buzzbait said:
Literally!!!! How much does that sucker weigh?
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I'll go check out the specs tomorrow (I think I know where I last saw it). It is in MINT condition, almost new, not a scratch on it. I wish I could find someone who could figure out how to make it useable.

It weighs just slightly less than a small compact car - but, hey, it's "portable"! :) I think I paid about Cdn$6,000 for it - an "impulse purchase" at the time. :o ;) :o
 
Get and HP they have a good web site to update software. Make sure it’s an AMD dv5000z and has at least 1 gig of ram. But I stress make sure its AMD Turion they have better battery life, and faster then Pentium. These few things will make all the difference. I have ordered many laptops for friends and these are the most important things. Otherwise your friend will grow impatient with how slow his computer is once he has had it for a couple months. Most people don’t defrag their comp so it just slows down the longer they have had it. So make sure and show him how to defrag it. Please listen to me it hurts when I see people buying pentium. It would be like buying a crappy knife
 
More battery problems !! Apple now has recalled 1.8 million lithium batteries since some have started fires. These batteries , like the Dell's were made by SONY !!...BTW Sony has just purchased a music website . Maybe they should go back to the basics of good electronics !!
 
I do agree that IBMs are solid busines platorms and the new lenovos are keeping with the trend. One of my clients just rolled out over 100 T60s so needless to say I've spent PLENTY of time on them configuring and helping the users and they are solid, and well built. I however do not like the preinstalled software, overly bloated and just tooooo much. They ordered them with the fingerprint scanners as well which they will never use so there is a bunch of unneeded software for those as well.
 
Buzzbait, ZJCHaser: Good to hear Lenovo is keeping up the quality so far. I have no need to upgrade right now, but I can definitely see an X61s for my future. :)

Kristofer
 
Avoid ACER at any cost, I have seen atleast five with cracked plastics, fallen off pieces of chasi. Also not uncommon is that motherboard dies for no reason.
I also don't like ASUS much, not exactly rubbish but not good as well (for their price).
IBM and Toshiba is way to go. Sony has great displays, but as overall piece it seems to me more fashionable than reliable.
Macbook may not be bad, but I have never liked MacOS...
(btw don't buy most expensive ones, get the decent (or even cheap) one for fraction of price and buy another one when you think it isn't fast enough (or starts having troubles after warranty expires)

STR said:
Everytime I've spent big bucks on a lap top it disappointed me.
I only buy reconditioned ones now for a few hundred bucks. The way I see it none of the ones I've bought new have lasted more than a couple of years.
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Well, it just makes me think: if none of your notebooks lasted long in acceptable condition, what do you expect from buying already so old notebook (someone had to get rid off it, question is why?Hmm?)?
 
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