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First off, FUCK BUYING OFF THE SHELF SYSTEMS! All these brick and mortars are going to do is sell you a craptastic system at an inflated price. And of COURSE all they'll sell you is Windows 8.

Dell

HP

Lenovo

Toshiba

Samsung

Sony

Sager You can still order their products with Win7. The configuration app gives you the option.

MSI MSI laptops still come with Win7. There's a push for Win8, but they come with Win7 by default.

Acer still sells Win7 laptops (just no way on the web to filter for them, so I can't provide a definitive link).

That should be enough to get you started.

Toshiba Portege with extended battery. Battery is semi-outside the case, as a support of the laptop. Very light, very nice design. I'm getting 8-10h battery life :)

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=503433

I'm using a Toshiba Satellite L355-S7834 laptop with a 17-inch screen, full size 104 key US keyboard with separate 10-key numeric keypad that does not need function keys to use. Just press the regular NUM-LOCK button and type all the numbers you want with one hand or even one finger.

The only Macbook that costs $2500 is the 17-inch Pro. Toshiba only sells a handful of 17-inch laptops, and based on what you say of the price, I'm guessing you have a Qosmio X775. I just randomly picked one, so let's go through it, shall we?

Case and form factor (or "build quality" as others are referring to)
Weight: 7.5 lbs for the Toshiba vs. 6.6 lbs. for the Apple
Thickness: not in the Toshiba specs, but from the pictures looks like about 2 inches vs. 1 inch for the Apple
Battery life: 5 hours on the Toshiba (testing conditions not disclosed) vs. 7 hours for the Apple (50% display brightness browsing the web with the wireless card)
Case material: plastic for the Toshiba vs. aluminum for the Apple
Display material: plastic/polymer for the Toshiba vs. glass for the Apple

Display and Graphics
Video adapter: NVidia GTX 1.5 Gb GDDR5 for the Toshiba vs. TWO graphics chipsets (AMD Radeon 1 Gb DDR5 + Intel HD3000, which it automatically switches between depending on workload, presumably to help the battery life) for the Apple
Native resolution: 1600x900 for the Toshiba vs. 1920x1200 for the Apple
Dual display: no mention of this on the Toshiba, but maximum external display resolution for the Apple is 2560x1600, which it can support while also driving the native resolution of the built-in display
Display: nothing about this for the Toshiba, but Apple is well-known for their high-quality displays
--from notebookcheck.net there are a few more specs (similar, but not the exact models)
    avg. brightness: 192 for the Toshiba vs. 290 for the Apple
    contrast: 250:1 for the Toshiba vs. 578:1 for the Apple
    illumination: 77% for the Toshiba vs. 70% for the Apple
    blacks: 0.9 cd/m^2 for the Toshiba vs. 0.6 cd/m^2 for the Apple

Memory, cpu, hard disk
RAM: 6 Gb DDR3 for the Toshiba vs. 4 Gb DDR3 for the Apple
Processor: Intel Core i5 2.4 GHz for the Toshiba vs. Intel quad-core i7 2.4Ghz for the Apple
Hard disk: 640 Gb 7200 rpm for the Toshiba vs. 750 Gb 5400 rpm (optional 750 Gb 7200 rpm for $50) for the Apple

Everything else
LAN: gigabit for both
WLAN: b/g/n for the Toshiba vs. a/b/g/n for the Apple
Bluetooth: 3.0 for the Toshiba vs. 2.1 for the Apple
Smart card reader: none for the Toshiba vs. SDXC for the Apple
Ports: USB 2/3 for the Toshiba vs. USB 2 + Firewire for the Apple
External display port: HDMI for the Toshiba vs. Thunderbolt for the Apple, which supports VGA/DVI/dual-link DVI/HDMI

This is just a careful spec-to-spec comparison of the two. No need to pull in anecdotes or "feelings about quality". The Apple clearly has more higher-spec'd hardware for that extra $1400. You can certainly argue that the Toshiba is "good enough". That's fine, a personal decision. But the Apple is more expensive because it has more, and the quality of some of the components is higher, plain and simple.

Awe damn it... I just bought this Toshiba two weeks ago

1. 
   Intel® Core i7-740QM processor (quad core 3.6 GHz)
2. 
   Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) -- (Also, I've installed Linux -- Dual Boot)
3. 
   6GB DDR3 1066MHz memory (50% more than Macbook?)
4. 
   564GB: 64GB SSD (Serial ATA) + 500GB (7200rpm, Serial ATA) -- ( 52 more GBs than Macbook, but only part SSD )
5. 
   1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460M -- (What's the Macbook got? Plus, I can play most games on this out of the box)

Additional features:

Quad-core Processor, 7200 RPM Hard Drive, Solid State Drive, Blu-ray, LED Backlit Keyboard, HDMI port, harman/kardon® speakers, Face Recognition, Numeric 10-key Pad, Webcam and Mic, Bluetooth®

Why wasn't there an article about my laptop? (Is it because it doesn't have that special Light Peak connector? Does my lit keyboard make up for that? :-P )

For me, the key specs on your laptop are:
6. Battery life: up to 3.77 hours (glad they computed that to the hundredths)
7. Weight: Starting at 10 pounds

1. Intel® Core i7-740QM processor (quad core 3.6 GHz)
2. Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) -- (Also, I've installed Linux -- Dual Boot)
3. 6GB DDR3 1066MHz memory (50% more than Macbook?)
4. 564GB: 64GB SSD (Serial ATA) + 500GB (7200rpm, Serial ATA) -- ( 52 more GBs than Macbook, but only part SSD )
5. 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460M -- (What's the Macbook got? Plus, I can play most games on this out of the box)

Additional features:
Quad-core Processor, 7200 RPM Hard Drive, Solid State Drive, Blu-ray, LED Backlit Keyboard, HDMI port, harman/kardon® speakers, Face Recognition, Numeric 10-key Pad, Webcam and Mic, Bluetooth®

Why wasn't there an article about my laptop? (Is it because it doesn't have that special Light Peak connector? Does my lit keyboard make up for that? :-P )

I can't find any Toshiba that only comes with a 90 day warranty. The cheapest laptops I can find on Toshiba's website come with at least a 1 year warrenty.

Moreover, Toshiba has one of the smallest malfunction rates of their laptops. Link here.

Combine with a USB "docking port" ( http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?seg=HHO&poid=408593) and you get a computer with no moving parts. No moving parts = no noise, and less to break.

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?seg=HHO&poid=412522

vs

http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB134LL/A?mco=NzUyMzc4

Please see the Toshiba Portege-

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?coid=-33781

$3K for a comparable system with an optical drive, solid-state HDD, etc. No backlit keyboard, maybe, but still food for thought. And I AM a macbook pro, ibook, and mac mini owner.

I'm just saying.

-b

The T60 widescreen is about half a pound heavier and half an inch thicker than a MBP; you get the regular ThinkPad goodies, but lose DVI, FW800, a slightly better graphics card, and OS X. The regular T60, being a 14" non-widescreen laptop with (usually) integrated graphics, really isn't the same type of product.

The X60 is very small and light, but doesn't have an optical drive and suffers a considerable power deficit compared to even a MacBook, let alone an MBP. (1024x768 screen is unusable these days, too.)

Of course, both are vastly, vastly better designed and made than more typical MBP competition.

I agree the onboard video really drags this and like all tablets down the drain if you plan to do any 3d work or gaming

Toshiba has a Tablet PC in their Tecra lineup now with an option for an NVIDIA graphics board. They hide it pretty well though. You have to actual go to the "Customize" screen to see that the NVIDIA graphics are an option.

Tecra M7 is the model. This link probably won't work but I'll give it a try anyway: Tecra M7

I'm typing from one right now! It's great.

Dig a little deeper. If you follow your own link to the Toshiba web site, and click on "Technical Suport" (their spelling, not mine) the first article outlines their battery exchange programme.

Sony is one of the suppliers of battery packs used in some Toshiba notebook PCs. We have investigated with Sony whether those PCs that employ the subject batteries are affected with the same problem that caused the recent recalls issued by Dell and Apple, and have found that the system design and the protection system of Toshiba notebook PCs differ from those of Dell and Apple. We have found no evidence that the problem reported by Dell and Apple in their recalls applies to our notebook PCs. Sony has confirmed to us that there is no such problem as cited in the recalls of Dell and Apple with the battery packs supplied to Toshiba.

Uhhh, I'm a little confused here. This article from Toshiba's website seems to conflict with that. No?

Uhhh, I'm a little confused here. This article from Toshiba's website seems to conflict with that. No?

Checked out the specs, and they are actually pretty decent (http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?seg=H HO&coid=-30597) but I still don't get why there are so many manufacturers that won't offer higher resolutions on their notebooks. I personally feel that 1440x900 on a 17" widescreen is just too low since I've gotten used to 1400x1050 on a 14.1" screen. Which is probably the same reason I won't be going for a MacBook Pro anytime soon.

You must not have looked very hard; there are plenty of tiny tablets with keyboards. The tiny Thinkpad X41 tablet weighs less than 3 pounds. I didn't want a 1024x768 screen, so I went with the Toshiba Portege M200, which is 4 pounds and offers a 1400x1050 resolution. Both are convertible tablet PCs with keyboards. After a year of owning the Toshiba, I'm quite happy and have recommended Tablet PCs to many other people.

Education is the biggest problem...they need as much knowledge available as possible. And these laptops can help with that. They can help alot. These laptops are about giving people the tools they need to learn - not just to fish, but to fish, farm, hunt, gather, build, heal, and *live*.

I agree that education is a big part of the problem. There is the concept of a "knowledge economy".. But this mostly was related to post-communist countries who had a high degree of education, but now have nothing else that is marketable.. Thus the only exportable resource is cheap outsourceable labor.. Course you have to deal w/ reliability and corruption factors in such down-trodden societies.

But I'm not sure that you can take a country that has no natural resources, has no established base of eduction, has no trust-worthy/safe infrastructure, and turn it into a knowledge-based economy.

Finally, the real question I have is whether manufacturing and maintaining and power a series of laptops is going to be cheaper than buying a bunch of text books.. Both are expensive, but theoretically you can put 1,000 pirated books onto one laptop in PDF format thereby producing cost savings.

Of course, the minute you do that, MS and other's will cry bloody murder that you're stealing their IP, bla bla bla.

I personally have a libretto http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?poid=2 96429&seg=HHO/

way overpriced, but the size of it is VERY advantageous.. I can take this puppy and read scanned or online purchased books all the time. And it's lighter than a single hard-back book.

There are a lot of other factors to "system performance", like memory, video, and disk subsystem speed. How much of a gain will a dual core CPU buy if the system is waiting for a (relatively) slow disk? If you want to put in a 7200 rpm 2 1/2", or a pair of 'em (or here), well ok. But then power consumption and it's cousin heat go up. Bigger batteries, Ok. Now you've got weight. I guess it's all about trade-offs, and what do you really want.

Has anyone tried it on a Tecra M4 Tablet convertible? I wonder if inkwell would work with the display. That would be schweeeeet!

The 17" PowerBook is surprisingly portable. It's one of the only laptops bigger than a 14" that I can stand.

It's very thin (much thinner than my own laptop, which I consider thin and light) and it weighs just under 7 pounds. That ain't bad for a 17".

Of course, I still love my 14" notebook that weighs 4.9 pounds. It also gets damn good battery life--thanks to EIST (which can throttle clock speed down to 800MHz), I get about two and a half hours of battery life (in fact, I'm typing this from my laptop, while running on battery and a wireless Internet connection). Who makes it? Toshiba. If you want a good, portable notebook, I really recommend the Toshiba Tecra M3.

And then there's this and this and any number of similar pieces sporting similar acreage. These things are barely portable. I'm not saying that there aren't truly portable notebooks and subnotebooks on the market, just that the trend is to the bigger and it's starting to get pretty stupid.

It took me more time to format and write this comment than it took me to find this:
Toshiba Satellite

for $999 (the price of the cheapest 12" ibook)
you get:

RAM: 512MB on board and one free slot,
CPU: Intel mobile P4 (3.20GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB)
OS: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition (SP2)
BUNDLED: No Microsoft® Office software
I'm willing to count this as a feature :)
SCREEN: 15.4" Wide-screen XGA Display w/TruBrite(TM) (1280x800)
GFX CARD: ATI MOBILITY(TM) RADEON(TM) 9000 IGP w/up to 128MB video memory (64MB default)
40GB HDD (5400rpm)
REMOVEABLE DRIVE: 8x DVD-SuperMulti drive (IS also a DVD burner)
WIRELESS: Atheros® Wireless LAN (802.11b/g) supporting Atheros SuperG(TM) technology

Now for the apple:
1.2GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache @1.2GHz
12-inch TFT Displays
1024x768 resolution
256MB DDR266 SDRAM
30GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo Drive (NOT a DVD burner)
ATI Mobility Radeon 9200
32MB DDR video memory
AirPort Extreme built-in

They appear to have similar graphics cards, (PC version has 2x the ram and is expantable). In all other areas except one, the PC wins: it's not 12"*.. Aparantly they are hard to find with screens that small. No amount of argument (except some benchmarks which i highly doubt you can produce) will convince me that a P4 mobile of more than 2x the speed (almost 3x!) of the G4 is slower than saidsame chip.

*It's 15" widescreen, so it's going to be pretty close to the 12" size in height, but it'll be a little longer - it's still going to fit in your backpack.

I'll admit I might have some bias because I own an 800ghz toshiba satellite (only two things wrong after 4 years of dropping it in the body search line at airports: keyboard connector came loose and battery never lasted long, died quickly as well) It even runs linux. Though If i were to buy another laptop right now, it'd be a powerbook (small form factor, OSX, allegedly good battery life) But performance wise, I'd to have to take the hit vs. similarly priced PC notebooks.

I am a current Thinkpad X31 owner, and I've been considering Tablet PCs for a while. The thing that has consistently held me back is the XGA (1024x768) screen. I have XGA on my current Thinkpad and it's just too small for Photoshop or some of the other programs I use on a daily basis. I've been taking a serious look at the Toshiba Portege M200, which uses 1400x1050 (SXGA+) resolution instead. While I'm excited that IBM, which is by far my favorite laptop brand (Toshiba being a close second), is coming out with a Tablet PC, I'm disappointed in the screen resolution. What really makes this Tablet PC unique? It's just like most of the other ones. I'd still rather have the Toshiba.

The Toshiba Portégé R100 is very cool, ultra light and gets upwards of 8 hours of battery life with the extended battery. It comes with a 1.1GHz Pentium-M, 256MB ram and a 40GB HDD.

It's also quite a bit more powerful than the MM1110, and much more affordable than the damn cool Sony X505.

And the build quality is very impressive, IMHO. Almost as good a a Thinkpad.

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Another program like Ztrace is Absolute Laptop Retriever (the home-user version of their corporate Computrace program). Located in Canada: https://www.laptopretriever.com/ Direct from Toshiba (USA) $100 for 3 years: http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/adet.to?poid=2 75734&seg=HHO&rcid=-26364&ccid=1291043

Do you notice anything in common?

Perhaps Microsoft is making some deals under the table to prevent Linux from getting into the laptop market.

...offers no services over a pda that I would want to use on the go. Unless of course you're talking about laptop-type activities, in which case, the laptop is the natural choice.

I almost agree. Despite the hype thrown behind the tablet PC, I consider it to be, at best, an evolution of the laptop. That's not a bad thing.

I bought the Toshiba Protege M200 when it came out and was really excited. Within a couple of months, I was using only it's laptop functionality 90% of the time. However, it's that 10% that keeps things interesting. A tablet has capabilities beyond that of existing laptops which opens doors to interactions that just weren't possible before. Alias Sketchbook Pro rocks! I'm excited about that untapped potential. My Treo 600 can record voice,(crappy) video, and act as a webcam now. It couldn't do that when I bought it.

Don't even bother asking about why one would need X to do Y when you've got A, B & C. For me it's about exploring the possibilities.

Some day the line between laptop and tablet will be nonexistant. Until then, save your money unless you're interested in helping that future get here a day or two sooner. Someone's got to be an early adopter. I can't wait for a Linux Tablet, which is made increasingly probable by lower priced hardware. Sometimes the slow, steady progress just isn't that impressive.