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Which Laptop To Buy?
Misha writes: "In this day and age, it seems that the advertisement offers for desktop systems have slowed down in term of features. Everyone has agreed that AGP, DVD, >1GHz, etc. is what everyone will want. This does not seem to be the case with laptops. Every year, they manage to cram a bigger resolution screen, more system and graphical memory, more battery life into a less-than-two-inch thick plactic box. So, what are everyone's preferences as far as laptops go? What kind of features are most important? How does price enter the equation? Which one is best for the money? And especially, can you get a decent machine for under $1000?" I've been using the IBM Thinkpad T20 for the last year or so, and love the machine -- with the exception of the WinModem *sigh*. What else is everyone using?
I've used everything from the Tecra 730, up to the Satellite Pro 8100. Beautiful machines, and they run linux flawlessly.
IBM laptops are great, they work wonderfully. I *have* the T20 that was mentioned in the writeup. Winmodem or no, every piece of hardware works in Linux. The winmodem is Lucent based, and has Linux support.
Best I've used is still a Dell Latitude CSx. Was metal cased, and very nice. Everything worked great and it was tiny.
http://www.compaq.com/support/techpubs/whitepapers /0206-0799-A.html
Ignoranus: A person who is both stupid and an asshole.
I've been using a compaq 1800T with linux and windows for almost a year now, with very few problems. At the time I bought it, it was easily the most feature complete laptop I found for the money. And the 1400x1050 screen resolution (which works under linux) is pretty stunning...
One thing for potential compaq buyers: don't pay extra for memory upgrades from compaq. You can do far better at other places on the net (ebay included). I bought mine with 64M installed, and upgraded to 192M for *half* the price that compaq was charging...
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I was sold on this one after taking a friend's out on a test drive. One of the sleekest yet solidy built machines I've seen in a while. I'm planning to buy one within the next few months. It's not below $1000, though (I think it's more around $1500). I'm pretty optimistic they'll get the issues with OS X worked out so that more applications work properly. I haven't done too much research into loading Linux PPC onto the new iBooks, are there any hardware/driver conflicts out there to watch out for?
I just got a Sony Vaio XG-700K, and it's a pretty sweet package. It comes with seperate DVD and Cd-RW drives. The screen is 1024 x 768 XGA and pretty crisp and can be replaced with a privacy screen for cheap off eBay.
It's a 750 megahertz PIII, has built in modem but no ethernet. With two PCMCIA slots, though, you can jam an ethernet card and 802.11b card with no problems.
Downsides? Everything is expensive. Battery is $250 (200 on eBay), extra AC adapter is $100 or so, and so on.
It's a great laptop, and there are linux drivers for the custom stuff (like the Jogdial).
I like Dell machines a lot, and use them exclusively at work (I buy all of our new systems). But, I just bought an iBook for my personal laptop. It's the first Mac I've ever owned, and I like it a lot. I got the DVD model ($1449 for Education users) and I'm quite happy in OS X.
I'll be happier when the 10.1 update is released in September, but I love the small form factor, the light weight, and the AirPort wireless networking. The unfortunate thing about the Dell machines is that you can't have both an internal network card and an internal wi-fi card, at least not at this time.
The biggest drawback to my iBook is the cost of the 3 year AppleCare warranty. $237 is a major rip off to extend your warranty two more years. OS 9.1 sucks too, but I don't use it except to play DVDs and to configure AirPort base stations.
In short, don't sell Apple's iBook short, I'm pretty happy with mine, and I've been a Pee-Cee user since I got my XT in the 7th grade.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
hell, runs Linux on it's own under Yellow Dog Linux
Here's my shortlist of vendors who preload Linux on laptops:
I encourage other posters to add to the list.
I Just purchased and recieved a Dell inspiron 8000. Very nice, 1Ghz, 256mb pc100, 32mb geforce2go 3d card, a 8x DVD and a 8x CD-RW, a 15" screen. This thing can fly, and play with the big boys. And it wasn't too bad at $2,400.
Captain Napalm, aka Sheridan Hurd Woohoo go dawgs!!! University of Washington rocks!!
Actually Asus has been making laptops for a while now. I used an old Asus P/233 laptop at my last job, and it was excellent machine, considering the hardware specs (P/233MMX, 48MB RAM, 2.1GB HDD). Excellent screen and keyboard too. Of course, YMMV.
Watch out for the Apple service. they are the loosers in the industry. We fix apple's where I work, and they are the absolute worst. The best thing about them is that you can send them back to apple for little cost and get them fixed within a week if something goes wrong (if you call this a good thing). If you have an apple authorized service center near you, then it is a little easier.
The main thing to watch out for is the 1 year warranty. Out of everyone i have ever known to own the Black keyboard Powerbook G3 (aka wallstreet) they have all had major repairs done to them. The worse thing is that the inverter board goes bad, and you have to pay apple $328.00 flat fee for any repairs. apple doesn't allow ASP's to work on their laptops anymore, so any time it breaks, this ~$330 fee applies (if its not covered on warranty).
Trust me, get the 3 year plan. it will save your day when(not IF) your laptop goes bad. Remember, this is the first model that has come out of that new style, and every single laptop apple has ever made that is the first of anything ended up being a POS (even the origional iMac is a POS)
good luck, and get the warranty, itl make you glad in about a year or 2.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
My biggest suggestion to you would be not to underestimate the importance of size and weight. I'm on my second laptop now, and I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. My first laptop was your standard sized laptop, a Hitachi Visionbook Pro, which had good power-wise specs for the time, and was only of average size and weight, because I completely blew off the importance of these factors. I thought to myself, p-shaw all the laptop owners who complain about how heavy their computers are and don't actually carry them with them to places are trippin', it's only 5-7 pounds we're talking about here for heaven sakes. But 5-7 pounds gets surprisingly annoying when you have to carry it around with you whenever you go anywhere where you'll need it, especially with all the support equipment (power, carrying-case, batteries, etc.). That computer got stolen, and now after having owned a laptop, and wanting to buy a new one, I made a more informed choice and purchased a Sony Vaio super slim model, and I could not be happier with my choice.
I think you'll find there's an exponential return between the size of the computer you choose and how willing you are to take it with you to places where it'd help. With a PDA you'll probably be willing to carry it with you everywhere you go, just in case. With a superslim style computer, you'll probably be willing to carry it with you whenever you have good reason to believe that you'll need it. With some monster oversized 15" screen desktop replacement laptop, you'll probably find that that's exactly what you bought - a replacement for your desktop. And that's all well and good, but most people who are thinking about buying laptops do so with the expectation that they will be using the computer on the go, not just buying a small desktop with poor expansion options.
These days, every damn computer has so much power and video speed and such. I would suggest that these factors can be minimized unless you absolutely, positively need to play games or do something else very video/cpu intensive on your system. For what you need on the run (word processing, internet, mp3s maybe, etc.) it's important to keep in mind that you're not buying a desktop, and not to think like you are. So realize what you need and buy with those in mind. Every laptop will fulfill what you need from it application wise, so try and maximize the other laptop-specific attributes, such as battery life, size/weight, storage space and screen. I'd even go so far as to suggest that these days almost every laptop has a pretty decent screen, so you probably don't need to worry about that too much, but I haven't owned one of those laptops with a truly huge (14"+) screen yet, so this is just speculation.
As far as price is concerned, I would suggest that around ~1300-1500 is the sweet spot these days for slim computers. But if you absolutely, positively, need to have it be bargain basement priced, you might want to consider going used.
If it has to be new, I don't know about other manufacturers, but Sony has a pretty decent super tiny laptop for 999 here:
http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/sr/index.html
First, as a Mac user, you can kiss the sub-1k$ range goodbye, unless you're willing to snag something older and a hell of a lot heavier.
:D )
I want the following features in a laptop- from most important to optional:
1. Weight. If it weighs as my Powerbook 180, forget it. Four, five pounds- tops.
2. Battery life. Lithium Ion batteries whup the llammas ass- four hours of "office" use, two hours of Quake III / Photoshop / Internet use, maybe an hour on the DVD player.
3. Modem AND Ethernet. All or nothing- I dump downloads onto a server on my home LAN and a crossover cable is far more useable than IRDA or lugging a zip drive.
4. Battery CAPACITY. My Pismo powerbook can ditch the DVD/CD drive module in favor of a second battery, if and when I need it. This has saved my ass many, many times! (forget the TiBook- and don't get me started on slot-loading drives in portables)
5. A responsive, reliable keyboard. Something that I can pick apart and clean if I need to. (the Pismo is a nightmare from this respect, but Apple seems to be sticking with the "wishbone suspension" on their portable keyboards....)
6. Any sort of Video Out. (fortunately, the pismo runs S-video and VGA out.
7. Audio out.
8. Millions of colors @ 1024x768. Bigger is better, but this usually means that the *case* gets bulkier, and who needs that?
9. Accessability. Upgrading laptops is a nightmare, and not recommended for amateurs.
Fortunately, one can run MacOS X or Classic MacOS on a Pismo, and I have a friend who's running DebianPPC on his Lombard (one model lower). Linux PPC installs, as does MKLinux.
My opinion? You want a Pismo or a Lombard powerbook. The only *real* differences between the two are that the Lombard has SCSI and the Pismo comes with Firewire and is slightly faster.
A quick features list:
14.5" LCD @ 1024x768, millions
VGA out, supports some wicked high resolutions as a second monitor
S-Video out, treated same as VGA.
2 USB ports
2 Firewire ports
Audio out
Audio in
Ethernet (10/100)
Modem (56k)
Expansion module comes with CD or CD/DVD drive, they make burner modules. And the expansion module can swallow a second battery.
I first used a Satellite system in Nicaragua a few years ago and we had Gateways, Dells, Sagers and Toshibas and the only ones we never had to send in were the Toshibas. All the other ones were real finicky about the abuse being dished upon them. We had lots of dust and humidity down there which was a real killer. The one I used had a crack down the backside of the monitor and still never gave me a problem. I am back in America now but still buy Satellite systems for their durability. I had a Vaio provided to me by work and proceeded to loose all my external port flaps and get a crack down front of the screen. Not to mention the fact that I never could get Win2k installed on it properly. The driver support was iffy. I am not nice to my laptop. It gets tossed in my bag which in turn gets slung, thrown, bounced and slid from here to kingdom come in my wanderings every day. The best part, as far as I am concerned, is the money aspect. I just bought a 700Mhz with 64MB Ram and a 8 GB HD from Circuit City about a month ago for $899. You can't beat it with a price like that. Also the pieces and parts are relatively inexpensive ($120 for a battery, $15 for another 64MB memory)
There are two caveats, however.
1. They aren't the lightest laptops I've ever seen (allthough way lighter than the gargantua Dells I saw last week)
2. They aren't the fastest laptops even accounting for it's clock speed. Laptops always seem slow to me and Toshibas just a hair slower.
I am definitly an evangelist but that doesn't blind me to the facts. For my money Toshiba wins, until they start to suck.
Jesus may love you, but I still think you're an asshole -BVB
More RAM may not be sufficient to make a G3 really happy with OS X. I've been running X exclusively for the last 3+ months on my 266 G3 PB with 192MB of RAM. It's a nice OS to use, and quite stable (some of the apps are another story). However, the poor little G3 gets overwhelmed occassionally, especially when running OS9 apps. I love the machine, after 3 years of daily use it's been very low maintenance. But I'd spring for an iBook in a heartbeat. Or as soon as the business starts making money, I guess.
Of course I don't speak for my employer. My employer doesn't speak for me, either.
Whatever laptop you buy, I've always been able to get good RAM, for less, from http://www.crucial.com
On a friend's laptop, the price difference we got was $483 for maxing the RAM out on a laptop. So he bought the RAM from Crucial, and not from the laptop vendor.
Crucial is one wing of Micron Computing, which used to make really nice desktops. Dunno if they still are.
I have never had a Mac do anything but work great. My low-end 6100/60 first generation PowerPC Mac, purchased when they first became available and later upgraded with a 3rd party G3 processor, is still plugging along happily, albeit slowly in this day and age. Well, actually it stopped working once - wouldn't boot - but I found out on the web that this was due to a dead PRAM battery which I replaced myself easily enough. I have a 2000 model iBook purchased earlier this year. I will see how long it lasts, but it is built like a tank and plugs along happily with OS X (and lots of RAM, of course.) I just wish I had one of those new fangled ones.... Steve
--- What?
The main thing about laptops are the screens. my 7500 bosts 15,5inch with 1600x1200, which make it very nice, not only to use on the road but also as a workstation at home or work. I couldnt bare to stand quinting at a 12inch screen, but this screen is just great, giving a 19inch a run for its money (who needs CRT, btw? ;)
Besides the screen, memory should be the second most important item on your list (leaving out keyboard and overall shineyness to impress your geeky pals). In my baby, i have 256 MB of thumping ram. If you have less, try to get more, but laptop RAM is hard to come by, so get as much as possible when you buy one.
3rd on the list? a good videocard. Most lt's have a crummy 4/8 meg card, enough for software, but we all know we want at least to be able to frag people at the local LAN party. 3D-support highly recommended, check out linux-support first.
DVD is last on my list. This just rocks with a beamer or widescreen tv (you do have svhs-out, do you?). I find myself not really using it much, but its a good show-off feature ;)
Last few ideas: :| ;)
builtin NIC. PCMCIA-cards are okay, but dont take one with a cablethingy. they break too soon (learned that from experience
HD? get one as big as possible. dont whine. my 20gigs are the limit. Think of a reason, and fast. You dont want a laptop as a wordprocessor, you want one to blow all those workstations away...
CPU? dunno. just dont get a Celeron. Those are for wuzzies
And dont buy a laptop for less than $1000. Get a good laptop or dont get one at all. A medicore laptop gets used every once in a while on the road, but a PDA serves this better. And dont get a 12inch screen. trust me...
This sig is intentionally left blank
I thought alot about this a few months back, and found much similarity in pricing and hardware between HP, Compaq, and Toshiba (retail), with Dell being just a bit more expensive. Long story short, I went with HP. All other things being largely equal, the HP Pavilions had 2 unique features that most others didn't: 1. Built-in composite TV-out (not heavily advertised but definitely present)....Great for presentations or TV-screen gaming 2. Built-in CD controls on the front, with LCD for track. Allows playing CD's without booting up (and wasting power). Great for airplane trips! Anyway, with everything else being equal between the others (screen size, hard drive, mem, price etc.), these 2 minor features stood out for me in a big way. Only Compaq and the hard-to-find-but-impressive Fujitsu Lifebook had the CD controls, but neither had the TV-out. Finally, I found installing Linux on my HP N5250 to be rather painless...and now you have the choice to go with AMD processors (which would have sealed the deal for me even more back then). All this retails around $1200 now.
1Ghz PIII CPU
DVD drive (and it can actually play DVD's under Windows 2000... and soon under Linux too)
Titanium shell
32GB drive
2 Type I/II/III/Zv card slots
4.7 lbs
4 hour battery (self measured, w/speed step)
SVHS-out
built in ethernet and modem (the newer T23 model has a built in wireless modem and antenna)
1400x1050 display (and will drive an external monitor or projector at 1600x1280)
When I bought my machine, it also came bundled with a top-mount digital camera (the IBM ultraport camera) a leather case, and one of those 8MB USB memory keys.
All that for $3999 Canadian, which at current exchange rates is about $2600USD.
Don't buy it if you love Intel/Athlon processors. But this thing is fast, light, has a big beautiful screen, does everything I need a computer to do. X 10.0.4 feels fine on it - can't wait for 10.1. The case is incredibly sturdy - my boss dropped his and dented the corner and cracked the outer casing, but the innards (and the screen) came through unscathed. USB, FireWire, 10/100, VGA out (runs dual-monitor mode, allowing me to run a 1280x1024 2nd monitor at work). Looks nice, too (he he). Apple's desktop offerings leave something to be desired, but the laptops are really nice.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
I run a low end Thinkpad (i1400) and love it, but the new iceBooks are the best I've seen so far. Under 5lbs (barely), 5 hour battery life, clean, crisp screen, gorgeous machine, and then add OS X. I would get one of those before a VAIO.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Some of you may remember Tuxtops, a linux laptop company. We stopped selling laptops at the beginning of the year, and I no longer work for them, but dealing with laptops and support issues on a larger scale has given me at least more data than most people have. Here's some observations:
* Our best model was the Obsidian (Premium) 30w. This is the same as the Dell Inpsiron 5000, made by a Taiwanese company called Compal (the biggest laptop manufacturer in the world.) I'm actually typing this on one right now. It has a nice-sized keyboard, big screen, powerful components. It isn't lightweight (as far as modern laptops go), but they were by far the most reliable model.
* The really cheap model we sold, made by ASUS, used mostly desktop parts to cut costs. It was inexpensive, but you paid the price. The units would easily overheat - when we started doing overnight cpu-heavy burn-in tests, it became apparant what the drawbacks of this approach were. For the sales-guy who does email and demos on the road, it'd be okay, but for anyone who knows what a makefile is, avoid these kinds of laptops. They're likely to go into Thermal Shutdown with virtually no notice.
* We had a really cool model show up last year that was ultralight, with a detachable bay where the CD-ROM and floppy sat. If you could leave that behind, it was a phenomenal design. However, in practice, we found that there were frequently problems with the docking, and many systems were very delicate. Getting it to dock properly could be difficult, moreso than it should be.
* We had one model that we sold for our first few months that had almost all the pressure from the lid on one hinge. Unsurprisingly, the case cracked easily through regular use - we lost money overall on this unit with all the replacements, and stopped selling it as soon as we saw the trend. This was just poor engineering.
* An early ultralight we sold had a really awful keyboard and was also prone to heat problems.
The morals? The quality of a piece of laptop hardware can vary greatly, much more so than in desktops. Our best experiences were with the more traditional designs (I know my current company is also going away from VAIOs and towards the Dell/Thinkpad designs, due to reliability problems in the field.) There are design tradeoffs to make things ultra-light and ultra-cheap, and in my experience, they weren't worth it.
Go for the big brick with the big screen. Buy from someone who has good tech support - you can't replace parts if they go bad yourself, like with a desktop. Pay attention to what people are saying in places like this thread - laptop models are definitely susceptible to design flaws. From my experience, physical flaws (ie, cracked cases) and overheating are issues to be very sensitive to. (Note: getting warm is different than overheating. Most laptops get warm. Most of them do not regularly go into Thermal Shutdown. That's what you want to avoid.)
Good luck!
-- Kate
No, the iBook's processor really isn't bad at all. Even with the high-end PowerBook eight months ago, for a grand less? Not bad. OS X runs beautifully on mine (typing this from my iBook in OS X right now), although it's not the best system for the pretty demos you give friends. It has the top bang/buck ratio around (my only problem with it is the 'pretty' touchpad, which my fingers frequently tap while I'm typing - I had to turn off clicking with the touchpad because all kinds of crazy things were happening). It also has, IMO, a better keyboard than the TiBook, which command line fans (and /. posters) should keep in mind.
On the other hand, there's hardly a bad word to be said for IBM laptops. I didn't buy one, but I didn't want to spend that much. The ThinkLight is very nice - I wish my iBook had one - and the hardware is top-notch, and widely supported (OS/2, Linux, any BSD, and BeOS is probably fine too). The T series is a phenomenal high-end laptop. And all of IBM's laptops have a fine keyboard.
The X series from IBM is, IMO, the top-of-the-line ultralight - it's as thin as the TiBook without the media slice (which is a reasonable comparison), but can include the media slice when you need it. It also weighs a couple of pounds less, which is what is really important in an ultra-light.
For cheap, get the iBook; for expensive, get the T22 (unless you wanna do a lot of Firewire, in which case a PCMCIA Firewire adapter might not cut it - get the TiBook); for ultralight, get the X21.
--Matthew
He, he. I know there's been a lot of gushing about the Mac iBook already, but no one's mentioned this: it has no fan. The G3 doesn't need one. It's a stealth laptop. My Dell at work sounds like a jet engine compared to my iBook.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
We use the following where I work:
Panasonic CF-71 ToughBook - Heavy duty, impossible to break, believe me I know. My users made a weekly event of at least one person breaking their screen on their Toshiba Tecras. Since we started using the Toughbooks for the well-traveled user we haven't had a single break. Also, the tool-less hard drive swap-out is always nice for those remote users.
Dell Inspiron 8000 - True desktop replacement. DVD player and seperate CDRW, swappable hard drive, huge screen with 1280x1024 or even 1400x1280, very nice for the developers.
Apple G4 Titanium - What can I say? The coolest notebook this side of the planet. The screen is stupendous and I don't mean just for DVD's. The G4 make OSX useable (no flames please, it's a dog on the G3's). Our execs love them as well as our graphics people.
IBM ThinkPad T20 - If this thing had a touchpad instead of the freakin eraserhead it would be my favorite. The ThinkPad has always been the Cadillac of notebooks (Gateway being the Ford Fiesta). Tough and with a lot of lovely built-in accessories, it's always a great choice.
Some features that I like:
1) Built-in antenna for 802.11b like the G4.
2) Tool-less removable hard drive.
3) Built-in Ethernet, modem, USB, FireWire.
4) Big battery with real-world runtime expectations.
5) NO MORE AD/DC CONVERSION BRICKS! With some kind of universal power cord like desktops.
6) Combo DVD/CDRW drive, maybe even a combo with DVDR or DVDRW.
7) Multiple swap-out drive bays like the Inspiron.
8) More than 2 PCMCIA slots.
9) Linux, BSD and Solaris/Intel friendly.
Sure, it's binary only, but it works.
If you want the source to this modem driver, go to http://www.heby.de/ltmodem. On Debian, I simply modprobe ltserial and ltmodem, with no options on the IBM ThinkPad X21. SB the same on the T20.
BTW, it's been updated significantly since 5.68 (6.00 was just released). I'm currently using 5.99 without any significant issues, except sometimes long initial handshaking.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
Well, when you're watching a DVD, the hard drive should turn itself off, and the processor isn't really doing much since the video decoding happens in the graphics chip. So if you have "allow processor cycling" and "reduce processor speed" (which isn't a big penalty, it goes from 500 to 400 MHz) checked, you'll get another boost. I *did* get about 4 hours out of it under those conditions. I was in a dark room though, with the screen brightness set low (this screen is really bright, another thing I like) so that might account for something.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!