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?

Comments

Used Laptops

[neuromantic]

If you want something decent for under $1000, you've pretty much gotta go used. I got a PII 400, 256mb, 14.1", 12GB for $400 off of eBay. ~Will

Compaq 1800T

[Tim]

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...

Apple iBook

[kb3edk]

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?

Vaio XG700k

[Chairboy]

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).

The lightest one, of course.

[lelitsch]

This might not be a popular response for /., but I have a bunch of laptops and notice that I always carry the lightest one if in any way possible. For most of the things you do on the road, anything you can buy nowadays is plenty powerful enough. Another rather important consideration if battery life. I have pretty good luck borrowing power in airports and hotels, but a laptop that shuts down after less than 3 hours is annoying. As far as quality goes, I had pretty good luck with Dell, some with Sony and none with Toshiba and IBM. But YMMVW. If your company is buying, get the replace-and-send-back warranty.

Re:Go Dell

[Sethb]

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.

The laptop I have...

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

Is an IBM Thinkpad i1400. It's a decent thinkpad, winmodem, but intel NIC (integrated). the screen is only 800x600 (blah!) but the newer low end (read: ~1,000-1,500$) all come with 1024x768 Active Matrix TFT.

Mine is a celeron 500MHz (this is good, as it is the 100MHz FSB version, not the 66MHz Crap they put in desktops).

I have installed linux on it, in fact, there are about 5 different websites out on the web that tell me how to install linux on this exact model. I couldn't get the modem working tho :(

If you want the best laptop for LINUX, then i would have to say IBM and Apple's iBook are your best bets. Sure, the iBook has a shitty CPU in it, but, it uses very little battery life (compared to a p3). And apple is all about not being compatible with the rest of the world. Well friends, when it comes to laptops, there are only a few things that matter. and CPU architecture isn't one of them. If you are running Linux on an x86 machine, or Linux on a PPC machine, its' all the same. I bet, if you are a linux guru that wants to run all the latest beta shitware on sourceforge, you wont want the iBook, because it will take some porting to get it to compile/running properly. but if you stick with software that comes with your distribution, then x86 and PPC are all the same.

For 1,300$ base end, and 1,900$ for high end iBook, i consider it a good buy for a linux laptop. (I paid $950 for my IBM 500MHz Celeron, 192MB ram, 800x600 active matrix TFT, NIC, winmodem, generic sound, i810 video (intel's), I think it was a steal about when i bought it 9 months ago)

If you were you, i would stay away from Dell laptops. For one, they are not like Dell desktops. They arent the "stable" machine on the block like the optiplex is. Not only that, but Dell is dropping Linux support on the desktop, so you can forget getting a Dell that is gonna run linux any better than IBM or apple. All in all, with my experience with dell laptops (i service them, gateway, and Apple's laptops under warranty where i work), I would have to say that Dells, and certain models of Apple's are the least reliable. (apple PB g3 Wallstreet comes to mind! Don't worry, bronze kb is a good one)

I hope you like my brief review, this is just my experience.

Re:The laptop I have...

[Matthew Weigel]

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.

Insist on Linux Preload

[elflord]

If your time is worth any money, you will not buy from a vendor who won't preload Linux and set it up properly. Of course, if you got nothing better to do than waste time chasing up drivers for (poorly|un)supported hardware or you want to learn about kernel compilation/configuration, that's fine. But for those of us who have better things to do, it's much less of a hassle to get Linux preloaded.

Here's my shortlist of vendors who preload Linux on laptops:

• Advanced Systems Labs
• Southwest Technologies

I encourage other posters to add to the list.

4.3 LBS should be clsoe enough.

[James Hetfield]

Here is a unit that comes in at 4.3 LBS, and is Linux Compatible. Great Guys to deal with as well.

http://www.qlitech.net/products/laptops/king.html

The only laptop worth buying...

[Rimbo]

...is the kind that costs $50 at Cheetah's Totally Nude.

Graphics, Modem, Wavelan...

[tjansen]

Things to consider when buying a laptop:

1. If you want to play (3D) games, make sure that you have a GeForce 2 Go chipset. It's the only one that allows you to play newer games at decent framerates

2. For Linux you should check whether your built-in modem is supported

3. Integrated WaveLan/WiFi is a cool feature if you know other people who have it, much better than an external PCMCIA card

4. If you want to use external drives (CD burner, faster harddisks (Laptops harddisks are slooow)), make sure you have a FireWire/iLink/ieee1394 port

5. built-in ethernet is always a useful feature

Hands down : Powerbook G4 (Titanium)

[torpor]

Simply the best you can get, right now.

I know, it's not Intel architecture - that's just fine. Cram it full of RAM (1Gig) and fire up a few Virtual PC windows.

It's extremely well made - except for the hinges, which flake paint after a while, but you can just brush that off and it looks fine.

Definitely a well-made piece of gear. Mac OS X runs great on it, too!

What *I* look for:

[solios]

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.

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. :D )

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.

Re:Mac, No Seriously

[jhoffoss]

FYI, I just setup a new Gateway laptop for the Veep of my division, and discovered (and showed to the boss) that you can set the laptop up to use Just VGA, Just CRT, Both VGA and CRT with the same desktop, or VGA and CRT in a dual-head setup. He still prefers the single screen, of course, but for the power-user at home, that could be a decent productivity boost.

Titanium

[Wyatt Earp]

G4 Titanium 400 with 384 MB of RAM and a dual-boot OS 9.1/10.0.4. Airport, DVD, Firewire, 15.2 inch screen - everything I need in a laptop.

And I have an iBook (Tangerine 300) running just 9.1 and 96MB of RAM. Works well as a sit around and surf machine.

My work got some IBM A21s in, pretty nice for a Windows PC, not sure how well Linux or BSD works on it though.

Re:Warranty? (Was:Apple Warranty [WAS:Go Dell])

[Wyatt Earp]

Same here.

I've supported Macs in Education for six years. 1400 500-5000 series machines, 500-600 Power Mac G3s and iMacs. I can count the number of machines I've had to send to a Apple Service Center on my hands.

As for home, I did have an early iMac DV go south within a month of buying it. But I had a new one within an hour.

Modem?

[ConsumedByTV]

Have you gotten your modem to work in Linux?

(High end) Vaios are NOISY!

[pq]

My boss just bought a new VAIO - the high end, lightest one. Spent a packet on it too (~$3k), and I put Debian on it, and it worked like a charm. But it was noisy - even in our workroom full of humming servers, you could hear it when the fan came on, a tinny, harsh whine. And at 700 (750?) MHz, it came on often! I was annoyed, and my boss *hated* it. He sent it back after a week, and got a Dell Inspiron 8000, which weighs about as much, is a little thicker, and much quieter.

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.