Comparative Laptop Reviews?

clambert asks: "A few co-workers and I are in the market for a new laptop, but it's been incredibly difficult to try and explore what's out there. How do Sony's warranties rank up against Dell's? Can I get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the new Toshibas? What model IBMs feature DDR memory? There doesn't seem to be an AnandTech/Ars/Toms for the notebook market, and short of filtering through all the marketing hype on every {brand}.com, its tough to find out what systems offer what specs. Are there any comprehensive resources out there for those of us in the market for a new laptop?"

Comments

I love my powerbook

[Dark Paladin]

Yes, I know - only one mouse button.

But otherwise, my Powerbook is a great machine. I can put Yellow Dog Linux on it if I want just Linux. Or if I want a good BSD system, like the song says, "Boom...there it is." Runs the major apps I care about (MS Office (yes, I know...but it's a business thing), Adobe Acrobat), runs the apps I make (Perl), has a great display, DVD playback, and if you plug in a monitor in the back, you can make it work as a secondary monitor (instead of just a mirror, which is kind of cool). Instant sleep-off, sleep-on just by closing the lid. (Most Windows based laptops I've seen get *very* pissed off when you put them in sleep mode, what with the PCMCIA slots getting redected and all.)

Modem, 1 G/100/10 Ethernet built in, Airport built in (you can turn it off if you're worried, or get an Airport and bridge it to your local network at 128 bits encryption - sitting in the living room surfing the net was never so much fun ;) ). There's a Firewire port in the back so you can plug in your DV cameras and the like - again, sat there in the living room with my wife and tweaked my daughter's birthday party video.

Other than the mouse thing - and you either get used to doing Control-Click for secondary mouse stuff, or when you have it at a desk you plug in a little USB mouse - it's been a rock solid machine.

Oh, and it plays Icewind Dale great too. (Baldur's Gate runs all right, as long as you boot into OS 9, because the bastards haven't Carbonized BG I yet.)

avoid the M$ tax.

[gukin]

From what I understand, there are only three or so
notebook MANUFACTURERS. Dell, Sony etc. take these notebooks, slap their trademarks all over
kick up the price by 50%-150% and force you to pay the M$ tax.

Scan http://powernotebooks.com to build your own.The above link has a perfect score in http://www.resellerratings.com (makes me a _little_ nervous) but they have a nice range of books from minimal SIS chipset based to the lateses P-4 DDR units with 64Mb DDR radeon video. All in the $800-$1700 (US dollar) range.

For a narrower range of notebooks but with better prices, pop over to http://www.mwave.com and poke on notebooks in their catalog. mwave has very good ratings in http://www.resellerratings.com (more realistic IMHO) and will let you configure your notebook without the M$ tax.

Linuxcare Labs certification reports

[Paul Komarek]

If you are interested in GNU/Linux laptops, you can narrow the search quickly via
Linuxcare Lab's certification reports. As usual, GNU/Linux-related docs are useful descriptive than the manufacturers'. =-)

-Paul Komarek

Re:Dell

[Com2Kid]

Bull, Dell places fall limiters on your parts selection to increase their profit margins.

Example, Pentium 4 Laptops are only available with Geforce4 video cards unless you get the one (/. is SOOO going to mess up that link, it is a link to the Inspirion 8200) model that they have that comes with a video card that is NOT insanly powerful AND has a Pentium 4 chip on it.

This model also happens to need a lot of 'other' upgrades to bring it up to the range of the next cheapest laptop and then you end up paying the same price (or greater) then the bottom most default configuration of the next laptop one level up but without a good video card.

it is insane.

Their Pentium 3 based laptops are decent enough, but for anybody who wants to do a lot of CPU intensive work and NO gaming AT ALL, well hell, heh.

That and they only sell Intel kit, Dell has a significant dedication towards caring more about what Intel says then what AMD says.

Getting a well built laptop is NOT easy, and often times to get a REALLY well built one you have to deal with yee as old technology.

See Here for an example of this tendency. Yeesh. Who knew that waterproofing could cost so much? ^_^

Here is another example

Yeesh. That much money and it can just stand a water STREAM. Ugh. Nothing about full immersion. :(

Anybody know of an x86 laptop that has a 15" screen, 1ghz+ chip, assloads of ram, and is fully submersible? No? Until they make one I am not buying a laptop. :(

Re:Not always true

[dublin]

As someone who used to be a program manager in Dell's portables group, I can tell you that Dell has a number of product marketing people that ensure that a special competition lab prepares machines for tests (they get tweaks the rest of us may never see, both hardware and software, mostly drivers), then carefully follow-up on the testing and results reporting/weighting to ensure that Dell is always at or near the top. (You'll notice that weight itself is seldom given much weight in notebook tests that include Dells, primarily because they have historically tended to be on the pudgy side - the Latitude CP family contains a half-pound of *screws* for cryin' out loud...)

This isn't meant as a slam at Dell - I suspect nearly all other OEMs do this as well, but this is an area in which Dell makes it a point to execute even better than usual. It's simply not possible to be important enough to get a "test machine" from Dell and not have some PM continually looking over your shoulder throughout the testing. Is that undue influence on the results? I guess that depends on your perspective...

As for the advertising stick, I've never seen it used, but then, it doesn't really have to be, now does it? When everyone *knows* you're carrying a big stick, you have the luxury of being able to speak softly. (TR was right about so many things...)