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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?"
Epinions Laptops
http://www.notebookreview.com/reviews.html
Indeed, even for whole systems it's very hard to find comparative reviews these days (i.e. a Dell XYZ versus a Gateway ZYX), and I would gather that the reason is that there are so many options out there, and the models change so frequently (or are badged in a country specific way, which we see a lot in Canada), that it's impossible to stay current (not to mentioning very difficult to get them all together: Pretty much limited to the very large publishers like ZDNet). Instead, the review sites target whatever new singular piece of hardware is out: A nice granular little review for a timely piece of hardware such as the new Athlon XP 2.2 or the WD 8MB cache harddrive -> It's easy to review something so contextual as you know what the readers are looking for.
Listen the regular cnet and zdnet sites usually have reviews of laptops. They are not as tech centered or as unbiased as other sources IMHO. However, they make for a good starting point.
_ __
If you are going to use an alternative OS (linux or BSD for examples obviously) then check out a quick google search first to see people's impressions of the compatibility. This is a good idea anyway since people often sprinkle general comments into these and give you an idea of the quality of the product.
Finally, unless you are going for a Dell please go to a computer store and browse. Laptops are very personal machines and pointing device preference and the feel of the keyboard beneath your fingers as well as general layout of special buttons and the brightness and clarity of the screens are something you need to get a feel for first-hand.
If you get a Dell or other mail-order product it also gives you a point of reference so you know what to look for. For example if you try a box out at a store and realize you can't live without at least 15" screen or something.
I have Dell Inspiron 4000 and have been very happy with the quality of the product. SuSE 7.3 installed with no issues and Sax2 did a better job than Dell in figuring out my video settings.
Castle Wolfenstein looks damn good.
_______________________________________________
ACK
Couldn't be any happier with my PowerBook G4. Runs Mac OS X great and works well with Mandrake 8.2 PPC. Plus it's one cool looking notebook! 8-)
iBooks are nice, but they use G3 CPUs... Mac users are waaay better off with a G4.
Yes, I know - only one mouse button.
;) ). 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.
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
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.)
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
sony has a 90 day limited warranty UNTIL YOU REGISTER THE PRODUCT, then it goes into a full 1 year limited warranty. Read your book, troll.
Most of the sites mentioned (like Ars, Anand, Tom's, and so forth) are targeted towards the "enthusiast" market. They're the people who go out and but new motherboards, video cards, and so on, and they tweak constantly. You don't see too many reviews of actual, brand-name computers on those sites unless they are doing something truly unique.
Laptops, for the most part, appeal to two groups of users - corporate shops and students (granted plenty of exceptions). Enthusiasts don't seem to buy as many laptops, probably because of the performance compromises virtually all laptops make. You can't readily upgrade anything on the typical laptop except for RAM, HD space, and Cardbus devices. There's no CPU swapping, no video card upgrades, and overclocking is kind of pointless on a laptop (though I had a PowerBook 3400c once that I overclocked from 240 to 270 MHz).
What coverage there is of laptops has usually been in the "mainstream" print publications like PC Magazine, but they don't even go there too often.
When it's a situation like yours, with multiple co-workers getting laptops, usually it's a pretty simple answer - your IT department will give you a Dell, Compaq, IBM, or Toshiba and tells you to love it. At least you guys get to pick!
As for our shop - Compaq Evo N600c laptops. They're pretty slick. As for me (IRL), I use a TiBook 667 as my main computer at home, and it's most wonderful indeed.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Click here for example
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
The problem is that the person isn't looking to find a laptop that can run anything: they are looking for a laptop with great specs. I don't think that's the way to buy a laptop.
;)
When my wife and I decided to buy a laptop, we sat down and discussed what we wanted to do with it. After that, the specs wrote themselves, and we could move on to finding compatible machines.
For example, she wanted to run Evercrack. I wanted screen real estate for work application. So a 3D accelerator, 512M RAM, and 1600x1200 display were part of the specs.
Did I eventually want to run Linux on it? If so, then maybe a laptop with no proprietary hardware (as it turns out, I don't want to run Linux on it, though, at least not for a while).
Finally, after determining what we wanted to do with the laptop, we spec shopped for the machine, using C-Net, USENET, vendor sites.
In the end, we narrowed it down to the high-end Vaio and high-end Toshiba. Both had comparable specs, the Vaio was slower, with larger screen size (same resolution, though) and a slightly better 3D card (mobile radeon 7500).
We went with the Toshiba, though: GeForce4Go (but the video card can be swapped out, apparently, which was a big plus), SD/Smart Media readers built in (for digital photography and swapping files to my Zaurus), Firewire. So we got a machine with great specs, but that does what we need it to do (plus more).
Of course, the Everquest thing should have tipped me off. I think I've used the laptop once since we've gotten it. Silly wife.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
As somebody who's been using laptops for the last ten years as my primary machine, and as a guy who's surrounded by mobile salespeople and execs who live on laptops, the reason why you don't see comparison reviews is because most of us are zealots about one or two brands.
The salespeople at my shop are absolutely married to their Sony Vaios, because they look sexy, they impress clients, and they're very lightweight. They don't care about things like driver support or warranty, because the tech crew handles that, and they always get a new one every year anyway.
The network admin crew loves Dells and Toshibas, because they're solid as rocks and the driver support is much better, with pretty regular driver updates.
You're already seeing lots of people slap up their opinion here, but notice that it's all opinions - not hardware comparisons. Us Slashdotters are subject to the same hardware fanatacism that my cohorts are subject to. Whether you want integrated 802.11b, big hard drives, big memory support, whatever, you can always find it in any brand. Everybody's doing basically the same thing, and the performance is within 10% of the next guy.
What's your damage, Heather?
Let's try this again....(in html this time)
System shootouts comparison page
--geethree
I tend to favor the main brands (Toshiba, Acer, IBM Thinkpad). You'll find that most Linux-ready laptops are also the better-made onee. I think this is because the linux laptop FAQ is weighted towards laptops that use decent hardware that has drivers available, so you get less off-brand internals.
After 8 laptops (varios purchases, various sources), my two recommendations are:
1) Make sure it has a 3 months warrenty. Most problems happen immediately (manufacturer flaws that appear during the first days of use). Most accidents happen during the first month (while you learn the 'stresses' your laptop can handle).
2) Never get reconditioned (or used) laptops unless they include a new battery-- battery replacement is expensive.
A.
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.
If you've got the dough and want something that'll last with some "ooo" factor, get a TiBook with OS9, OS X and YellowDog Linux.
That's what I got in January when they finally started to deliver a CD-R & RW burner in 'em. (I HATE not being able to back-up.)
I can only recommend it. My G4/667MHz 512MB RAM 30GB disk is great.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I simple took a visit to Apple's homepage and once again realized that they are the creators of the finest laptop computers around.
As simple as that.
I'm currently using a A21p (850 PIII) as my main machine. I've had it since March '01 with no probs.
:)
Reason: 1600x1200? You cannot really argue with that.
Also, these IBM's have video in too! (Tosh's don't by default (I've just checked))
The previous one was a 770z (March '99? I think I get a new one every 2 years. That had a 300 PII I think), which at the time had the highest resolution (1280x1024) and that's still going strong on someones desk (the battery's dead by now).
Previous to that, it was a Tosh' Tecra something-or-other 166 (Nov '98) which is still running as a router somewhere in the organisation. (how's about that for reuse then
Unfortunately, there isn't anything with a higher resolution of 1k6 x 1k2 yet (prove me wrong) but I'd get it as soon as it came out.
Other collegues typically have Vaios (crap video cards (CStrike-wise)) and Dells (the little Inspiron 2650's ok, but too small).
& the one I've got my eye on is the A31p but I'll wait for the 2 or 2.1 Ghz P4 (Q1 '03 roll-out, methinks) + it'll take the Ultraport camera I got for the last one too!
After saying all that bollocks, I think that if this is your first laptop, the main things to ask yourself is:
"How long's the warranty? (Y'know you'll drop it more often/earlier if it's shorter)"
"Trackpoint or scratch&sniff?"
"Will it scale up my display on the LCD if I drop the resolution (IOW: play CS) , or does it only show up the middle 30% of the screen?"
"Can I carry it easily? (e.g. I don't feel like a dickwad with a 3kg 'top in a rucksack, or am I a neo-PHB who looks cools with a teeny briefcase)?"
"Will it run Linux/BSD/OS-of-choice?"
I'll shut up now & get on with....
XOR EAX,EAX
PUSH EAX
RET
.
.
;lame I know...
-- Mod me down. I am not a karma tart. ffs,gag
At the end of the day, many of us would like to check the laptop for "linux compliance" before actually purchasing the machine.
I found these 2 site quite useful:
Linux on a laptop
UniX with Mobile Computers
I myself am loving my titanium powerbook. At the moment it is tri-booting Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and Yellowdog Linux 2.2.
JOY
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Or if I want a good BSD system, like the song says, "Boom...there it is."
;) )
Uhh... that's "Whoop there it is"...
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
The Airport antenna is built into every new Mac (desktops and laptops), and they all have an internal slot for the Airport card, but the Airport card itself is an extra $100.
If you are looking for a high end laptop, I would definitely check out Dynamism. They have great service, and offer some very cool machines. There comparisons are purely spec based.
Spencer Ogden
In the last month Anandtech had begun reviewing laptops with the same rigor with which they approach everything else! While they have only covered 3 laptops so far, I think the reviews are exactly what a technical person wants to read when they are trying to make an educated decision.
They have covered the:
Asus T9
Toshiba Satellite
and just today:
WinBook N4
I am really glad to see someone as trusted at Anand filling this niche!
-OctaneZ
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
As long as we are on the subject of rabid laptop testimonials, I'll tell you about my laptop.
A Tadpole SparcBook 2, from 1993. A neat little thing I got from my company and it still works great, though I no longer have a working battery for it, it is neat to boot up for nostalgia's sake. Built in SCSI, AUI Ethernet, etc. Anyway, the funny thing is my home was robbed and the laptop stolen. I tried to call pawn shops to report it, and they all had the same question (so, is it a Mac, or a PC, I would say "saprc, running solaris, and they would ask "is that a DOS program? Does it say anything about intel on it? A latop *has* to be either PC or Mac, so you probably have an old 286 or 386 or something" Describing this thing to pawnshops was painful., eventually I just said if it is a laptop and you can't tell what the hell t is, it's probably mine). As it turns out, no one would buy it and they guy got caught two years later and couldn't even figure out how to turn it on, and I got it back intact. Still works great, though I'm looking for a cheap PC laptop replacement, since the SparcBook 2 is getting long in the tooth. Mac platform looks like they approach Sun quality on laptops, but is too expensive, oh well.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
BEST - IBM ThinkPad T-series - All other laptops are playing catchup to the IBM T-series line of portables. They have the best weight/performance/features ratio of any laptop on the market. IBM offers a fully 3-year warranty that covers your laptop internationally, no other mfg does this like IBM. Since this is /. I should mention that you can load your favorite *NIX distro onto one of these without a lot of trouble.
The biggest drawback to the T-series is the price - starting at $2400. If you can afford it, this laptop is king.
Sony Vaio - Beautiful laptops that run great until you have to get them repaired. The backlog on parts from Sony is a joke - 3-6 months easy.
Toshiba - They used to make great laptops, but have fallen in years past to mediocrity. A reasonable cheap solution.
HPaq - Forgetaboutit. Neither HP nor Compaq makes a laptop I would purchase, period.
Apple - The PowerBook G4 is beautiful, so long as you can stand running Mac OS. X is better... much better. The iBooks work well too. Apple repairs on laptops - mail it to them and get it back in a week fixed. At least you know it'll be done right.
Hope this helps. Best of luck.
Sapere Aude - Homer
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.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
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...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last