The Best Traveling Laptop?

Subaiku asks: "Next semester my girlfriend will be traveling to Japan to continue with her studies. As a going away gift I plan on buying her a laptop of some sort. I've been thinking about going with a PowerBook, or maybe a Dell, but I really need advice as to which brand/configuration/platform would be best in terms of ease of use/connectivity in foreign places (namely Japan). Any suggestions?"

Comments

Id go with a ibook 14"

[EvanTaylor]

or powerbook, but youll want a good quality screen so stay away from the 12"ers. Battery life is awesome on the g3 ibooks, so it is great for travel. Pretty good shock resistence, resilient case, etc. If your going the pc route, ibm thinkpads beat the hell out of dell imo. There are new centrino based thinkpads with great battery life too, so mac is not the only lower power platform. Only problems Ive found with owning a mac are the little apps all cost 10 bucks or so, and you really need em.

Re:Id go with a ibook 14"

[Cheesy Fool]

What exactly is wrong with the 12" ibook screens? I've got one and the screen quality is excellent plus it's smaller and much easier to carry around with you.

Apple is right.

[E1ven]

Your first thought was a good one.
Get her the 15 inch Powerbook G4.
While certain features of OSX (such as the movie listings) don't work properly in .jp, Apple has done a GREAT job in preparing the system.
The Japanese support in OSX is top-knotch, and there is a lot of BSD support for Japanese.

The machine is strong, and gets great battery life. And, I must admit, Apple's Technical Support and customer care is Top of the line.
I had had a number of problems with my laptop due to physical manafacturing, and after working with Apple, and describing the problem, they not only replaced it, but gave me a faster model as an apology.

I cannot recomend Apple laptops enough.

depends on what she needs

[MerlynEmrys67]

I like a big thick laptop that does everything... a real brick with two batteries... I know others that like their smaller machines, it is a trade off. I will say get her at least one extra battery for the flights

Re:depends on what she needs

[Christopher_G_Lewis]

Extra Batteries are *way* over rated. They are heavy, and if you can't find a plug, well, enjoy the scenery, not your laptop.

For the flight, get one of these:

Targus

These days, most planes (esp. on long duration flights) have 12 volt adapters under the seat.

She will be *much* happier.

I did have a problem with one of my flights to Japan on United. They don't use the 12 volt car adapter, but a smaller connector. My power brick had the appropriate connector, but kept kicking in a circuit breaker when I'd power up. I bought the "offical" one ($80) on the flight, and was fine.

Now that's a tough one...

[noeffred]

1. ease of use.
   I can't really say if either an Apple or a x86 based laptop will be better in therms of ease of use. Many people swear by Apple, on the other hand, you might get a better bang for the buck when buying an x86. I'd say it's probably just being used to something. I've been working for years with Windows, now i'm hooked on Linux and Gnome. I've never had my hands on an Apple PC so can't say.
2. connectivity
   I'd say the only thing you need is to find some sort of either an travel adapter or some replacement power brick for Japan, which shoulnd't be that hard to get. Ethernet and stuff is the same all over the globe, so connectivity is nothing I'd be worried about. Problems could arise when using an analog modem, since these can be quite a pain in the butt sometimes. But you can get some adaptors for the differnet plugs, so again, no problem.
3. 
   So as you can see, it's just a matter of getting the best bang for the buck, everything else is pretty much a no-brainer, just a matter of getting some adapters and/or power brick. Just ask your hardware dealer to help you out.

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[account_deleted]

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Horror!!

[droyad]

Don't buy dell. Everyone knows Dell's are crap.. everyone. You get what you pay for (esp with laptops). You don't want that Dell crapping out while you are overseas.

Invest in a good quality laptop (Toshi, Apple, Acer or IBM). All three companies support international travelers and Acer has a 2 _hour_ turnaround on their repairs.

And for godsake buy the extended warrenty, worth it's weight in gold (literally unfortunatly)

I was at a trade show yesterday and was looking at the IBM laptops. I notice that the sales guy was throwing them around quite abit and I questioned him on it. Well he closed it and _stood_ on it for a while, then he opened it up and passed it to me by the _monitor_ and lo and behold still worked fine. I was impressed.

As for battery life, those new Centrino systems are sweet, as are the Transmeta ones. Up to 8 hours battery life on a standard battery.

One last one was the new laptop from Toshiba it was about as thick as a finger and wieghed 1.2kg. PIII, 30GB HDD, 512 ram, wow. Expensive though.

Just a thought, try buying the laptop on the way if possible, they are often cheaper (and higher speced) in Asia.

Robert

Re:Don't.

[Nutrimentia]

Wrong. Japan is the place for cutting edge consumer electronics, but computers don't fall into that category. Japanese computers and components are always more expensive for what you get than what is available in the US. I've lived here for almost 4 years now and have seen the prices come way down, but its still expensive.

Plus she'll be stuck with a Japanese layout keyboard. letters are standard QWERTY, but useful punctuation is all funky, like Shift+2 for quotes " and shift+7 for apostrophes '. The @ is to the right of the P key and doesn't require a modifier-key to use though :-) I ordered my laptop from the states and made a trip home to get it so I wouldn't be stuck with that stuff.

Apple's computers are almost exactly the same price as they are in the US. The slight elevated expense offsets shipping and pads daily currency fluctuations, so if she did buy over here, Apple would be a good deal. If she buys at the apple.co.jp Apple Store, she can order an American keyboard layout too.

I'd recommend an iBook and maybe wait a little bit. Word on the street is that a speed bump is coming across the line. But the OS is excellent and the Japanese support is great. Be sure to have her check out the Character Palette.

Also, check out the JEDict application. Its an incredible Japn/Engl dictionary that also has contextual menu (ctrl+click!) translation support that is indispensable! The Omnigroup applications OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner are important too.

I hope she enjoys the computer and the time over here. I love it,

I have a Dell

[Andy Dodd]

And it works perfectly. (Inspiron 8200)

My dad, 3-4 friends at my alma mater, and my research lab there all had Inspiron 8000s, all of them were rock solid and we loved them.

4 years ago or so (Inspiron 7500s for example), Dells did suck, they were in a major quality slump during my sophomore year in college, but starting around the time of the Inspiron 8000 series they shaped up a lot.

Toshibas were good deals, but all were a bit on the flimsy side. This may have changed, I stopped looking at Toshibas long ago.

Acers - I never liked their form factors, and IMHO their tech support *sucks* (My old laptop was a TI/Acer Travelmate, that thing was a real mess.)

Apple - Good quality, but their displays lag behind PC laptops. And if this guy's GF is a PC person, then Apple isn't really an option.

IBM - Expensive, but I will agree with you here, the only thing tougher than a ThinkPad is a Panasonic ToughBook. ThinkPads seem to last forever. (I worked in the computer sales/service department of my campus store a few years back. The average age of IBMs coming in for service was 2-3 years or more older than everything else, and most of the problems they did have were minor ones or user-created problems like a Coke spilled in the keyboard.)

Platform agnosticism here...

[Raptor CK]

These days, with enough additional OS packages, Windows and OS X are about equal. I've got a coworker in my office running the US version of Win2K with everything set to Japanese. It's rather annoying when I've got to use that workstation, but it's certainly Japanese. OS X, of course, is known for having excellent language support, and Apple is committed to supporting the Japanese market, so she should be fine either way.

The real issue, then, isn't the CPU. It's the overall design.

In Japan, anyone using a full sized laptop will stick out like a sore thumb. I strongly recommend something small and light, especially since she might need to carry it around a lot. No one wants to lug an 8 pound laptop around.

I used to own a Toshiba Libretto 110CT, one of the smallest laptops available in the US. It was a great system, but with a 233 MHz processor, I decided it was time to move on. As a whole, though, subnotes are completely usable systems, and I can't remember a single time that I ever left it behind due to packing constraints. Sure, I left it at home when I went canoeing, but that's just common sense. Get her something like a Libretto (almost any Japanese ultralight, really, although I've heard that Sony's stuff is somewhat flaky,) and she's almost guaranteed to have her laptop handy whenever she needs it. A good modern example might be the Fujitsu P-series laptops.

The other option, bringing you back to full-size keyboards and the like, are the Powerbooks (and iBooks, although those haven't been updated in a while.) The 17" is simply massive, and has no place in a traveling student's hands. The 15" is pretty nice, but hasn't been updated with the new Aluminum Powerbooks. The 12" Powerbook may actually be a bit more power than she needs, of course, and you may want to lean towards a 12" iBook. Out of the Powerbooks, the 12" is still the cheapest, although I'm sure if you looked at refurbished and used models, you could find a great deal on a 15", which is a bit older, and a bit more "tried and true."

In general, though, you should look at portability over power. A nice small laptop will end up in her bag a lot more often than some 6-8 pound behemoth. And, as long as she's got an Ethernet connection, I don't think there are any major issues to worry about re: adapters and the like. Power should be close enough to the US norm to work fine, and the only thing I'd really worry about are modems, and drivers if she gets some crazy Japanese cellphone and wants to hook it up to the laptop.