Six Laptops That Don't Burn

digihome writes, "An exploding laptop can really ruin your weekend, so here's a review of six laptops that are unlikely to blow up." From the article: "We evaluated everything from battery and air vent temperatures, AC power draw and battery life to performance and price... What we found is that there's a real difference among those notebooks that know how to take the heat without sacrificing performance."

Comments

Twinhead? Uh, no.

[Kris_J]

Any article that actually considers a laptop from Twinhead as a viable option loses all credibility, even if it does come last. They're junk. My most recent experience with a single Twinhead laptop involved two new hard drives, new RAM, a flakey power socket, a hinge that barely works and a battery pack with a failed cell (it splutters if you have the battery connected.) Prior experience involves machines that didn't come with the right bits and didn't recognise their own floppy drives.

Re:Say no more, Panasonic Tough Book

[b0s0z0ku]

I would previously recommend ThinkPads, but even before moving to Levono the quality was waning. The only thing the ThinkPad has that is superior is a longer warranty.

Just pick up a T23 or T41. Should run Linux fine and you'll pay under $300 used for the first, under $500 for the second on EBay. If it conks out, replace it with another $300 notebook.

-b.

Re:Am I supposed to be afraid of this?

[Firehed]

I've asked the Apple 'Geniuses' about this on both a MacBook and MBP. While it wasn't *that* pronounced, both warped enough that they wouldn't sit flat on the table (notably worse on the MacBook). I don't know whether the MacBook was from heat or poor QC as it never got astonishingly hot during use, but I know it's heat related on my MBP, which I've seen report CPU temps upwards of 85c (where Applecare did absolutely nothing except replacing the main logic board with one that not only failed to fix the heat issue but started causing video corruption).

I'm not bashing Apple here - my old Gateway was almost as hot, and considerably louder (the fan was off-balance for most of its life; both very loud and almost always on since day one). As the MBP is often on a table it's not the end of the world, but Apple's engineers need to do some rethinking. I've also got a Thinkpad of nearly equal spec (almost identical to a MB except for the size, with over an hour more battery life) and it very rarely gets warm and the fan is never noticible. Apple genius's thoughts: "well, it's plastic, it won't heat up as much". Okay, well I guess IBM/Lenovo use a superplastic that dissipates heat better than aluminum... not even the copper heatsink section of the body gets warm, yet my MBP with plenty of metal surface area to dissipate that heat really roasts. Last I knew, added surface area for more heat dissipation meant a cooler system, but I guess IBM and Apple don't follow the laws of thermodynamics.

Translation: I still love my MBP (for the OS, not so much the hardware), but the Thinkpad (T60, if you care) runs very cool and has quite a bit of kick to it, with the main faults being a crappy display and Windows (unfortunately, OSx86 on it wasn't functional or reliable enough, or else it'd have been a best-of-both-worlds). For around $1100 I think (school paid for mine), it gives me a solid 5+ hours of battery life (it seems closer to 6 in Vista for some reason that escapes me) and no roasted legs. With a nicer, preferably widescreen, display, and OS X, I'd say it's pretty close to my ideal laptop. Except how the stupid black plastic gets laughably greasy if you ever handle the thing without wearing gloves. If Apple were to talk to the Thinkpad engineers to deal with their heat issues, they'd have a pretty nice system (as I doubt IBM/Lenovo talking to Apple about their choice of OS issue will get them anywhere). They certainly look pretty and OS X is the real reason to buy the thing, but Apple's portables really have a couple pretty inexcusable issues, most significantly heat (rounding the edges where your wrists tend to rest wouldn't get a "no" vote from me either).

Re:Am I supposed to be afraid of this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look into smcFanControl http://www.conscius.de/~eidac/software/page5/page5 .html
Set it to something like 3000 rpm, which you can barely notice, and bam, cooler lap. Of course, this shouldn't be required, but until they get the heat issues sorted out...

Re:Twinhead? Uh, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with parent post. Twinhead laptops are very disappointing. I own one and using it right now (model E14AL if you care) and only had problems with it. It killed two RAM in the first 3 months, then had to replace the motherboard, dvd drive died last month, plastic case is of very bad quality and get scratched very easily (can scratch it with your nails!), and now my the screen fixations are going away. After one year of use, I'm about to buy a new laptop, as I fear it's going to die soon and continually fixing it will prove to be more costly than buying a brand new one (hey, warranty has just expired!).

Ok, about heating problem, it's terrible. First, the fan and air intake are located on the bottom of the laptop, which means u need to use it on a perfectly flat desk and not on your lap or bed as it would obstruct all air flow. Second, the fan sometimes doesn't turn on at all and the laptop ends to power down after overheating too much.

That's my first Twinhead computer and my last one. I don't want to generalize to every single laptop built by Twinhead, but their Efio (EXXX) models are crap. Poor quality parts and bad quality standards. Better pay more and get a more robust computer.

Ced

Re:Celsius v. Fahrenheit

[Starayo]

I find it amusing that America, whose citizens love to claim the best of everything, still use an outdated system of measurement.

Re:They forgot one!

[mspohr]

One of their criteria was "best performance for the buck" but they chose a bunch of expensive laptops.

My 1.7GHz Dell 700m barely gets warm even after prolonged use. The fan rarely even runs so I can't measure the "exhaust temperature". Battery life close to 3 hours (twice that with the big battery- NOT Sony). Also has dual display Intel chipset so I can run an external display for twice the desktop real estate. Cost was less than $1000.