Which notebook to buy?

[SpencerH]

I'm probably gonna buy a notebook soon, so I'd like to get some personal opinions about good and bad notebooks.

[Asher]

IBM ThinkPad T40

Though it's pricey...

[DinoDoc]

I like Mead notebooks.

[Spiffor]

I am very enthusiastic with Dell's notebooks. The big difference between Dell and its competitors is the service : they test the computer before shipping it to you (it explains why shipping times are generally longer, and often suffer unexpected lengthening).
They have a 3 years international guarantee... They come at your home to take the computer and come back a while later after having repaired everything.
Their hardware is generally of high quality, and you won't have some unpleasant surprises with incompatibilities within your hardware.
You can either have light computers, or heavy laptops with everything within (That's what I'm using now : Inspiron 8200)

In my class, about every colleague has a laptop but only two of us have Dells. While there are some other rands who do good quality (Toshiba is pretty good), many laptop brands are crap.

[Atahualpa]

Acer Travelmate 803LCi - http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030528/index.html

Sony PCG-Z1SP - http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030516/index.html

IBM Thinkpad T40 - http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030418/index.html

Do not buy a Notebook with the ATI IGP320 Chipset (some Compaq's do have that chipset). Its slow (but very pricey).

Also from the Specs the Toshiba Satellite 5200-902 looks cool. But the price is hefty.

I only read Toms Hardware, so I do not know of other reviews, but I bet you'll find a million more.

From my experience buying a notebook is difficult. First you need to make sure what you'll be using it. Do you want a Desktop Replacement or just a Mobil Computer?

Ata

[Spiffor]

My experience with Acer Travelmates :
Lots of crap is preinstalled. One of my friends has a travelmate, and it became increasingly unstable over time, making more and more problems. However, after we finally formatted it (and didn't install using the OEM CDs, which were full of the very crap we wanted to get rid of), it ran fine.

With Sony :
The performance was ok, and the amount of preinstalled crap was tolerable. The design was pretty strange, but that's not a problem. However, I never got too acquainted with this computer.

More general advice :
- DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM PACKARD BELL ! Packard installs throngs of crap on your computer, and they are present in the reinstallation CDs. Among this crap, there is adware, and I suspect there is spyware as well. The starting page of Internet Explorer is PB's website and it takes a bit of knowledge to get rid of it (not just IE's preferences).
Besides, their support is absolutely horrendous, and you should feel lucky if you don't fall on a dead link when attempting to download a driver on their website (I am not exxagerating here). Doing so is indispensable if you want to format the whole **** and reinstall it properly - which you have to if you want to have a useful computer.
Also, they tend to use cheapass components built by Taiwanese on a budget : don't expect these people to put their drivers online
(note: I have had to maintain two Packard Bells, and I've seen a few more, so I know what I am talking about - these computers are the worst found on the market... You can't fall any lower).
I mean it. A friend of mine has been warned but thought "Well, Spiff sure must be exaggerating, it can't be that horrible", and she bought one. Her loss.

- Generally avoid "craputer" brands, which ship tons of preinstalled crap without your agreement. Known for it are Packard Bell ( ), Hewlett-Packard, anything you'll find in the supermarket... Acer does it to some extent too.

- Also, be aware that less and less laptops are sold with a floppy driver. While floppies are generally useless, they are still the only way to boot your computer to install older OS like Windows 98. They are also useful to transfer files if your network has problems. Make sure your comp has enough RAM to handle Win2000 or WinXP smoothly (256 Mb RAM is a minimum), or make sure you have a floppy driver.

[SpencerH]

Thanks for the comments. What I'm really after are your personal experiences with the laptops you own yourself(I'm familiar with all the review sites). Do you find that the batteries run down quicker than expected? Does it overheat? In retrospect, would you have bought a lighter/heavier unit or with a bigger screen, or faster/or slower (cheaper) CPU? What about connectivity issues, do you wish your laptop had more/better connection ports (firewire, USB2, ethernet)? Have you had problems with the CR-RW drives?

I'll be doing a lot of travelling in the coming year or so, so this will be a work-gaming machine while on the move.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Spiffor
I am very enthusiastic with Dell's notebooks. The big difference between Dell and its competitors is the service : they test the computer before shipping it to you (it explains why shipping times are generally longer, and often suffer unexpected lengthening).
They have a 3 years international guarantee... They come at your home to take the computer and come back a while later after having repaired everything.
Their hardware is generally of high quality, and you won't have some unpleasant surprises with incompatibilities within your hardware.
You can either have light computers, or heavy laptops with everything within (That's what I'm using now : Inspiron 8200)

In my class, about every colleague has a laptop but only two of us have Dells. While there are some other rands who do good quality (Toshiba is pretty good), many laptop brands are crap.

I use inspiron 8200 as well, Although I wouldnt be praising dell as you seem to be doing, I'd agree with alot of the stuff on ur post.

inspiron 8200s had some huge incompatibility problems with Nvidia GeForce 2 Go.... Screen would freeze just randomly and it was ****ing annoying! Dell isnt incompatiblity-free. Actually its plagued with incompatibility problems and since their parts and drivers are dell-specific it worsens the case.

Try to look for other laptop other than dell. I only owned dell laptops so I cant recommend you any, but Dell laptops arent bad at all.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Thanks for the comments. What I'm really after are your personal experiences with the laptops you own yourself(I'm familiar with all the review sites). Do you find that the batteries run down quicker than expected? Does it overheat? In retrospect, would you have bought a lighter/heavier unit or with a bigger screen, or faster/or slower (cheaper) CPU? What about connectivity issues, do you wish your laptop had more/better connection ports (firewire, USB2, ethernet)? Have you had problems with the CR-RW drives?

I'll be doing a lot of travelling in the coming year or so, so this will be a work-gaming machine while on the move.

Well, for the past 4 years, I have used laptops as my primary machines, both for work and gaming. I used a desktop only at my parents' home, 800km away from where I study.

My first laptop was a Dell, Inspiron 3500 IIRC. Good Ram, good batteries (3 hours), horrible graphic card, because I bought it at a time where laptops were supposed to be used for work. Also, the hard drive of 6 Gb became insufficient very quickly. As I didn't have a CD-burner, I had to take a peripheral hard drive (buying it was highly stressful, I don't want to talk about it) connected with USB. USB is slow when you transfer gigas (30min-1 hour per giga). It was tolerable for MP3s and videos, but it was simply impossible to play recent, fast paced games if they were on this separate harddrive: the access times to memory was simply too high. Also, decompressing a file from this harddrive took loads of time.

My current Laptop is an inspiron 8200. I've bought the best possible configuration available back in September 2002.
It has only two USB connectors, and one more would be better for me. Any busy desk can have USB printers, scanners, or even peripheral harddrives And since there is no joystick port on a laptop, you can only play with USB joysticks.
It is not noisy, but is not completely silent either. However, it has never troubled me.
As with my former laptop, the speakers are minuscule. It results in having a crappy sound quality if you don't plug you computer to headphones or to real speakers. Actually, it seems to be something specific to Dell. My friend's Toshiba has a satisfying sound even when it's not plugged.
I have sometimes worked for hours with my comp on my legs without being burned (sometimes bare legs). You can clearly feel the heat, but it is never excessive or dangerous. The power adapter can also be pretty hot, but never reaches dangerous levels.
Big Screen = Good ! I have a 15", and it is really great. Since it's my main computer, I couldn't bear staring at some 13" screen.
My battery lasts about 2h30 - 3hours when using word or similar. However, it lasts only one hour when I play a 3d game, requesting much more enrgy for the graphic card and the CPU. The battery doesn't seem to reduce even though it is full almost all the time (I never empty my battery)
OTOH, on one of the Packard Bells I know, the battery lasts 5 to 10 minutes.


The worse "practical" problem with my computer is the weight. I'm not strong, and the weight of the machine (about 8 kg) makes any transportation unappealing. I sometimes don't move with my comp only because I'm tired bearing this weight. As such, my comp isn't exactly a "laptop", it is more a "transportable computer". That's what I wanted : a computer with the highest performance and as many things built-in as possible.

Another practical problem, for all laptops, is the terrible price for memory, and the maximal memory which is pretty slim. With 60 Gigabytes, I have bought the biggest harddrive available for laptops, at a time when 200Gb harddrives were beginning on desktops. When you are storing things, 0 Gb is used more quickly than it looks. Fortunately, CD-burners will help you solving this problem.

Edit : How could I forget the three years international guarantee ? The best thing ever ! When you have a hardware problem, you simply know it won't be an headache to fix

[Zero]

I'd say stick with toshiba IBM thinkpad or Dell. And since Dell is the only one I used (and therefore know all about good AND bad things about it) I'd personally suggest the others.

[Az]

We have an option to buy Compaq laptops, subsidized by my uni. is it worth it?

[Spiffor]

I have almost never touched a Compaq. They have a reputation of making "craputers" though (i.e much preinstalled crap). I don't know any practical problems or advantages when it comes to them

[Atahualpa]

My primary notebook is a Compaq.
One of the Presario 900 Series.
Apart from using ATI's crappy Chipset it is okay. The Soundsystem it has is amazing. You can view DVDs without the need of speakers and it sounds great!! Here is the Article that describes the notebook I currently have (and the crappy chipset): http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20020516/index.html

If I would buy a Laptop now I would:
- go for higher resolution (1024x768 is not great to work with)
- go for a real graphics card that doesnt take system memory and delivers acceptable performance like a Mobility Radeon 9000 or a GeForce FX Go5600
- features an integrated wireless lan adapter (as with the centrinos)
- 40GB minimum Harddisk space

If you buy a Laptop make sure the CPU it has, is a Mobile version. Desktop CPUs in Notebooks suck quite a lot. My notebook has a battery time of about 2:30 - 3:00 when doing not much (typing and stuff) and display-background-lightning is set low.

But I am having it connected to a power supply about 95% of the time. Nevertheless, its good to have a long battery life if you need it. Most probably you will have it connected to a power source most of the time anyway, but it is still good not to be too dependent on it.

ata

[Atahualpa]

About preinstalled things there were:
-Norton Anti-Virus 2002
-MS Word
-MS Works

And about 1GB of data on the harddisk in strange folders (compaq, CPQAPPS, cpqs, i386). Mostly drivers and stuff.

hmm that pretty much was it.

Nothing really worrying

[Az]

thanks!