Buying laptop: any lighthouse?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I personnally don't like IBM thinkpads because I hate their little red button which is supposed to be a mouse and prefer larger touchpads that don't hinder you when you're typing,

One of the reasons I like the Thinkpads is because it's too easy to double click on a touchpad.

[Thue]

I am thinking about getting an Apple laptop. Is the ibooks any good?

[Urban Ranger]

Ibooks are toys - though you can get Linux running on them.

[Trifna]

Urban Ranger, why do you see them as toys? Seems like a computer like any other, except with Apple hardware and software standards (which are quite high)...

[vovan]

Trifna, I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop (have had it for about three years now). I have two main gripes with it.

1. Driver support sucks. Point in case: the video card. nVidia comes out with new drivers every couple of months and I want to be uptodate. However, their drivers don't support the laptop video cards - they expect laptop manufacturers to adapt their drivers to whatever video cards their laptops use. Toshiba hasn't updated its drivers since 2001, whereas Dell, which uses the same nVidia video card in some laptops, follows the updates far more closely.

2. Hard drive. The one that came with the laptop died just as the warranty expired. I did some research online, and apparently it is a very widespread problem with Toshiba laptops - the hard drives are unreliable. I got a new one and it is doing well. Replacing the drive manually was a breeze (did they make it easily accessible, expecting it to fail? ), but still the loss of the hard drive caused major inconvenience.

[Atahualpa]

Re: Buying laptop: any lighthouse?

Originally posted by Trifna
I didn't check computers components since... 5 years? So, is nowadays' DDRAM double of SDRAM 100MB? hehe
Here's my present idea of balanced comp (minimum specs):
1.5MHz (Pensium M or Athlon)
256 RAM
DVD + CD burner
30-40 Gig hd
video card: not a clue! These things change too much...
14-15" screen
wireless


Thank you very very much, especially for this brand thing...

Umm I'd go with 512 RAM.. when there is little RAM than it will have to access the HDD very often and Notebooks have very slow HDDs.

If you want to play games make sure the graphics card is not "shared memory" but has its own memory. You know, even Civ4 will be 3D.
I doubt though that there will be one with own gfx card in that price range.

As for screen resolution. XGA (1024x768) is very little to work with.. better is 1400x1050. Especially when you are working with several apps at the same time.


About brand: Acer is very popular here. Maybe Asus is worth a look as well. Don't know about Dell, but you should probably check as well.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Trifna
Urban Ranger, why do you see them as toys? Seems like a computer like any other, except with Apple hardware and software standards (which are quite high)...

The iBooks are rather underpowered.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Ibooks are toys - though you can get Linux running on them.

you can get linux running pretty everywhere, that however would only make it even more of a toy though

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
you can get linux running pretty everywhere, that however would only make it even more of a toy though

You can go ahead and tell Brin and Page that.

[Asher]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I personnally don't like IBM thinkpads because I hate their little red button which is supposed to be a mouse and prefer larger touchpads that don't hinder you when you're typing, but they are solid computers nonetheless.

Unless you get an X-series (ultraportable), touchpads and trackpoints are both standard. You choose which one you prefer.

UR:

One of the reasons I like the Thinkpads is because it's too easy to double click on a touchpad.

You can easily configure disabling that (I did) on ThinkPads.

PowerBooks and iBooks are both underpowered and overpriced. They're using the G4 chips from 2001, for christ sake. And they don't even get decent batterylife out of it.

They're cheapily made with cheap parts. The iBooks had a notorious problem with the motherboard (IIRC, there was a class action lawsuit). And Apple is once again recalling PowerBook/iBook batteries that may overheat/explode, made by the paragon of Quality -- LG...

At least IBM uses Sony batteries.

[Atahualpa]

Both PowerBooks and Thinkpads are very well out of reach for the price range Trifna stated...

[Donegeal]

I recently bought a Toshiba Satelite. I upgraded the memory and it works fine. It doesn't have the same chip you want (it has a 1.3 Celeron M), but it works great for me so far!

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by vovan

Hard drive. The one that came with the laptop died just as the warranty expired. I did some research online, and apparently it is a very widespread problem with Toshiba laptops - the hard drives are unreliable. I got a new one and it is doing well. Replacing the drive manually was a breeze (did they make it easily accessible, expecting it to fail? ), but still the loss of the hard drive caused major inconvenience.

Well for what its worth, I had my Toshiba for 5 years now and I didn't have a single problem. I could be true that Toshiba hard drives are unreliable, but I doubt it. I don't know where you read that. I hope its not consumer reviews on Amazon, Cnet or Epninions, because they're worthless. First, they're not statistically representative. Second, people can write anything they want in these reviews. Another thing, I'm pretty sure Toshiba hard drives can be found in plenty of other brands, like IBM for example.

[Trifna]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Both PowerBooks and Thinkpads are very well out of reach for the price range Trifna stated...

Actually, I might have a few good second handed occasions. I know some websites where people sell laptops, and I see affordable ThinkPad fairly often.

But are ThinkPad worth their bucks? They seem more business-oriented, and businesses are ready to pay higher premium due to the impact it can have on their revenues anyway.


PS: For those interested, I found interesting out-of-mainstream websites

http://www.abspc.com/app/config.asp?mono=1850

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=80302

http://resellerratings.com/

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16834114127&ATT=Notebooks&CMP=OTC-d3alt1me

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Trifna
But are ThinkPad worth their bucks?

There was this one random German guy (he's got a German version of Windows on his Thinkpad) I helped who kept saying that Thinkpad is the only notebook anybody should buy.

I reckon they are expensive, but they last a good long time.

I heard bad things about Dell ones.