Laptop Computer......
 

Hey guys, was wondering if you could give me some recommendations for laptop computers. My friend is looking for a new one, and while I mainly use desktops, my only experience with my previous laptop was solid, but lackluster.

She's looking at....

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1196470144972

Price isn't too much an issue, bang for the buck is more a priority. Her current laptop is 5 years old, so it's definitely time for an upgrade. Looking for something under $1000, but if it's more and you guys think it's worth it I'll take that under advisement. She's definitely willing to go over that amount, I'm just putting it as a benchmark.

As for the laptop, I wasn't all that impressed with it. Thanks for you help!

I think its more important to know whats the intended use of the laptop
and what kind of portability is expected.

Would you rather have something little bulky, but very powerful or
something light, but powerful enough to take care of
email/browsing and similar light weight processes.

if I had to get one for myself, I'd go with a sub 13in MacBook for its
portability and reliability. But your needs would be different from mine.

I'd stay away from that lineup of Toshiba. Google "A215 Black screen of death".

I've heard that Toshiba have provided a "fix", but it doesn't make me confident that they are doing the kind of QC you want on a notebook.

What are you looking for in a machine? Office use only? Suitable for gaming?

She prefers something light, I know that. She wants it for grad school, so something with email/browsing, powerpoint, (which is every computer, I know) and something with a long battery. I'm pretty sure she doesn't do games, or anything that would really need graphics or heavy processing. I'd think she'd want something along the lines of what a business traveler would want.

If the usage is not heavy like you've said, I'd go with something like
this:
Mac:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...family/macbook

PC (Lenovo Thinkpad)
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/c...FABC3CE1BC569A

http://www.deals2buy.com/search/notebook

There's an HP for $700, though it's a larger 17" display; and one for $600 with a 15.4" display. Both pretty good specs and better than Toshiba IMHO.

Also there are some Dells in the $700s that look pretty reasonable. People either love Dells or hate them, so one must decide where one stands on that brand.

For a copy of Microsoft Office, use www.computersworth.com or her college's store if it's cheaper there; and if possible, she should check at the school for any school discount programs from Lenovo, Dell and/or others for both the hardware and the software.

Check out the Sony Vaio SZ Series http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1199496322538

that is the top Spec SZ model with a carbon fibre chasis et al

the lower spec ones in SZ series (google them, or check out www.sonystyle.com ) have mag al casing, are just a little bit heavier (still, around 2 Kgs - someone convert that to lbs) and have a great battery life..

I have a similar Toshiba and the keyboard does NOT impress me as being durable. And battery life is GHASTLY for the 15.4" display.

Buy a Lenovo Thinkpad that will last for less money!

Bottom feeder laptops are almost always sold with minimal batteries and memory.

Figure on adding a hundred bucks for a real battery, and another 50 or so for memory to get to price for a usable system.

This is particularly true with Toshiba.

Want small?
 

The cheapest white Macbook currently available will be more than enough. Macbook's Intel architecture is superb and of high-quality; it'll offer her more than enough juice to run all of her software. If she will be using things like MS Access which is only available through Windows, she can run a small partition of Windows on it as well to seamlessly continue her work. And.. you actually get someone that understands you well on the phone when you call 1-800-MY-APPLE. (No more repeating your creditcard numbers... haha!)

I am actually a marketing agent for Apple on campus for a college in the Northeast region. If you want more help, feel free to post back here! I can go over the usual requirements if you can tell me a little more about what kind of degree she'll be pursuing in her grad school.

I should also be able to forward her directly to her school's campus rep to assist her in person or via email on any pre-purchase issues!

# AMD Geode™ processor LX800* with 400MHz frontside bus
# 512MB DDR memory for multitasking power

Uh, no thanks.

Service
 

If you use your computer for business the most important question has to be how quickly it can be repaired.

I have sung the praises of the Sony TX series on this forum because its lightweight design.

But yesterday marked six weeks since the day I called for service and my computer is still not fixed. (They called me with an update.)

As I keep saying to Sony, "This is a business machine, not a Play Station Portable."

As to Toshiba, I've had many of them and while they routinely break their word as to the Depot Express service, they generally have the machine back to you within a week.

I felt that the Sony was a better computer than Toshiba and needed less service (this is the first trip to the shop in two and a half years versus two mother boards in six months for one of my Toshibas last year), I have been very disappointed with Sony service.

Sir Howard will definitely be hearing from me--if I ever get my computer back.

Sony: :td:

Toshiba: :td:

Anybody have good, reliable, quick service?

For business machines, onsite service is the only way to go unless you have another lying around you can swap out. Depot just takes way too long, even if it's just a couple of days, it's way too long in some cases.

Very respectfully, it took onsite two weeks to call me back and by then the Sony store had asked me to bring the machine to them for sending in.

Lenovo/IBM depot service has been FAST IME.

Thanks everyone I appreciate the advice in the other thread, she's down to two options (they won't be purchased at bestbuy, so fear not, but those are the two she's looking at) tell me which one you think she'd be better off with. (or your own preference)

Also, please take a look at their stat lines and see if there is any glaring drawbacks in power, system bus, etc. I really appreciate you guys lending your time and expertise. Thanks

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....#productdetail


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....#productdetail

Before she buys anything, she needs to try the keyboard to be sure she likes it. I used a Sony for a week and HATED the keyboard. I've tried every brand available and only like Toshiba's keyboard. (I buy Tecras, not Satellites for other reasons.)

Given the choice of only these two, I'd go with the HP. I've never been a fan of Sony.

Neither has a high resolution screen - 1280x800 isn't something I'd buy these days.

HP's non-Intel processor doesn't turn me on much.

I think there are other choices for $700.

How much larger would you really want to go?

As it is, those two are already bricks at 6lbs+.

Sigh. Higher resolution, not larger screen size.

A standard desktop monitor is 1280 across the top. At some point it becomes silly to try to view more than that on a laptop.

As a grad student myself, I wanted a laptop that's reliable (since its my primary computer), quickly serviceable, and lightweight since its going to be carried around a lot. I ended up buying a Lenovo T61 and am extremely happy I did.

The T61 is almost silent, reasonable fast, built like tank, and fairly light. In terms of service, IBM/Lenovo really can't be built. The cooling fan on the laptop started failing a few months ago by making a loud noise. I finally got annoyed with it and contacted Lenovo. I got an option of either sending it in to their depot service (4-5 days) or using a local authorized service provider. On a Friday afternoon I drove down to downtown LA, they took down the information and ordered a few fan (in reality I should've just told them to order it instead of driving down). On Tuesday I got a phone call to bring down the laptop. I brought in on Thursday at 11 AM and got it back around 3PM and everything works great. They have a bunch of locations all over the country (and world probably).

In terms of HP, I knew someone with an HP laptop. Everything was great until the area around the power connected melted due to some issue with the connector (yes, literally melted). In terms of Sony, I had a Vaio from 2001 that had to be sent in to service 6 times over 4 years, each time taking a week. 4 times out of 6 it was due to the power connector breaking. Twice was because one of the RAM modules stopped working (once was due to a faulty Sony BIOS update they later retracted and once was due to the motherboard not working correctly, apparently a known problem that can be fixed by another company for a few hundred).

I will not be buying from either company again. For laptops, reliability and service are definitely the biggest differentiators. Apple is pretty good about and Lenovo is probably the best. The Macbook Pro feels like a very solid computer...the Macbook less so. As for Dell, their computers feel cheap and like they're about to fall apart. If she really is going to be moving it around a lot, there's really no substitute for a thinkpad.

A CRT, maybe. I've been at WSXGA+, 1680x1050, for 3 years now. My LCD at home is the same resolution.

Heh, we just bought a couple new iMacs. Apple is not renowned for putting in the highest res screens, so the first thing I've personally used with 1680x1050 is a 20" screen. Good on a 17" laptop, and I know some are probably out there using it on a 15" although I think that could be pushing it for many others. My 15" screen is "only" 1440x900, but yeah looking at the links above I see those are 15" with the 1280x800, which is indeed quite low for a 15" laptop. If they were 13" screens, that wouldn't look quite so out of place, plus they would be smaller/lighter. Going up to that bigger screen with the added weight without gaining resolution is useful maybe if you have vision problems but otherwise not much good.

I wouldn't think a standard desktop screen is only 1280 across anymore. Even Apple has been putting 1440x900 in their 17" desktop screens (which they don't use anymore) for at least 3 years. I wouldn't buy a 17" desktop screen that wasn't at least 1440, and I wouldn't buy a desktop screen that wasn't at least 17" at this point. (As I sit here, though, I can see a few ancient 5-6 year old iMacs that have 15" 4:3 LCD 1024x768 screens. ;))

If she likes the keyboard of the HP, that's what I'd go for.

The HP has 250GB instead of 200GB of HD
The HP also has a 1Gb network adapter, which is nice to have.
The HP has 2GB (so does the Sony) but the HP is expendable to 4GB - the Sony isn't.

JP

Question guys, how critical is the difference between 533 system bus and 1600? Is 533 even worth looking at? I've seen a couple laptops with low ... stats, and was curious. Is it at such a high rate that the difference isn't AS noticable for something with that high of a disparity? Thanks.

I have found Dell absolutely excellent for service. I have a Dell 770M which went out of warranty about six weeks ago. It doesn't say much for the hardware, but in the past four months, I have had a hard drive and two motherboards replaced, the last one being out of warranty by a month with no arguments about cost. Service was 24 hours and on site. Excellent.

Zero impact for most people. Typical laptop apps simply dont use that much memory bandwidth, so all you get is more idle time. In fact the major reason for a higher bus speed is the graphics card -- which are not available even on the high end laptops (until you get to the USD 5K+ workstations).

I once configured a laptop with single channel (instead of dual channel), cutting the memory bandwidth in half (so same as cutting the bus speed in half). Knew this would hurt performance, so benchmarked it extensively. Net was 1% drop in memory intensive workload (and 0% for others). So it is check-box marketing and not a useful feature for most laptops. But those bus numbers sure look impressive.

How often is she going to be lugging it around? If the answer is more than once in a great while I would have to strongly suggest going with a laptop that weighs no more than 4.5 to 5lbs. I'm starting to look at replacements for my Dell 700m (12.4" 4.2lbs) and while I am thinking about a slightly larger screen size, I don't want to add much weight. I'm not pulling the trigger for a few months at least, but if I had to buy something now I would consider this:

http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/satellite/U300

Hard drive sizes are usually not that critical (just about all are at least 160GB these days which is sufficient for just about anyone who isn't making HD movies), nor can most people notice the difference between various processors (really any dual core processor is fine.) But a laptop that's lightweight is a different story. Just make sure it's got 2GB Ram and she should be good to go.