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Author Topic: Laptop Advice
KarlEd
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So, I'm thinking of buying a laptop. There are things I really don't like about laptops that lead me to believe I won't be having one as my primary computer, but there are advantages (mainly portability) that have kept the idea of owning one in my mind for some time. But the market is HUGE now, and laptops seem to be available from under $400 to well over $3k.

What I want is a reliable machine with long battery life on which I can do email, writing, store photos and watch the occasional DVD or downloaded video. I like to do gaming, but I don't need a laptop souped up for that, I prefer my desktop for that sort of thing.

Any suggestions? Things to look out for? Things to avoid at all costs?

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Stephan
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If all you truly want is email, photo storage, and watching dvds, go for an inexpensive one. I bought my wife a lower end dell laptop for her birthday that does all of that. The battery life is decent as long as it is not running on wifi for internet. Best Buy, Comp USA, and Office Depot always have at least one laptop on sale for under $500.

For a laptop I would sacrafice memory for speed if price is a worry. You can always get more memory, especially with external hard drives come down in price so much. But upgrading RAM and/or your processor on a laptop is definitely a chore when compared to a desktop.

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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by Stephan:
The battery life is decent as long as it is not running on wifi for internet.

*blink* The wifi card draws that much power? Ok, that explains a lot!

Karl, how important is weight? One of the things you pay a lot more for is lighter-weight. But for me, that was crucial.

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Fitz
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I own an IBM T43, and it has yet to give me any grief. In fact, it's pretty damn good. I was introduced to the brand while working for IBM's technical support division. We used laptops, rather than desktops, as our main machines. I was kind of surprised by that at first, but I learned quickly that they were more than up to the task.

I worked there for about 8 months, running the laptop for 8-10 hours shifts, with 10-15 applications running, and the only time it ever crashed was when I had a Firefox issue.

IBM's laptops have been taken over by Lenovo, but I bought my laptop after that occurred, and it still came to me as an IBM laptop. So I'm not really sure what the deal is there, but if they maintain IBM's standard, then you can get a great laptop from them.

The only other brand I've had experience with is my brother's Toshiba. That sucker was a monster. A gamer's laptop. He played World of Warcraft on it pretty heavily, and eventually fried some hardware component. Apart from that, it was a good machine.

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KarlEd
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Weight isn't that much of an issue, and neither is WiFi, for that matter, since I probably won't be using WiFi much unless I'm at home where I can plug it in.

I like to game a lot, too, but as I said, I'll use my home PC for that, most likely.

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TheGrimace
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one other thing to consider is looking at macs, even if you want to run windows. I've been very happy so far with the performance of my macbook pro, and my only complaint is that I haven't ponied up for a copy of XP to install on there so I can get even more use out of it.

just keep that in mind as I believe they're still known as more physically reliable, and are now pretty windows-friendly.

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Samarkand
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I heart my shiny silver PowerBook. Cheap? No. Has it EVER frozen or failed to play a media file of any kind or lost data? NO! I dunno, ease of use means so much to me, I'm willing to throw down the moolah. Apple sells refurbished models that have the same exact warranty and look brand new but aren't as pricey. And with the new Intel chip you could run any games that won't run on OS X. *shrug* I'll never buy a PC.

Also, I have no idea whether this is widespread, but I know five friends who recently bought Dell laptops and the things are crashing and failing to connect to internet and freezing and losing files and just generally being really weird. But that could just be coincidence, I guess. I used to think Dell was a pretty reliable company.

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aspectre
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Nope, always sacrifice CPU speed for extra RAM. Laptop manufacturers themselves often deliberately underclock their systems. And operating system creators put in features to allow the user to more deliberately underclock their computer.
Underclocking saves power, lessens cooling needs, extends battery life, and minimizes general wear&tear.
The bottleneck in processing is almost always in getting data to the CPU: ie in how much / how fast the RAM can shove bytes into the CPU, not in how fast the CPU can process the data.

The unfortunate reality is that programs are becoming uglier and uglier with every new version: ie the useful/active parts of any given program are becoming ever more buried within the garbage of blocked-off sections of old versions, additions of ever increasing amounts of unwanted/unasked-for skins/wallpapers/music/etc, copyright and security management routines, etc.
You can't keep old programs running your machines cuz the program makers eventually quit supporting their older versions. Which causes a lack of communications-compatibility with uploaders using newer versions and HUGE security holes because of that lack of program support.
And ya know that eg Microsoft is gonna quit supporting Windows2000 soon after Vista comes out: if nothing else to force users of old programs to buy a new program, even if that "new program" purchase is of the old WindowsXP.
And ya know that eg Vista is gonna take up a LOT more RAM than WindowsXP. Given Microsoft's past performance, system requirements will probably include a minimum of half a gig, ie 512megabytes.

All of which means that it takes ever greater amounts of RAM just to keep your computer functional as the years pass by. And even with expansion slots, there is always a maximum amount of RAM that can be added to a machine before ya hafta buy a new board; if your computer case is designed to accept a new board, and if there even is a new board that'll fit your old computer.

So the best*thing to do maximize the useful life of your computer is have "too much" RAM -- at least double the minimum system requirement of your current operating system -- and "too many" expansion slots in the first place, upon purchase.

* Unless, of course, you like to spend money to remain fashionable. Or there is a high likelyhood of having an accident which destroys your computer before an extended maintenance warranty expires.

[ October 10, 2006, 03:57 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]

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aspectre
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If you're going to go the PC route (instead of eg Apple), you'll probably save a lot of money by waiting until the laptops come preloaded with Vista. Computer manufacturers receive a huge discount from Microsoft for agreeing to load their machines with Microsoft products. And computer vendors pass nearly all of that savings on to the customer.

Even if you choose to buy a WindowsXP-preload computer, they'll be cheaper after Vista comes out because of clearance sales.

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Tante Shvester
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You can probably get a good deal on a used model, since you are not looking for the lightest, most souped-up version. Someone who is looking for that kind of thing has a more basic model that they are looking to get rid of.
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Dan_raven
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I am still waiting for a dobie of this thread.
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Tante Shvester
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May your wait be long and fruitless.
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TheTick
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First thought was Lapdance advice, but I couldn't search for a link from work...
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pH
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My Averatec laptop has a freakishly long battery life, even when I'm watching DVDs on an airplane. It's a pretty cool little machine. [Smile] And pretty affordable. http://www.averatec.com

-pH

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BaoQingTian
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I'd steer away from used laptops. A used desktop I wouldn't have a problem with at all- when someone spills their coffee on the keyboard, you buy another $10 keyboard. Unfortunately when this happens on a laptop, not so good since the majority of the electronic components are under and behind the keyboard.

That's just one example, but laptops seem to be used and abused- dropped, left in extremes of hot and cold, tossed around, sat on, etc. I would be very wary of buying a laptop used. You could get lucky, just be aware that it's a gamble-YMMV

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mackillian
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If you are clumsy in any way, don't get an Averatec.

Just sayin'.

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TheGrimace
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btw aspectre I don't think anyone would disagree with you on the importance of RAM, but the mention was to aim for your target CPU speed and then you can still upgrade your RAM and hard disk space as neccessary.

Good Example: in order to upgrade my macbook from 512 to 2 gigs of memory from the apple webpage was hundreds of dollars and I think might have required stepping up to the next level of processor as well. Instead I got the version with low memory and just bought two gig sticks for less than $100 and put them in myself. If I had seen an option with 2 gigs of ram but a slow processor I wouldn't have been able to do anything to upgrade the machine down the road (or at least not nearly as easily).

That being said, in my experience it's not much of an issue, as most computers (both laptop and desktop) come with far less ram than you would want to compliment the rest of the system, but it's the easiest thing to upgrade on either.

Also, much as I'd encourage the apple route in terms of laptop hardware, just make sure you're willing to factor in the extra cost for a copy of XP that would likely come free with a non-mac laptop (unless you have XP with SP2 sitting around on your shelf or would be content working with OSX)

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James Tiberius Kirk
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I have a Lenovo T60 (IBM), Core2 Duo.

Mind you, I didn't pick it -- it's part of a package they offer at this school -- but I think it's a very nice lappy.

--j_k

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pH
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quote:
Originally posted by mackillian:
If you are clumsy in any way, don't get an Averatec.

Just sayin'.

Did you breakify yours? Mine's been pretty tough, all things considered.

-pH

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ricree101
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quote:
Originally posted by aspectre:
If you're going to go the PC route (instead of eg Apple), you'll probably save a lot of money by waiting until the laptops come preloaded with Vista. Computer manufacturers receive a huge discount from Microsoft for agreeing to load their machines with Microsoft products. And computer vendors pass nearly all of that savings on to the customer.

Even if you choose to buy a WindowsXP-preload computer, they'll be cheaper after Vista comes out because of clearance sales.

This is probably a good idea if you have no particularly pressing need. According to wikipedia, it looks like the release will be november for business editions and january for home editions.
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by mackillian:
If you are clumsy in any way, don't get an Averatec.

Just sayin'.

mack's butterfingers tendencies should not be used as guidance for normal people. [Wink] I love my Averatec.
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Boris
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I wouldn't recommend going below the 1000 dollar mark for a laptop. Most of the computers below that point tend to be made of fairly poor quality materials. There are a lot of things to consider when recommending a laptop, and many of them require the ability to see it from every angle (the airflow system is a particularly critical part of the equation). Because there are no form standards for laptops, manufacturers do pretty much whatever they want, so consider prices for replacement parts if the need should arise in the future. Dells are usually better for replacement parts, simply because there are a larger number of them on the market and thus it is more likely to find used parts for replacement. I always try to steer people away from Sony. They're overpriced and horribly expensive to repair if something breaks.

Good brands to look for are Asus and IBM/Lenovo (The Thinkpad is the highest quality notebook on the market in my opinion. Which is backed up by a few benchmark tests I've seen). They do have a sub-$1000 model. I'm typically skeptical of cheap laptops, but this might be a pretty good deal.

General rules - faster CPU = less battery life. (With Windows XP you can get away with a 300mhz processor if you have enough RAM)
Higher RAM - Better performance in just about every way. Never go below 512 megs.
Video capabilities are unimportant unless you plan on gaming.
The rest is preference, really. If you get the opportunity to use a laptop you are considering for purchase, it will allow you to make sure you can work comfortably with it.

As far as waiting for Vista goes...uhhh, don't. There's really no guarantee that there will be price breaks for Vista for laptop manufacturers. Vista will run from 150 for the stripped down home version to 400 for the fully functional version (which makes me laugh because I can get Windows 2003 Small Business Server for that much.) Aside from that, a sub 1000 dollar laptop is *not* going to run Vista well. I'm willing to bet that Vista qill require twice the RAM to operate smoothly. Let's also not forget Microsoft's history in OS releases. Wait about a year to get it and it will work right.

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Tante Shvester
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quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
I love my Averatec.

Averatec? Do you have to do teshuvah when you log off?

[/incomprehensible jargon]

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Zeugma
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I paid around $1300 for my MacBook (not pro), and put Windows on it via Parallels so Windows runs inside OS X, so I can use both at the same time. It's awesome. [Big Grin] My only complaint is that they've moved to 13" as the smallest size, and I really liked the old 12" options. Still, it's pretty light, and the screen is nice.

My favorite thing about Apple's consumer laptop line is the ruggedness of the design. I like being able to sling my computer around without worrying too much about breaking it, carry it by a corner of the screen, burn a DVD while I'm running down the stairs, and leave it where the dog occasionally smacks it with a foot. I've long since gotten over my issues with Windows and would get something like a Dell if it made sense, but I'd probably have to be a lot more careful with it, and that'd be a bummer. [Smile]

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rivka
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Tante, yes. But I don't usually discuss that in public!

[Cry]

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