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Laptop recommendation

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We've got a ton of Dells at work, and almost zero problems. Some 4-5 years old and still going. The Latitude line (check the small biz site) seems to be much better than the Inspiron.

Also plenty of good luck with the Thinkpads. Most are older but still going well.

Have had bad experience with Toshiba and with Sony, especially with Sony support.
 
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I've owned a Dell laptop and now have a Toshiba. Both gave me very dependable service and I don't pamper 'em. They go everywhere I go.

The Toshiba was the first model to have a Pentium 4. It's very heavy (7-8 lbs) my wife hated it for that reason... which is why I now have it and she has an Apple.

I've been very happy with the four Dell machines we've owned, but the last time I needed tech support the person on the other end spoke English like my college math professor and was about as user friendly as Tibor.
 
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I was a computer science major for two years, and spent 4 years taking related classes. The hundred or so students/faculty I encountered in that environment were not fans of dell equipment. As for laptops, thinkpads are expensive but infinitely better than dells, in my experience, though pricey.
 
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I am also looking for a laptop PC for my wife.

Over the weekend I checked out my father's new Dell Inspirion 1705 with Vista and I was VERY unimpressed. I thought Vista ran like a dog. He just bought it last month and hasn't installed much of anything on it except the printer driver. I checked the Task Manager to see what was slowing it down. It had about 600-700 meg of memory tied up (out of a 1 gig total) with all the processes running.

At first I thought it was the wireless card that was slowing down IE, but when I got into it, everything seemed sluggish. I felt like I was using my wife's old Win98 machine.

Any thoughts? I wonder how much RAM it takes or which processor would by the best choice to make Vista fly.
 
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oh, for sure with vista you need a minimum of 2gb for it not to run sluggishly. i am on an e1705 right now and it runs fine, but I also have it on a gateway laptop and a dell desktop with only 1gb and it definitely runs sluggish. Definitely go with 2gb, and the 667mhz if possible.
 
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jwinslow;782764; said:
The hundred or so students/faculty I encountered in that environment were not fans of dell equipment.
Click to expand...

Ditto. Having owned a Dell laptop, I can say that I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't do it again. Too heavy, too hot, etc. My current laptop is an Acer Aspire and I absolutely love it. I've had it about 9 months now and haven't had any complaints. CoreDuo processor, 120 GB hard drive, 2GB DDR2, DVD/CD Burner. After one great sale, I got it for around $700.
 
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My laptop for work is an ibm T series, and I agree they are probably the best, for business use. They just lack a lot of features the home user would like, not to mention they are ugly as shit. My personal choice is a mac book pro, but no way in hell I am spending that much on a laptop, retarded use of money.
 
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I'm quite surprised reading this thread and seeing two recommendations for Acer (both BMax and shoegirl). Most people see the "Acer" brand and equate low price = crap. Not true.

Last year, I started pining for a new laptop so that I could carry work back and forth from my office to home, and I also wanted something portable to carry around the building at work for configuring printers and switches and so forth when necessary. I settled on waiting until August when I could buy a laptop during the back-to-school sale period, and I wound up getting an Acer Aspire 3610 at Circuit City for $449 (regularly $749). 15.4" display/802.11g/CD-RW/DVD -- it was fairly loaded for that price point. The caveat was 512Mb RAM, but adding another 1Gb myself was only ~$60.

Now, I knowingly bought the cheapie Acer expecting it would be a one-year disposable type thing, but I now expect it'll last far longer than that. I've been very happy with it. The build quality far exceeds what I expected.

I would avoid Dells outright. We've purchased three laptops for the company (all Dells), and they've been nothing but headaches. Not a single one works 100% as it should -- each has its own personality and quirks.
 
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Dryden;811097; said:
I'm quite surprised reading this thread and seeing two recommendations for Acer (both BMax and shoegirl). Most people see the "Acer" brand and equate low price = crap. Not true.

Last year, I started pining for a new laptop so that I could carry work back and forth from my office to home, and I also wanted something portable to carry around the building at work for configuring printers and switches and so forth when necessary. I settled on waiting until August when I could buy a laptop during the back-to-school sale period, and I wound up getting an Acer Aspire 3610 at Circuit City for $449 (regularly $749). 15.4" display/802.11g/CD-RW/DVD -- it was fairly loaded for that price point. The caveat was 512Mb RAM, but adding another 1Gb myself was only ~$60.

Now, I knowingly bought the cheapie Acer expecting it would be a one-year disposable type thing, but I now expect it'll last far longer than that. I've been very happy with it. The build quality far exceeds what I expected.

I would avoid Dells outright. We've purchased three laptops for the company (all Dells), and they've been nothing but headaches. Not a single one works 100% as it should -- each has its own personality and quirks.
Click to expand...

Oh come on. Has anyone really had a problem with Dell or their support?

:sneaky:

* patiently awaits C-Dawg's hammer of doom*
 
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Dryden;811097; said:
...I would avoid Dells outright. We've purchased three laptops for the company (all Dells), and they've been nothing but headaches. Not a single one works 100% as it should -- each has its own personality and quirks.
Click to expand...
At my old job, I used Dell desktops and laptops and rarely had any issues. The only probelm I can recall is that the hard drive on my first desktop PC died. The PC guy said that when he opened it up, it was completely black, and that he had never seen anything like it.
Aside from that I'm not aware of any significant issues with Dells at work. The desktop PC I bought my mom 2 years ago still works fine.

I'm presently using an IBM T60 with my new job, and have no complaints. The battery seems to drain quickly when it's not plugged in, but that might well just be my not being used to seeing the battery charge drop every single percent, as opposed to just showing 3 or 4 bars like my old laptops did.

My understanding is that the IBM laptops are supposed to be very durable, and that that is why my new company switched to them a few years back.
 
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My POS Dell kicked the bucket, so I've replaced it with a Compaq (specs below). Got a really good deal on this at Staples right now if anyone needs one. I paid 599 (reg 799) which is 100 cheaper than the similarly spec'd HP.

Presario V6310
15.4" widescreen display
802.11 g
AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Tech TL-50 1.6 Ghz (Dual core)
1 Gb RAM
100 Gb HD
DVD/CD combo burner
Windows Vista Premium
 
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Anyone have any feelings one way or another about Macbook Pros?

My laptop is slowly dying, and I may be able to replace it in the Fall on Penn State's dime. I've had a few people who work IT give me strong Apple recommendations, but I just have no hands on experience myself. The last Apple I owned was a II+ in the early to mid 80s. The last Apple I used was an original Mac in the late 80s.

I know they've done a few things since then, but, ah, I haven't stayed in the loop.

I'll look at Acers as well. What I really want is a full sized keyboard (with numpad), 17"+ widescreen, actually, that's more or less the end of my "must have" list. I'm easy.

I'd use it for pretty basic stuff. Word processing, PDF creation, Photoshop, some video manipulation/editing/saving, everything related to working on BP (pretty light software for that), and of course email and browsing.

I think I'd really miss things I've grown comfortable with, like KeePass, TrueCrypt, GAIM, etc. But I bet some of those have Mac builds.
 
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