sparehead02

click on one of our sponsors! OR REMOVE ADS

I'm thinking about buying a laptop, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. I know my way around computers pretty well (I would build my own if I wanted a tower), but I don't know a whole lot about laptops. I'm looking for something that I can take with me to class because my main building is a wireless hotspot on campus. I don't need the laptop to play games, since my tower can handle them. Right now, I'm leaning towards a Toshiba Tecra M3 with a Pentium M 1.8 GHz, 512 RAM, 80 Gig HD, and an NVidia graphics card. Just wondering what people think about Toshiba laptops or if anyone has other suggestions. Oh, I'm looking to spend somewhere between 1500-2000, and the Toshiba is 1700 with shipping. Thanks.

tombb25

I believe some of the best laptops are Toshiba and Sony, they are beautiful and seem to last a very long time. But as far as price, you can't be Dell , but anyway if you are interested in Dell, DealCatcher.com has great deals. Good Luck!

HIJACKER

Dell has the best laptops...

___________________________________________
SC-Customs Promo Car, CLICK - http://www.club3g.com/forum/members...rs-eclipse.html

thepipebomb

My biggest beef with Dell's is battery life .. it sucks.

If you want to go the Dell route be sure to check for coupon codes (or what ever they call them) and rebates on techbargains.com. A guy I work with got a really nice laptop from Dell, with a printer, for around $800 using some deals pointed out on that website.

I have a Fujistsu Lifebook for work and it is amazing. The battery life is a legitimate 5-6 hours with heavy use and it is light as a feather. I have the tiny one (I think 13” or something) and it weighs in at 3.3lbs. It’s powerful and packed full of flashcard readers, wireless, fingerprint scanner, DVD-CDRW. Of course it cost around $2200, but I wasn’t paying for it. I also have a larger screen Compaq for work as well. We use a lot of Compaqs here, and they seem to work well. We buy the business class ones, and they are fairly light and slim. They aren’t cheap either.

davemo2us

We have several Dells and they seem fine for what a laptop should be used for, but a consultant we used brought her Sony and that my man was sweet.

mrsnifflez

I have a HP ze4900, and I am very impressed with it. I was told by a few computer guru's I know that HP was the way to go for the price, and i can't complain one bit about this one with the exception of the spyware problems i had with it a few weeks ago, which i have straightened out now.

thepipebomb

You've got Microsoft to thank for that, not HP.

Ryan

as a computer geek to fullest extent, I researched laptops like crazy for a month before I bought one a few months ago. I ended up buying an HP ZD7000 serires... it was DOA. So i returned it and got another one. It booted up, worked for like a week, then the hard drive failed. No more hp laptops for me.

I don't game either, and I wanted battery life, portability, and speed. I ended up buying a dell 700m. 12.1" widescreen, 4 lbs, 5 hour battery life, 1.8ghz centrino, 512mb ram (I upgraded to 1 gb later, though), 80gb hard drive, dual layer dvd burner, etc.

After tax it cost me $1400. Fuck your toshiba- the 700m is the way to go (and I've had it for around 3 months now and it's PERFECT... not one complaint).

Like someone said earlier- go to techbargains.com and only buy it if there's a coupon available (there usually is).

___________________________________________
Oh my god, I have a blog

sparehead02

Thanks for all the suggestions. I don't like Dell because of all the extra crap they put on their new computers. I set one up for someone last August, and the amount of trial programs that are put on to one of their new laptops is horrible. When I was looking at customizing a Dell online, the options to get rid of those trials aren't available. So I refuse to buy Dell partially on principle, and mostly because I'm too lazy to delete a whole bunch of stuff.

Ryan

that used to be a turnoff to me, too, until I realized that the little restore cd that comes along with it doesn't include all that crap

the very first time I turn it on, I stick in the restore CD and reinstall windows from scratch... it takes like an hour or so, but then it's a straight up windows install with all of the right drivers and none of the trial crap

___________________________________________
Oh my god, I have a blog

bleh123

whatever you do DO NOT GET DELL!! believe me, every singel comptuer I've had to fix in my dorm has been a dell laptop (with a toshiba laptop or two)

My only suggestion (I build my only computers and mainly use XP too...that is until I get my own laptop) is powerBook (most of the major games out there are also made for OSX)
why you might ask? I'm not goign to go in a long list: my best suggestion is find someone who has a powerBook (and is good with it, nost osme dolt, but someone good with computers) and they'll show the coolest things that just made me hate XP many more times than I had before. The only thing I"m going to say right now for why Apple laptops are better (if you want me to say more, please do so) is they are made out of TITANIUM. I have yet to see a p/c laptop made outta more than plastic, or some sort of soft aluminum. Sseriously, Dell needs to go fuck itself. I have a caribiner made out of titanium, ccannot they make a fucking laptop outta one?

Ryan

every computer you've had to fix is a dell, and you complain that they're not made out of titanium... do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound? Are you seriously suggesting that you wouldn't have to fix those computers if they were made out of titanium? Like that has anything to do with what you're fixing?

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you're probably usually cleaning off spyware and viruses. Having a solid gold laptop won't protect you from that. Having a smart user will, however.

That said, I understand the mac argument, because the learning curve is not as steep. However, we sadly live in windows world right now, and learning windows will much better prepare you for entering the world in a career that uses computers (less than 5% of professionals use anything on their desktop besides windows).

Also, the mac is going to cost a TON more for the same computing power. The powerbook that is most like the laptop I described above STARTS at $1700, and goes up as you add accessories. After tax, it will easily be $500-600 more than the dell 700m.

Unless you are doing your computing in a place where your shit is going to get banged up, I'd save the $500 and make sure I had the technology that is going to best prepare me for the future.

___________________________________________
Oh my god, I have a blog

Zatarhi

Dell, HP, Toshiba, etc. don't make their own laptops...in fact, I don't think any company that's visible does. There's only a handful of companies that actually manufacture everything you see on the market - they're just all rebranded and changed slightly for cosmetic purposes. Also in some cases, there are quality tiers - which is why emachines can sell laptops that don't spontaneously combust somehow
Basically, just keep in mind that you get what you pay for. In a new laptop, your best bet is a Pentium M/Centrino package - they get the best battery life, are relatively high performance, and most importantly from a quality perspective - they don't generate 10,000,000 watts of waste heat. That's how they can sell laptops for like $500 - they have next to no cooling system. Yes, the thing will work, but it will eventually cook itself to death, and it won't smell like chicken. Basically you already know that modern heatsinks are the size of my FIST - just make sure you keep an eye on what you're cramming into such a tiny package The less heat it generates, the longer it will last for you.
Also, anything with the second generation Sonoma chipset is excellent - you get DDR2, a PCI-X slot, and in some cases a SATA hard drive...the things scream.

jrscobra

im looking too. my compaq is 4 years old now and the screen is going out. ive had great performance out of it and if the screen werent going, id probably not be interested. heres what ive found at bestbuy.com
compaq presario x6000, Intel pentium 4 w/ ht tech., 1.0gb ddr sdram 533 mhz, 60gb harddrive. , double layer dvd, cd rw , 64mb ati mobility x300 graphics card, 12 cell lithium battery, 17" brighview wide view monitor. The nice thing is the full size key board and the 16key number keypad, which i need. $1577 plus tax. anyone out there beat that? the keyboard and keypad are very important. if someone knows of a better priced place, let me know. buying soon.

jr