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  #1  
Old 02-05-2008, 10:38 PM
TheDon's Avatar
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Posts: 13,285
Laptop shopping

Ok.. Its time for a new laptop and I mean it. This one is failing on a weekly basis and is causing me a lot of grief. This 4 year old vaio needs to be replaced

I have champagne taste on a beer budget, so to speak.

How are those dells? I do get a student discount, probably more than what mac would give me.

Hows Vista.. I had some of the Beta's and release candidates.. sure those had bugs..

I do recall that for the "full vista experience" you need the premium version and like 2 gigs of ram since its such a pig.

How are the new dual cores? the Dell I'm looking at has a .. 1.6 Intel dual core (IIRC.. its an inspiron 1720 with a mocha skin)

120 gig harddrive, 1 gig of ram...

maybe friday I'll go to best buy and play

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  #2  
Old 02-05-2008, 10:42 PM
truckinik's Avatar
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Two words Don..."Toshiba Satellite" You won't regret it. It's what I've always had. You can pick one up, at a regular store too. You don't need to play all the B.S. games with Dell or anything. They make a ton of different models, depending on your particular price range, and requirements. Just check them out atleast. I love mine to death..

Nick
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  #3  
Old 02-05-2008, 10:44 PM
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My sister has a Dell thats gone through hell, they have one heck of a warranty and stand behind it!

I really like HP's because they work perfectly, IMHO they are the Lexus of computers.
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  #4  
Old 02-05-2008, 10:46 PM
TheDon's Avatar
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I had one before my Vaio. It had a hard drive failure.

I'm partial to the Sony Vaio line since I've had such good luck with this one. 4 years and no failures.. Just.. its old and out dated.


I'll see what best buy has on shelf and decide from there...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8659034&type=product&id=1196470145630

this one looks like a better buy than a mac
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  #5  
Old 02-05-2008, 10:52 PM
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You can get a Dell Vostro loaded with XP and none of the annoying ads and icons. It's meant to be a business notebook, and its slightly plain and clunky, but pretty solid. They are very inexpensive.
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  #6  
Old 02-05-2008, 10:52 PM
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I really like the Lenovo (IBM) ThinkPad that belongs to my employer. One nice feature is both a stick and a touchpad. Another is seemingly really solid construction. Also, a dual-monitor docking station is not very expensive. I must have two monitors.
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  #7  
Old 02-05-2008, 11:03 PM
TheDon's Avatar
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http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=0188068B103A4927AECCDEF5D8F0C043

very spartan in appearance.. function over form.. much like my W123

with office 07 student addition, 120 gig harddrive, wifi, 1.86 dual core intel centrino, 2 gigs of ram,

for $1002 ish
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  #8  
Old 02-05-2008, 11:42 PM
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One company, two names.

IBM/Lenovo.



I love my thinkpad. Very spartan, and robust. Its even got drain channels, like Mercedes.


Its been through hell and back....


When you get your computer, get the TPM chip. Install LoJack, and away you go.... They say they can recover your PC, and if it gets stolen, they will cut you a check for a grand!
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  #9  
Old 02-05-2008, 11:52 PM
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My company at one time gave everyone Dell laptops, and they were pieces of junk. Every single one. All of ours had every conceivable failure imaginable: RAM, motherboards, hard drive failures. I don't think there was ever a time when at least one laptop wasn't sent out for repairs.

We then went with Toshiba laptops, and life was good. They very, very seldom have problems.

I am the first guy with a Sony Vaio in the office, and it has been trouble-free so far.

I don't like Vista, though. It's very, very buggy. If you try and do a file transfer over a network, it is extremely slow. What used to take me about 15 minutes to transfer with XP, takes about 22 hours with Vista, and that is not an exaggeration.

Just Google "Slow network transfer time Vista", and you'll see what I mean.
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  #10  
Old 02-06-2008, 12:09 AM
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I had a Toshiba Satellite whose display just died yesterday.. noooo!

Laptops are just hit and miss man. The parts are the same, built with the same quality and as cheaply as possible in countries very far east of here.

Just get whatever computer has what processor and size you want at a price you can afford. Everyone has their story about how crappy a brand of computer is because it failed and they'll never buy another one again, etc.

I'd get one with a dual processor and at least 2GB of RAM. Or just add memory yourself later. Vista is kinduva pig.
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  #11  
Old 02-06-2008, 01:51 AM
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i like my macbook.
get a refurbished one if you have to. no more drivers to install, updates to configure and antivirus and so on and so on.
mine just tells me when it has an update. and updates when i turn it off.
recognises cameras, printers, with no hassle.


couldnt be happier.
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  #12  
Old 02-06-2008, 02:08 AM
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Location: Rancho Cucamunga, California
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if you are on a budget look on ebay for new or refurbished ones. I bought mine of of ebay and got a great deal. Retail is about 3200-3300 for my laptop got it for 1650 out the door and shipped to my house. i have a
HP DV9000:
2.0 ghz dual core,
2 gigs, 230 gig hdd (2x 115gig),
Nvidia 7600GO 512mb,
got the better display the res. is 1680x1050,
HD-DVD drive(kinda sucks after HD-DVD is going to die),
it has four usb 2.0,
1 firewire (4pin),
HDMI out,
SPDIF(Optical/Toslink Out),
VGA out,
s-video out,
5in1 card reader
i am very happy with what i have, you could get the DV6000 which are the 15 inch screen but i chose the larger 17 inch(DV9000) check on ebay the prices will surprise you.
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  #13  
Old 02-06-2008, 08:01 AM
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Posts: 315
I have, well had, a Toshiba Satellite.
Paid around $2,000 for it. 4 months out of warranty the motherboard died. Replacement board would cost me $600.00. My tenant had a Toshiba Satellite, 2 months after the warranty ran out it's motherboard has fried. I have heard a few other cases like ours.

Toshiba Canada wants $50 just to talk me through the resetting process.
The dumb biatch didn't want to understand that there is nothing to "walk me through", the thing will not turn on no matter what I do.

Will never touch a Toshiba laptop again.

My HP is 4 months old, I did buy the extended warranty for $169.00, so far OK. Will see in a year or two how it goes.

Wife has a Sony Vaio, about a year old, so far no issues.

Alex
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  #14  
Old 02-06-2008, 08:25 AM
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Location: Chesapeake, VA
Posts: 438
We use Dell laptops at work but I have Mac laptops at home. The Dells have been pretty awful in terms of bad hard drives, mother boards, etc. Support from Dell has been slow and unreliable. We can't use Vista because of the problems noted above and because some of our enterprise software just won't run right on it.

Our Mac laptops have had some issues - the optical drive on an iBook went bad and the hard drive on a Powerbook G4 went bad. However, there is excellent support on the net (www.ifixit.com) and we fixed them ourselves at moderate cost and little investment of time. Overall, that is IMHO preferable to shipping the thing off somewhere. The Mac OS is vastly superior to Windows in terms of stability and user friendliness. I won't go back to Windows at home - too many problems.
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  #15  
Old 02-06-2008, 08:40 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by truckinik View Post
Two words Don..."Toshiba Satellite" You won't regret it. It's what I've always had. You can pick one up, at a regular store too. You don't need to play all the B.S. games with Dell or anything. They make a ton of different models, depending on your particular price range, and requirements. Just check them out atleast. I love mine to death..

Nick
I've got a Satellite and have had in for several years. It's been pretty good. Before that I had two Microcenter Winbooks. They werre cheap to buy, but well-made and lasted me a long time.

The next computer of any kind I buy will be a Mac, I don't care how much it costs.

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