Notebook Computers

[sechs]

What are folks suggesting these days?

I have a librarian who had enough sense to realise that the $3000 XPS laptop that the Dell salesman quoted her was a bit much and came to me for advice. Normally, I would pick a R-series Thinkpad out for her, but Lenovo seems to have completely rejimmied all of their lines, and things aren't so clear.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm still recommending Dell Latitudes, and I got to play with a precision workstation...very sweet. They may not be the best, but they aren't bad, and everyone knows Dell. I'm happy with my ASUS, but that is a tougher sell.

 

[Mercutio]

If she's OK with the money, point her toward an R or a T. My impression of the SLs is that they're carrying some of the lower-end Ideapad crap into the Thinkpad line, and I'd rather avoid that.

Latitudes mostly just aren't that impressive. They don't have the quality of construction and they certainly don't have the service organization backing them up. I have the opportunity to buy a few every year and my general impression is that they're actually worse now than they were three or so years ago.

On the crap end of things, I see a lot of Acer notebooks these days. They seem to be the absolute cheapest things out there. You might be able to get three Acers for what a properly appointed Thinkpad costs.

What I basically tell people is buy something really nice that says Thinkpad or at worst Latitude on it, or else buy the cheapest thing you can find and just assuming you'll need to replace it about 15 seconds after the warranty runs out.

The best part of that advice is that it cuts out a lot of shitty Toshiba, S*ny and HP/Compaq shit, because they never price low enough to touch Acer or Asus. And I don't have to argue with people about the fact that the Toshiba they had 15 years ago was the greatest computer ever made so the new ones must be even better.

 

[udaman]

Oh but in these days of economic distress you want something that will last a long time, and be stylish, from a company that is still gaining while the rest of the market retracts.

Enter the all new MacBook with those great Nvidia integrated GPU chipsets, and it won't even fry Merc's testicles...how 'cool' is that! Ok, it's got that funky, new fandangled trackpad, with not a separate clicker, ala macBook Air & iPhone (which is selling like hotcakes btw), made of glass no less, uses instead finger gestures (now, now Merc...don't go there)...way cool man/totally geekdom, it rules.

Trio of articles on computerworld:

24 hours with the new Apple MacBook
http://blogs.computerworld.com/24_hours_with_the_new_apple_macbook

• It runs way cooler than my nuclear reactor core generation one MacBook Pro. Apple has been making steady progress on this and with it, the fertility rate of MacBook users is going back up as well (har).

Apple's new MacBook is a stealth business notebook

Review: Apple takes the MacBook upscale

If an Apple iMac married a MacBook Air, what would their offspring look like? A lot like Apple Inc.'s new upscale MacBook.. . I use the word ...

 

[Fushigi]

At work we buy a couple thousand Latitudes a year, mostly in the 600 series so the D630 is the current favored unit. Although spot-checking Dell's site shows the E series units are out. While I admit they aren't anything special, they do the job and if you get the better warranty, service is fine.

I don't have to take the corporate standard so I got a D830 as outlined in some other thread here. For the past 10 months the machine has been just fine.

For personal use, I don't make many recommendations anymore. The few I've made tend to be similar to Merc's: Pony up decent bucks for a near-high end machine or get the sub-$500 special at Fry's and spend up to another hundred or so tweaking it (generally more RAM) and realize you're buying low end; expect low-end durability.

That actually seems to work out OK. For the people who I've seen follow it, they don't generally abuse the machines (rarely taking the laptops outside the home) and they see relatively light-duty usage so they last a while. For a college student or someone who will take the unit with them a lot, I'd recommend bumping the warranty.

And you absolutely can get a sub-$500 HP/Compaq or Toshiba. Late last year a co-worker picked up a black Friday deal on a Toshiba. Dual-core, 512MB RAM, 160ish GB drive, etc. for under $400. I bumped the RAM to 2GB for about $30 or 40 after rebate. Although the 5400 RPM drive is on the slow side, it's an overall decent machine. Would I buy it for me? No; there are too many compromises for my taste. But for the 'average' user who wants to surf, edit Office docs, and watch the occasional DVD it is perfectly fine.

 

[Mercutio]

service is fine.

Service is not fine. It's poor, even on the business products. I don't want a 20 minute wait time and some godawful hold music to talk to someone about replacing a $30 DVD drive. I want to press 1, 2 and tell Charlie in Atlanta my Thinkpad serial number and be off the phone in under two minutes.

I'm not dealing with thousands of Latitudes. I support a few dozen. For what I deal with, I see way, way more issues, particularly for notebook hard drives and for keyboards. Now hard drives may be luck of the draw, but losing keys on the keyboard is a particularly irksome issue with the overall construction of the notebook.

 

[Santilli]

Might have a look at Panasonic. If you do a bit of a search, they have dropped a ton in price, and, there are some great deals slightly used.

 

[sechs]

If she's OK with the money, point her toward an R or a T. My impression of the SLs is that they're carrying some of the lower-end Ideapad crap into the Thinkpad line, and I'd rather avoid that.

She was willing to pay the $3k for the XPS if I had told her it fit her needs; so, as long as I can explain why she's spending money on certain components, it should fly.

Now, I used to spec R-series as a desktop replacement, but you can't even seem to get discrete graphics on them any more. Should I now be looking more to the T-series for that roll?

Still miffed that they only offer wide screens... but I can get XP.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes, Ts have discrete nVidia graphics. They use a Quadro chip as I recall. I'm told it's fairly underpowered, but Intel's X3100 isn't a speed demon either.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm not saying that Dell is better than Lenovo, but a Precision M4400 can be very nicely configured with a Quadro for about $2k.

 

[sechs]

Yes, Ts have discrete nVidia graphics.

I don't like nVidia's mobile graphics. I wish they'd go back to ATi.

Anyway, I'm figuring that the Intel crap graphics should be sufficient for her. She hasn't gotten back with the exact applications that she wants to be able to use, but I doubt that "games" moves much beyond solitaire.

 

[Fushigi]

We've been talking about getting my wife a notebook of her own. She's been using my old work machine (2Ghz, 1GB, 8ish pound Latitude D800) but it's slow and heavy. And technically it's not ours and I should return it to work, although they aren't asking for it back and will likely recycle it when returned.

At Best Buy the other day we were looking and she really liked this Sony. 4GB (upgradable to 8GB), T6500 CPU (2.1GHz C2D), BD drive, 320GB HD, about 6 pounds, 1 yr warranty, etc. Reviews around the net seem decent noting the main disappointment is getting nowhere near the claimed "up to 5 hour" battery life; around 2.5-3 hours seems normal.

OK, it's a Sony, and that doesn't thrill me. The price is a tad higher than what I wanted to pay, but this does come with a BD drive and HDMI out so there are features that make up for it. The main downside I see is it using Intel graphics instead of a discrete GPU. A higher end unit has a 512MB ATI card but is $300 more and definitely out of budget.

Most other brands had something she didn't like. Or something I didn't like. Some, for some dumb reason, have shiny finishes around the keyboard that show fingerprints like crazy. Ugh. Others were too big - obvious desktop replacements. None that I noticed (could have missed it) came with BD support. Lots have yucky keyboard designs like squished arrow keys.

BB doesn't carry Lenovo. Fry's does, so I might drag her over there to take a look. I'll also take her to the TigerDirect outlet (now, cough, CompUSA). We absolutely won't buy sight-unseen but I've no issue test-driving in a store & buying online.

I don't want to make the decision in haste but this does look like Sony is phasing out this model as they no longer sell it online and neither does Amazon. And if we buy before our vacation in October I could get away with not taking my work laptop (besides saving a few pounds there's a psychological benefit to having one less reminder of work while on vacation).

Other than "run away from anything Sony", any thoughts on models to compare with? Budget would be around $800

 

[Mercutio]

Sony notebooks tend to be poorly made and have... idiosyncratic software setups, even weirder than the way Toshiba typically mangles Windows.

I'm not even applying my usual Sony bias here.

On the other hand, the weight is about right for the specs; she's not looking at some boat anchor desktop replacement.

In general I think discrete graphics in a notebook are a dumb idea. They waste battery life, create additional heat and typically have minimal benefit for the sorts of apps that run on most notebooks. I deal with a few people who need to do CAD stuff, but that's why there are "workstation" class notebooks.

 

[Fushigi]

Regarding the software, I'd definitely do a wipe/reload with the "free" Win7 upgrade come late October so unless the goofiness is in the drivers I think that part can be minimized.

She has a desktop machine .. Q6600, 2GB, yada yada .. but I'm going to guess once she gets used to the notebook I could retire it and save a few bucks on power each month. I seem to be collecting desktops with no place to redeploy them.

Oh yeah, I don't really like that it has bottom vent holes. She will use it on her lap and possibly will set it on the bed to use.

The unit didn't seem to have much flex to it; can you point to anything I should look at hardware-wise or is it all under the covers?

 

[paugie]

My sister-in-law received a brand new Acer laptop with an AMD processor as a gift. It has Windows Vista Basic and the usual software overload.
If I have a copy of Windows Vista Basic and use that to reformat the machine and use the windows key taped to the back of the laptop, would it activate?

 

[Stereodude]

As long as the key and the version you have match, ie: both OEM it should work.

 

[paugie]

ok, thanks, will try it.

 

[LunarMist]

Presumably you have a backup of the boot partition in case it does not work out?

 

[Mercutio]

Make sure you grab drivers from Acer's site. In the past I've found that even Acer can't tell what hardware is in any particular model of their notebook.

 

[paugie]

Make sure you grab drivers from Acer's site. In the past I've found that even Acer can't tell what hardware is in any particular model of their notebook.

uh, ok. Will make sure of this before I tinker with it.

 

[Fushigi]

I stopped by MicroCenter on the way home from work. Didn't see anything too impressive for my wife, especially now that we're wanting a BD drive.

Probably 1/2 to 2/3rd of the models had the shiny surface (fingerprint magnet) around the keyboard/wrist-rest area. Sorry, PC makers, those models are dismissed right away. If you don't understand that basic aesthetic, what else did you get wrong? Shiny screens I can deal with, but the case gets touched. Often.

We're still planning on hitting Fry's & Tiger tomorrow but I'm guessing there's a Sony in our future.

MC did have the Dell mini with the 12" screen (Inspiron 11z I think); that looked kinda nice as a netbook. But after playing with loading Word on a couple of the Atom machines I'm giving sharp reconsideration to anything Atom-class. I may wait for a dual-core Atom or move up to an entry C2D instead. The Atoms were just too slow. And I don't blame the HD; I watched and there were plenty of times where the activity light wasn't on. I even loaded Word, closed it, and loaded it again so it's be a cache hit and it was still just too slow.

Since the purchase of her laptop is imminent I went ahead & used the MS Home Use program through work to buy MS Office Enterprise for the new machine. It used to be $19.95 but is now only $9.95. The difference being it's now a download (502MB) and you have to pay extra for media.

 

[Fushigi]

Sony it is. Surprisingly it shipping with a minimum amount of true crapware. Norton was replaced. I uninstalled the MS Office trial before installing Office Enterprise. A couple of other things were removed. The Sony & 3rd party apps that actually provide some functionality are staying so far, including Sony's media manager, web cam apps, WinDVD w/BD, etc. It shipped with Chrome installed but not Firefox; I reversed that. It also came with the relatively recent Acrobat Reader 9.0; I updated that. Vista HP SP1 was upgraded to SP2 & all updates for Windows & Office sans Windows Live (which seems useless to me) were loaded. I added it to the Home Server and did a backup in lieu of making recovery discs.

Sony's support site for the model does not offer a "check for available updates" function to examine your machine & compare it to what's available. However, it does put "Original" in the title of shipping drivers so you can easily spot what's been upgraded since release.

Seems to resume from sleep mode just fine. Haven't tried hibernation yet.

All that's left is to finish ordering the Win7 upgrade. I ordered it online but have to mail/fax proof of purchase.

Performance-wise it blows the snot off the old D800 laptop. Even with the Vista "performance penalty" it's just way faster at practically everything. I'd be hard pressed to guess it was a 5400 RPM drive.

 

[Pradeep]

Have you had a chance to try the blu-ray playback via HDMI?

 

[Pradeep]

Can I ask how much you paid? The NW 160 with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 is $929 at Amazon. Seems like a small premium to be able to play games.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-VAIO-VGN-NW160J-15-5-Inch-Laptop/dp/B002A4CP3O/

 

[Pradeep]

Normally I would hesitate to induce buyers remorse but BB does have liberal exchange policies.

 

[Fushigi]

$829 at Best Buy but we bought at TigerDirect/CompUSA who price-matched. The sales dude at CompUSA was friendlier & more knowledgable. BestBuy had the best price; better than anything I found online.

We haven't tried any BD playback yet. Maybe we can try it this afternoon while my wife is babysitting for a friend. I'll try it on-screen first and hook it up to our TV second. It will be a good test of the GPU since it's an Intel.

I'm guessing the only way it'd be returned would for an exchange. She does like it a good bit so far. We'll see how it likes Hawaii in October.

Next stop: low-end/modest HD Camcorder. Currently looking at the JVC units like this but am willing to look at anything in a similar price range.

 

[Fushigi]

Spot-checked a few scenes from Wanted on BD and didn't have any problems, although the WinDVD full-screen keyboard controls don't seem to work work crap. It also warned that some discs, including Wanted, don't work with mouse gestures for menu selections. You have to arrow around menus and hit Enter. So menus: Keyboard. Playback: Mouse (right-click, pause/stop/etc.) if full-screen. The built in help is poor. We can probably get used to it or I'll look for a better app.

Oh, if you look at the keyboard you see each key has spacing around it. I thought at first it would throw off typing but in reality the spacing is just fine and neither my wife nor I have had any problems. My only keyboard gripe is the Home/End and Page Up/Down layout is different from what I'm used to on the Dell laptops.

BTW, the model you linked to seems to have identical specs except for the ATI GPU. If Runny Glass has a local Best Buy, you can probably see it in person in-store.

 

[ddrueding]

You don't want to be carrying around BD disks while traveling anyway. Just rip it to the hard drive and save your battery.

 

[Stereodude]

Most Blu-Ray Discs don't support a mouse. Idiots!

 

[Pradeep]

BTW, the model you linked to seems to have identical specs except for the ATI GPU. If Runny Glass has a local Best Buy, you can probably see it in person in-store.

I'm afraid that would lead to an overwhelming compulsion to buy one. Or the 16.4" series above this one with the 4670 video and the 2.53 core 2 duo. Right now a $300 120GB PS3 "slim" is my next object of desire.

 

[LunarMist]

It looks good for the low price I guess, but why no bluetooth and which CPU has only 2MB L2 these days?

 

[Pradeep]

You get bluetooth 2.1 in this model ($1150):

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-VAIO-VGN-FW465J-16-4-Inch-Laptop/dp/B0027P9BYW/

 

[Pradeep]

The games Intel have been playing with processor naming have reached an all time high.

 

[paugie]

on that Acer notebook...

I uninstalled all the software not needed. Replaced the macAfee with Avast. It was zippy enough that I didn't bother reformatting.

surprised me because the Toshiba notebook I reinstalled with XP Pro last April seemed sluggish compared to this Athlon unit. It has 2Gb versus 1Gb memory on the Toshiba. So maybe that's the reason this is zippier.

 

[Fushigi]

You don't want to be carrying around BD disks while traveling anyway. Just rip it to the hard drive and save your battery.

This would be for hotel room usage. Even without spinning the optical drive I'm guessing it'd be a close call to watch an entire movie on battery power. And while I'm being a bit OCD about trimming weight for the trip with the luggage restrictions & added cost nowadays, taking along 3 or 4 discs in sleeves wouldn't be enough weight to matter.


Pradeep, my wife thought the 16.4" edition was too heavy.


LM, BT would be nice but it isn't something my wife would likely use. If she does want it later, we could pick it up in a USB adapter.


BTW, the T6500 seems to have had a rather brief life. Launched in 09Q2, Intel has already discontinued it.

 

[Mercutio]

Most Blu-Ray Discs don't support a mouse. Idiots!

PowerDVD 8 and 9 have an option for that.

 

[MaxBurn]

PowerDVD 8 and 9 have an option for that.

Ah, do they have an option to turn it on or is it default on? That's one of the many things that annoyed me and lead to my abandoning them for some indeterminate revisit time in the future.

 

[Stereodude]

Ah, do they have an option to turn it on or is it default on? That's one of the many things that annoyed me and lead to my abandoning them for some indeterminate revisit time in the future.

It's not as elegant as you probably think. It puts up a little graphic on the screen with arrow keys and an enter button that you then click on with your mouse to navigate the menus.

 

[MaxBurn]

It's not as elegant as you probably think. It puts up a little graphic on the screen with arrow keys and an enter button that you then click on with your mouse to navigate the menus.

Ah geez, I think I remember seeing that and wondering what it was. As you can tell I didn't play with it long after I confirmed the whole clone/mirror mode is locked out.

 

[Tannin]

The Thinkpad T400 and T500 both come with ATI graphics chips. A real shame that the R Series is all on-board now. (Actually, I couldn't care less if the graphics are on-board, except for one crucial difference: with on-board, you have no DVI output through your docking station, And that is completely unacceptable.

We sold quite a few SLs for a while there, essentially because the R Series got ridiculously expensive, but Lenovo have got a bit more serious about their R Series pricing and its R Series pretty much all the way at present. Except for me and Belinda: I bought a T400 a couple of months ago, and just got Belinda a T500. That's overkill for her needs, but it's a beautiful machine. (I'm very happy with my T400, by the way.)