Which brand of Laptop is the best?

[Bill Bumface]

Originally posted by Flame Of Liberty@Jun 10 2005, 08:14 AM
I am thinking about buying this one. Can anyone comment on it, or recommend it in case someone has it?

IBM ThinkPad G41
Pentium 4 3.06 GHz
512MB RAM
40 GB HDD
15`` TFT 1024x768
NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200

Price: $1,589.00 (canadian)

Personally I'd always get a centrino. If you plan on always being plugged into an outlet though, its a different story.

[CaptainCrunch]

One worry is that IBM no longer manufactures its laptops or desktops, thats all been recently sold to an interest in China who's name escapes me. So I would be worried about the quality for the next couple of years until they prove that they are just as good as the legacy thinkpads.

[flamingchina]

What I meant was that 1024x768 is to big(small?) of a resolution for 15". your icons will be huge (I think..)
I have that resolution on my 12.1" screen.
And i'll vouch for the centrinos..
Basically if you want over 3 hours batrtery life you either need a centrio/pentium m or a big big laptop with two batteries.

and may I ask what you mean by the screen is important because you value your eyes?

[TimSJ]

I have an Acer Travel Mate 290 and it has worked very well for me so far...

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally posted by CaptainCrunch@Jun 10 2005, 09:34 AM
One worry is that IBM no longer manufactures its laptops or desktops, thats all been recently sold to an interest in China who's name escapes me. So I would be worried about the quality for the next couple of years until they prove that they are just as good as the legacy thinkpads.

Lenovo is keeping all the old IBM design staff and moving it's HQ to the North Carolina area. I wouldn't be too worried about the design of the current Thinkpads. As for manufacturing, some of the lower end Thinkpad, and a good portion of the higher end had their production in China, just like everything else these days.

Centrino can be a little confusing, I'd just make sure that you get a Mobile version of whatever processor you decide on. More or less the same thing.

[Flame Of Liberty]

Originally posted by flamingchina@Jun 10 2005, 05:23 PM
What I meant was that 1024x768 is to big(small?) of a resolution for 15". your icons will be huge (I think..)
I have that resolution on my 12.1" screen.
And i'll vouch for the centrinos..
Basically if you want over 3 hours batrtery life you either need a centrio/pentium m or a big big laptop with two batteries.

and may I ask what you mean by the screen is important because you value your eyes?

Well I have a Thinkpad with 14`` screen and if I compare it to my friends Thinkpad with 15`` screen, its world of difference. As far as I can tell from my biased point of view, eyes are far less strained (15``).

One interesting model with a widescreen is Toshiba Satellite M45...

As far as the battery goes, its not much of a concern since I will be using the laptop more or less as a desktop replacement (plugged all the time).

[fredr123]

I got a barebones system from Memoryexpress when I started law school. I'm pretty good with computers but even I had all sorts of issues with drivers and such. While what I got for how much I paid was incredible, the lack of hardware support for drivers was a huge pain. Don't follow in my footsteps.

That being said, if I had known then what I know now there are certain things I would really emphasize in a laptop for everyday class room use. Nice screens are a given but the widescreen 17+inchers are over the top. Moving all around the school, you definitely want to make sure the computer is light, compact and gets great battery life. Find where screen size and multimedia features intersect those portability and battery life vectors comfortably for you and go for that. You also can't underemphasize the importance of a nice, comfortable keyboard. Get a quiet one for the sake of your classmates (IBM's are pretty good). Bottom line: If you want something that'll last your entire program, don't cheap out now.

[Burn-Baby-Burn]

I too am in the market for a laptop for school. I am going into my second year BSc honors program at the UofA. What do you think of this laptop:

It is on sale at Future Shop for $1699.99 Cdn.

HP DV4040

Intel Centrino Mobile Processor 740 (1.73 Ghz)
1024MB DDR RAM (expandable to 2048)
100GB Hard drive (4200RPM)
DVD & CD Burner
802.11b/g Wireless
15.4" WXGA Brightview Widescreen
128MB Intel 900 Graphics (not too keen on playing games)
Windows XP HOME + SP2 OS

A Link to the product specs can be found here:

Future Shop

If I had any quabbles about the laptop, I'd be about the OS and the graphics. But since Windows Longhorn is just around the corner, it might be useless to upgrade to Windows XP professional.

[300spartans]

I ordered a Dell Inspiron 6000 last week. Took almost a month of waiting but a good deal finally came up.

for $1330 i got

Pentium M 1.5 (equivalent to a P4 2.6-2.8ghz)
512 ram
free upgrade to 80gig drive
8x dvd burner with dual layer
15.4 inch WXGA screen
integrated graphics (no games for me)
extended battery (almost 6 hours!)
free case and shipping

Just went to the Dell website and tried to configure a similar system, came to over $1600!

This will be my main computer and I will also be taking it to university alot hence the extended battery. And most places on campus have wireless now yay!

I did quite a bit of research and I found that Dell was the best combination of price and performance. The HP DV series are pretty nice too, though more expensive.

[Flames89]

Funny, I think I have rounded it down to the above 2 computers as well.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Here's a link the the Dell 110L that many Redflagdeals guys jumped on. $699 for a Celeron M laptop with wireless and a free battery was crazy cheap ($50 upgrade to a 15" screen). I snagged one - a good laptop for the money, although I hate the placement of the insert/delete/home keys. Loaded it up with 1.25GB of RAM now so it's nice and fast.

The deal is gone now but since it's Dell, wait a bit and something crazy cheap will always be lurking around the corner with them.

http://forums.redflagdeals.com/showthread....31&page=1&pp=15

[Gugstanley]

Don't get a Micron

[300spartans]

Dell Inspiron 6000 was delivered a few days ago, gotta lova that new tech toy feeling.

Great laptop so far, spent a few hours uninstalling the pre-installed software and tweaking some settings. Runs very fast and the boot time is down to like 35secs!

Extended battery life with standard settings is about 5 hours, dimming the screen to the lower levels takes it up to almost 7.5 hours Definetly worth the upgrade!

[CaptainCrunch]

I'm in hell, my head office just delivered a new laptop for me on friday . . . Its a Dell.

Dell is Satan,

bleah

[Flames89]

Originally posted by 300spartans@Jun 18 2005, 04:48 PM
Dell Inspiron 6000 was delivered a few days ago, gotta lova that new tech toy feeling.

Great laptop so far, spent a few hours uninstalling the pre-installed software and tweaking some settings. Runs very fast and the boot time is down to like 35secs!

Extended battery life with standard settings is about 5 hours, dimming the screen to the lower levels takes it up to almost 7.5 hours Definetly worth the upgrade!

How does one get the boot time down? I am technically inclined - can you give a run down?

[300spartans]

This article has been the most help in getting the boot time down.

How to Optimize a Notebook Computer

The two things I found which really helped the time was working on MSCONFIG and running MS BOOTVIS.

Hope this helps!