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Looking for new laptop. Help please.
- Thread starter White92
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If you're looking for a high end laptop, then an Apple PBG4 starts to make sense economically since it already comes with a lot of stuff "built-in", like Firewire (both 400 and 800), DVI connector, bluetooth, etc. Comparably equipped PC's end up costing roughly the same. The form factor is awesome, you never have to worry about viruses/spyware and all of the major applications are there eg. MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite (photoshop, illustrator), Maya/Lightwave, etc. Plus you get various nice apps that come standard like iMovie, iDVD, Omnigraffle, etc. For user friendliness and ease of use, it's hard to beat a Mac and they work well in most corporate environments. The only major app I've needed that wasn't available is MS Project (although there are alternatives available). Your mileage may vary.
I've had numerous Powerbooks over the years, and in fact I just got a 15" to replace my 17" a few days ago (the 17" was too bulky for hauling around) For me, personally, a PC laptop just doesn't make sense.
Having said all that, if you're not looking for a top of the line machine, then there is no question that you should consider a PC laptop. There are many more options, at much lower price points. Things to be aware of:
-Battery life. Going with a centrino will give you better battery life, but lower "Mhz" compared to P4/Athlon based CPU's and they also command a higher price. Many P4 based laptops can't even play an entire DVD without the battery running out (important consideration on the plane!).
-If you're going to be travelling a lot, in addition to battery life, weight is a big consideration. If you don't need to be lugging around the CD drive or don't need all of the ports on the road, there are very light mini-notebooks that come with docking bays.
-Keep in mind that integrated graphics chipsets provide cheaper solutions, but they also have much lower performance and share their graphics memory with system memory. This is only a factor if you have limited memory or anticipate playing graphics heavy games. Most cheaper laptops come with integrated graphics, with the higher end ones being equipped with a discrete part.
-Most laptops only have two memory slots. eg. if you have two 256 meg DIMMS, it's not possible to just add more memory without swapping one DIMM out. Memory is relatively cheap these days, but can be expensive when configured directly from the manufacturer.
-Keep in mind that upgrading components in a laptop is more difficult than in a desktop PC. You generally can't just upgrade the graphics or swap out for a faster CPU etc. Make sure that the machine you're getting truly covers your needs. Hard drives are one component that can easily be upgraded, and there are always external FireWire/USB2 solutions for additional storage.
-Having bluetooth is a nice bonus. Many people are not as comfortable with the mouse trackpads/buttons on a laptop and use an external mouse. However, the mouse wire can be a real pain, especially if you have limited space. That's where a wireless bluetooth mouse is VERY nice, particularly if bluetooth is built into your machine!
-If you're using this for a business, highly consider leasing the machine. Laptops become obsolete faster than desktops since for the most part, they can't be upgraded. With a leased machine, you can expense the laptop rather than having it count as a capital asset, and you can get a new one 2-3 years later when it's showing its age. All of the big manufacturers (Dell, IBM, etc) offer a business leasing model and offer various after-care packages that can accomodate your needs.
-Having a higher resolution screen is not always better. Running a 1920 or 1600 panel in a 15" form factor can be hard on the eyes. You want to run at native panel resolution whenever possible for performance and quality reasons, so choose a resolution that meets your needs. Higher resolutions of course have the advantage of providing more desktop real-estate, and is an important consideration for video editors, programmers, etc.
Have fun shopping! ;-)
I've had numerous Powerbooks over the years, and in fact I just got a 15" to replace my 17" a few days ago (the 17" was too bulky for hauling around) For me, personally, a PC laptop just doesn't make sense.
Having said all that, if you're not looking for a top of the line machine, then there is no question that you should consider a PC laptop. There are many more options, at much lower price points. Things to be aware of:
-Battery life. Going with a centrino will give you better battery life, but lower "Mhz" compared to P4/Athlon based CPU's and they also command a higher price. Many P4 based laptops can't even play an entire DVD without the battery running out (important consideration on the plane!).
-If you're going to be travelling a lot, in addition to battery life, weight is a big consideration. If you don't need to be lugging around the CD drive or don't need all of the ports on the road, there are very light mini-notebooks that come with docking bays.
-Keep in mind that integrated graphics chipsets provide cheaper solutions, but they also have much lower performance and share their graphics memory with system memory. This is only a factor if you have limited memory or anticipate playing graphics heavy games. Most cheaper laptops come with integrated graphics, with the higher end ones being equipped with a discrete part.
-Most laptops only have two memory slots. eg. if you have two 256 meg DIMMS, it's not possible to just add more memory without swapping one DIMM out. Memory is relatively cheap these days, but can be expensive when configured directly from the manufacturer.
-Keep in mind that upgrading components in a laptop is more difficult than in a desktop PC. You generally can't just upgrade the graphics or swap out for a faster CPU etc. Make sure that the machine you're getting truly covers your needs. Hard drives are one component that can easily be upgraded, and there are always external FireWire/USB2 solutions for additional storage.
-Having bluetooth is a nice bonus. Many people are not as comfortable with the mouse trackpads/buttons on a laptop and use an external mouse. However, the mouse wire can be a real pain, especially if you have limited space. That's where a wireless bluetooth mouse is VERY nice, particularly if bluetooth is built into your machine!
-If you're using this for a business, highly consider leasing the machine. Laptops become obsolete faster than desktops since for the most part, they can't be upgraded. With a leased machine, you can expense the laptop rather than having it count as a capital asset, and you can get a new one 2-3 years later when it's showing its age. All of the big manufacturers (Dell, IBM, etc) offer a business leasing model and offer various after-care packages that can accomodate your needs.
-Having a higher resolution screen is not always better. Running a 1920 or 1600 panel in a 15" form factor can be hard on the eyes. You want to run at native panel resolution whenever possible for performance and quality reasons, so choose a resolution that meets your needs. Higher resolutions of course have the advantage of providing more desktop real-estate, and is an important consideration for video editors, programmers, etc.
Have fun shopping! ;-)
I would not buy a Dell laptop ever again. Mine died (twice), and 2 coworkers have had theirs blow up mysteriously. Dell is pretty good as long as you get the extended warranty, but no store is gonna replace it in a day, even if you go to best buy.
In terms of power, the P4's are awesome as long as you get the centrino chip, those babies are more efficient.
I'll echo what everyone else says about the Macs. Runs strong, but the incompatabilites and price put it over the edge for me. I wouldnt buy one
I like Toshibas and Sony's. Oh and Alienware
In terms of power, the P4's are awesome as long as you get the centrino chip, those babies are more efficient.
I'll echo what everyone else says about the Macs. Runs strong, but the incompatabilites and price put it over the edge for me. I wouldnt buy one
I like Toshibas and Sony's. Oh and Alienware
What about the new "M" that is out? Isn't that supposed to do wonders for that? I had it explained to me by one person that it was hard to make a laptop with the same conviguration as a desktop perform at the same speed because of heat and the small amount of space that everything was crammed into. And even if you could make it perfrom as well as a comparable desktop, it would suck the life out of the battery pretty quick. So they were supposed to take everything good about previous chips and make the "M" for laptops. Is this bs that I was fed or was there any truth to it? It makes sense to me, but who knows....
Alienware? What's that?
What about the new "M" that is out? Isn't that supposed to do wonders for that?
The Penium "M" is one component of "Centrino". Centrino is actually a combination of the Pentium M + Calexico 802.11 WLAN (wireless) chipset + 855 Northbridge (a controller chip).
The Pentium "M" is largely based on the older P3 architecture, not the P4 architecture. This is why even with the more advanced fabrication process, it still clocks much lower than the Pentium 4 and mobile Celeron CPU's. The problem with the P4 architecture however is that it's not as efficient in how much work gets done every clock cycle. It overcomes this by its ability to be clocked much higher. eg. When the P3's were max'ing at 1Ghz, the p4's were coming out at 2Ghz. (I'd be glad to go into more details on the architectural differences, and why the P4 can be clocked higher etc, if you're interested).
Bottom line is: At a given wattage, the PentiumM can get more "work" done than an equivalent Pentium4 "M". Since power consumption is one of the biggest factors for a mobile solution, Pentium "M" based laptops are preferable to P4/Celeron ones. This of course directly translates to lighter/smaller batteries.
I had it explained to me by one person that it was hard to make a laptop with the same conviguration as a desktop perform at the same speed because of heat and the small amount of space that everything was crammed into. And even if you could make it perfrom as well as a comparable desktop, it would suck the life out of the battery pretty quick.
This is largely true. CPU's, GPU's, and everything else are generally downclocked or lack certain features on mobile variants. There are desktop replacement laptops that are as powerful as full desktops, but these are generally big monster machines that you don't want to lug around and have really poor battery life, even with multiple battery slots.
White92 said:
Hi
With a Bluetooth enabled cellphone I can surf the web without having to align the phone and the pc's ir. I also has a Bluetooth headset which I use with the phone. I have just tested it with the pc and not gotten it to work yet. But when I get it to work I can use it to talk with MSN or other IP phone services.
Irda can be used for a lot of things. Going on the internet but then you have to align the phone.
Regards
Arshad, so would I want to get the M of 4? I don't really care about weight right now. Battery life is in about the middle of my list. I'll almost always be able to plug into an outlout wherever I'm at. Any other suggestions at what I should look for?
Chalk me up as a Thinkpad guy. I've had several different manufacturers over the years (compaq, toshiba, Dell, IBM). IBM is by far the best (I am on the 4th one in a row now). FWIW, the last 3 have been T-series (T20, T23, T40). I've been very pleased with all of them.
If this is your first laptop, I would be especially concious of the hard drive that is included with the computer. Laptop drives are slower than desktops, and it will annoy the hell out of you if you don't make it a point to get one of the faster drives. Other features I look for are video performance, screen size, and system memory. CPU speed is nice, but IMO a couple hundred megahertz one way or anther is no big deal. Memory can be upgraded, as can just about anything that fits in a PCMCIA slot. Focus on the stuff you can't upgrade in a year or two when its feeling a little sluggish.
Can't really speak to Macs, that might be another option. Personally, I never really understood the appeal of MacOS unless you are a graphics guy - but that's just me.
YMMV, JMO, yadda yadda.
If this is your first laptop, I would be especially concious of the hard drive that is included with the computer. Laptop drives are slower than desktops, and it will annoy the hell out of you if you don't make it a point to get one of the faster drives. Other features I look for are video performance, screen size, and system memory. CPU speed is nice, but IMO a couple hundred megahertz one way or anther is no big deal. Memory can be upgraded, as can just about anything that fits in a PCMCIA slot. Focus on the stuff you can't upgrade in a year or two when its feeling a little sluggish.
Can't really speak to Macs, that might be another option. Personally, I never really understood the appeal of MacOS unless you are a graphics guy - but that's just me.
YMMV, JMO, yadda yadda.
- Joined
- 29 April 2004
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NSX-Racer said:
Haha, I sure hope so, my new G4 will be here in a week for my school. I bought a Sony VAIO last year ($2700 with 2 yr full warranty) and it now overheats very frequently and shuts off with no warning or shut down procedure. When the G4 gets here I'm sending my VAIO back to get it fixed
I've only heard good things about the apple, I'd look into it if I were you
Just to add another goodie: Apple will release it's next major system software update called "tiger" next year (so it's the year of the tiger for Mac fans). They already described some features at Apple Expo in Paris which are stunning - such as built-in video conferencing ('til now only one-to-one-video), search functions and scripting routines over all programmes (you can search a word or name in one mask and it performs the search everywhere even inside video files, mails etc.).
You can see a webcast from the introduction here
You can see a webcast from the introduction here
- Joined
- 29 April 2004
- Messages
- 1,567
well... here's my $0.02
I'm 20 and in design at Kent State University.
I was in architecture last summer, and had to buy new computers like said before in my previous post. My friends also have had to buy new ones. One of my friends bought a Toshiba. My roommate now coincidentally has the same one. He has been on the phone with Toshiba for the last week trying to find out why it has crashed. My friend from architecture has already replaced hers with a different brand because her's was being fixed more than being used (think American car...haha, j/k)...
My best friend went t a different school and someone suggested buying an HP laptop. He's going into law, so he wanted something good, and that would last... and as the saying goes... "you get what you pay for" so he bought a near $3000 HP Laptop. His has crashed 3 times in 2 years, they sent him a new model for free... it crashed also.
We have an apple store in our art building. Our building is wired for their airport's. Everyone there swears by apples. Their reliability, lack of viruses, and since I'm in graphics, those are supposed to be better too. We are required to buy one for school, so they aren't trying to sell us one, we're buying one anyways.
Those are just my experiences. Take from it what you will...
my first long post on Prime...hmm, awesome... maybe someday I'll be able to do so with an actual NSX!! Someday... hope this helps.
I'm 20 and in design at Kent State University.
I was in architecture last summer, and had to buy new computers like said before in my previous post. My friends also have had to buy new ones. One of my friends bought a Toshiba. My roommate now coincidentally has the same one. He has been on the phone with Toshiba for the last week trying to find out why it has crashed. My friend from architecture has already replaced hers with a different brand because her's was being fixed more than being used (think American car...haha, j/k)...
My best friend went t a different school and someone suggested buying an HP laptop. He's going into law, so he wanted something good, and that would last... and as the saying goes... "you get what you pay for" so he bought a near $3000 HP Laptop. His has crashed 3 times in 2 years, they sent him a new model for free... it crashed also.
We have an apple store in our art building. Our building is wired for their airport's. Everyone there swears by apples. Their reliability, lack of viruses, and since I'm in graphics, those are supposed to be better too. We are required to buy one for school, so they aren't trying to sell us one, we're buying one anyways.
Those are just my experiences. Take from it what you will...
my first long post on Prime...hmm, awesome... maybe someday I'll be able to do so with an actual NSX!! Someday...
hope this helps.
Arshad, so would I want to get the M of 4?
Sorry, I should have made that more clear. From a pure power consumption and "work per watt" perspective, you want to get a Pentium "M", which has a different architecture than either the "Pentium4 M" or "Pentium3 M" (even though it's largely based on the P3 architecture). What this generally translates to is a laptop with longer battery life, and one that weighs less since you don't have to stick as large or as many batteries in.
HOWEVER, they also charge a premium for the PentiumM, and the overall performance is not necessarily better than a P4 or Celeron based machine since they are typically clocked a lot higher. eg. a 2.8Ghz P4 vs a 1.2Ghz PentiumM or whatever.
The key thing to remember here is that you Mhz is not apples to apples. The architecture defines how efficient the chip is per clock (Mhz is essentially a million clocks per second). A pentiumM at 1.2Ghz is going to have higher performance for the most part than let's say a Celeron at 1.8Ghz, but a 4Ghz P4 is still going to smoke that PentiumM by sheer clock speed.
I know, it's all very confusing! Just keep in mind, that unless it specifically says "Centrino" or "PentiumM", it's not. If weight and battery life are not as big a concern, I would just go with the much cheaper Celeron or P4 based laptops.
Personally, I never really understood the appeal of MacOS unless you are a graphics guy - but that's just me.
You know that's a common misconception. Back in the day, all of the graphically intensive applications were only available on the Mac, like Photoshop and Illustrator and Quark etc. Now, you can get all of them on a PC and until the G5's came out, they were more responsive on a PC! From a pure "graphics" perspective, at one time there were HW accelerators for the Mac when the PC was still using non-accelerated VGA, but these days the performance is somewhat higher on the PC than it is on the Mac, often even with the exact same graphics chip. Trust me on this one, I work for a company that provides PC's and Mac's with their graphics chips, and I personally work on the graphics chip drivers for Apple machines. Macs no longer have any advantage in graphics, either from a HW perspective or from a SW one.
Having said that, there are more reasons than ever to be using a Mac than a PC. Nowadays the excuse that "It doesn't have the software I need" is largely not true since pretty much all the popular SW is available on the Mac as well. Even the top-tier game titles all make it to the Mac. It works perfectly fine in a plug-and-play fashion in most corporate environments with the email system, with the network, etc. The advantages come from a much better user experierence, much easier setup for things like networking, and tons of very easy to use built-in applications for the home user, like iDVD, iMovie, etc. On my PC, I am constantly barraged by security updates from MS to avoid the latest virus/worm, I have to worry about which email attachments I can open, which files someone else using my machine might download, and am constantly being hit by spyware which bogs the machine down. This is now a very big deal for me because it interrupts my workflow on a regular basis. On the Mac, this is a nonexistant problem. These days, that's the biggest reason for me to be using a Mac instead of a PC.
Looking into the future, the next major release of OSX has a VERY cool feature which is their advanced searching. It's very hard to describe in words. When I first read about I was like "ho hum, big deal", but after seeing it in action the first thing I did was install "Tiger" even though it's still in early alpha stages and has plenty of other development issues, simply because of how powerful this feature is. (Since we work so closely with Apple, we get all the development builds pretty much from day 1). It's one of those things that are truly going to redefine HOW you use the computer! The biggest issue for users these days is information and data management. Hard Drives are getting huge and people have thousands of files and bits of information which are scattered all over the place. Even if you are meticulous with your organization, it can be difficult to isolate a particular bit of information -- you know you read it somewhere, but which file or email was it in? Tiger solves this in an elegant manner -- it truly is a paradigm shift in how you use the computer, and when my longtime hardcore PC/Mac-bashing friend saw it in action he was so convinced of how awesome it was, he just went out and bought a Mac laptop a few weeks ago ;-) Anyways, this is totally off-topic and I apologize... back to the original topic!
Sorry, I should have made that more clear. From a pure power consumption and "work per watt" perspective, you want to get a Pentium "M", which has a different architecture than either the "Pentium4 M" or "Pentium3 M" (even though it's largely based on the P3 architecture). What this generally translates to is a laptop with longer battery life, and one that weighs less since you don't have to stick as large or as many batteries in.
HOWEVER, they also charge a premium for the PentiumM, and the overall performance is not necessarily better than a P4 or Celeron based machine since they are typically clocked a lot higher. eg. a 2.8Ghz P4 vs a 1.2Ghz PentiumM or whatever.
The key thing to remember here is that you Mhz is not apples to apples. The architecture defines how efficient the chip is per clock (Mhz is essentially a million clocks per second). A pentiumM at 1.2Ghz is going to have higher performance for the most part than let's say a Celeron at 1.8Ghz, but a 4Ghz P4 is still going to smoke that PentiumM by sheer clock speed.
I know, it's all very confusing! Just keep in mind, that unless it specifically says "Centrino" or "PentiumM", it's not. If weight and battery life are not as big a concern, I would just go with the much cheaper Celeron or P4 based laptops.
Personally, I never really understood the appeal of MacOS unless you are a graphics guy - but that's just me.
You know that's a common misconception. Back in the day, all of the graphically intensive applications were only available on the Mac, like Photoshop and Illustrator and Quark etc. Now, you can get all of them on a PC and until the G5's came out, they were more responsive on a PC! From a pure "graphics" perspective, at one time there were HW accelerators for the Mac when the PC was still using non-accelerated VGA, but these days the performance is somewhat higher on the PC than it is on the Mac, often even with the exact same graphics chip. Trust me on this one, I work for a company that provides PC's and Mac's with their graphics chips, and I personally work on the graphics chip drivers for Apple machines. Macs no longer have any advantage in graphics, either from a HW perspective or from a SW one.
Having said that, there are more reasons than ever to be using a Mac than a PC. Nowadays the excuse that "It doesn't have the software I need" is largely not true since pretty much all the popular SW is available on the Mac as well. Even the top-tier game titles all make it to the Mac. It works perfectly fine in a plug-and-play fashion in most corporate environments with the email system, with the network, etc. The advantages come from a much better user experierence, much easier setup for things like networking, and tons of very easy to use built-in applications for the home user, like iDVD, iMovie, etc. On my PC, I am constantly barraged by security updates from MS to avoid the latest virus/worm, I have to worry about which email attachments I can open, which files someone else using my machine might download, and am constantly being hit by spyware which bogs the machine down. This is now a very big deal for me because it interrupts my workflow on a regular basis. On the Mac, this is a nonexistant problem. These days, that's the biggest reason for me to be using a Mac instead of a PC.
Looking into the future, the next major release of OSX has a VERY cool feature which is their advanced searching. It's very hard to describe in words. When I first read about I was like "ho hum, big deal", but after seeing it in action the first thing I did was install "Tiger" even though it's still in early alpha stages and has plenty of other development issues, simply because of how powerful this feature is. (Since we work so closely with Apple, we get all the development builds pretty much from day 1). It's one of those things that are truly going to redefine HOW you use the computer! The biggest issue for users these days is information and data management. Hard Drives are getting huge and people have thousands of files and bits of information which are scattered all over the place. Even if you are meticulous with your organization, it can be difficult to isolate a particular bit of information -- you know you read it somewhere, but which file or email was it in? Tiger solves this in an elegant manner -- it truly is a paradigm shift in how you use the computer, and when my longtime hardcore PC/Mac-bashing friend saw it in action he was so convinced of how awesome it was, he just went out and bought a Mac laptop a few weeks ago ;-) Anyways, this is totally off-topic and I apologize... back to the original topic!
I didn't think there were so many Mac lovers out there. I remember the days when IBM/PC users used to bash the Macs. They thought that the operating system was too gimmicky. Windows, mouse, double-clicking, it'll never last....
That was when they were still typing DOS commands on a black screen. Gotta give Bill Gates credit, he saw something that worked and copied it.... the rest is history.
Straying way off topic now.
That was when they were still typing DOS commands on a black screen. Gotta give Bill Gates credit, he saw something that worked and copied it.... the rest is history.
Straying way off topic now.
Those X-505-s have gone down in price though .. They used to be close to $4K when they first came out!
Gus
Gus
Looking for something cheap and lightweight? About 2 years ago I got an Averatec 3200 that's about 1" thick closed 12" screen and weighs 4 lbs. My only interest at the time was to get an inexpensive small laptop I could use to save my digital photos on. Best buy had them with several rebates and I got one 2 years ago for $500! I thought what the heck you could spend that on one of the dedicated photo storage units alone at the time. Since then I use it all the time around the house as my most portable unit. It works great for what I wanted for but it also has worked flawlessly as a general purpose laptop. www.averatec.com is the corporate site. I was amazed at the quality of the unit in this price range. I'm writing this post on it right now. Lots of choices out there on the PC/Winders world.
