Regrettably last night some little chimpanzee of a cretin essentially destroyed my trusty personal laptop in a gratuitous act of stupidity. So I need to replace it. Although personal, this is actually for business for consulting I do in Africa, so the needs are (i) tough, (ii) powered to run business suites, Office; (iii) battery life, (iv) tough, (v) int’l service oriented, (vi) reasonably weighted - but not ultra portable (so far those things annoy me, big hands…).
Added bonus, as I may buy this in either continental Europe or possibly in the USA on visit next month: recommendations on good sourcing for English language systems, keybaords. I don’t want to buy in UK for various reasons.
Lowest cost, I may add really isn’t a concern, but best cost/value is. Euro2k works well as benchmark.
Panasonic has pretty much had the ruggedized market to itself, but Dell recently introduced the Latitude XFR notebook systems to compete with it. But like the Toughbooks, they are not cheap. They are in the $3,000 range depending on how you equip them.
Define tough. Physically durable, or just reliable?
I had a friend from our music undergrad that moved to Ghana for a year after graduating. Her husband’s from there, and she wanted to keep up with her recording studio. By her estimation, it was a veritable nightmare to find mac parts and accessories in Africa, as opposed to PC stuff that was easier to find. So, I at least offer what not to buy if you plan on working there!
I have 15 years of experience in Africa, I feel very comfortable calling an idiot a chimpanzee. However, you will note I did not say this chiimpanzee was a black African, in fact the fellow is quite white.
But I am not looking for something that ruggedised. Toughbooks are bloody heavy and I am not out on engineering missions.
Looking for more like tough but ordinary business laptops. Reliable and touch relative to more or less ordinary business travel (except yes in Africa). I know wel, by the way, that Mac is unfindable in most of SSA, ex South Africa, but Mac is not a good business solution for my work, so we’re talking win systems…
I’ve been very happy with the sturdiness of the two Lenovo (ex IBM) Thinkpad T-series laptops I’ve had. They’re not explicitly ruggedized, but they’re well built. I dropped one of them from a two-foot height (accidentally, you understand) and saw no adverse effects.
The T-series models are all fairly high-powered and would certainly run business suites and Office; for long battery life you can get six-cell batteries (in place of the ordinary four-cell). I don’t know what the service and support would be like outside of South Africa - I suspect that if you needed service elsewhere in Africa you’d be told to send it to Johannesburg for repairs, but I’d suspect the same of any laptop brand.
Both PC Magazine and Consumer Reports have ratings for notebook computer reliability based on survey results from their readers. Apple and Asus were top-rated in PC Magazine, while Toshiba, Sony and Compaq were top-rated in Consumer Reports.
You don’t have to run OS X on a Macbook Pro - it is a very solid and reliable laptop for running windows. All metal body, good battery, no plastic doors to break off, good keyboard, good screen and it will run Windows very happily - Apple provide all the hardware drivers you need with the software in the box on a single disc.
It’s certainly one of the better PC laptops out there, in terms of physical features and ease of travel, if a little more expensive than something from Dell.
For the price of one Toughbook, you could probably buy two or three spare laptops. If you’re diligent at making backups, you’d have minimal downtime to grab your spare and start fresh, so to speak.
I’ve had good experiences with ThinkPads. They’re pretty stout to begin with, and for the original IBM models, at least, it’s easy to get complete tear-down instructions for swapping out everything - keyboards, display panels, etc. I’d like to assume Lenovo continues this legacy. The worst damage I’ve witnessed done to a ThinkPad was when a co-worker dropped theirs four feet to concrete. The impact was hard enough to dislodge an internal connector, but it took all of 15 minutes to open it up, peeling back the layers of hardware like an onion to get at the plug, re-seat it and put it all back together. Other than some cosmetic damage to the case where it hit the sidewalk, there was no permanent damage.
“It’s the closest thing to a perfect ultraportable notebook that we’ve tested. And that’s because Sony has crafted a machine that’s beautiful, incredibly light, and super fast.”
Pity, I know a guy who used to work designing ruggedized laptops for the military - he had one that you could sink underwater and practically drive a hummer over. I believe he is on a call to an account in Taiwan right now but I bet he has industry contacts still that he could recommend =)
As already mentioned, and sorry for the Mac fanatics, but Mac support is virtually unfindable on the Continent and where found, stunningly expensive. Sorry mate, already zapped. It will not be a Mac for very practical reasons.
Were I in the market for that, it would be interesting.
Right the consensus seems to be the Thinkpad. Anyone have specific model experience? Poking around the site I see T and X series that appear to be interesting.
I only have owned Ideapads, not Thinkpads. I run the Y 510 and will continue until it dies on me, I love it that much. But I’ve played with the Thinkpad L and Edge, and I’d take the L series hands down.
I have experience with the T series, though not with any of the ones that are currently on the market. (My current laptop is a T61.) The T-series has a reputation for sturdiness and reliability. The X-series machines are ultraportables, so I presume that would rule them out for you?
Yes, although I was toying with the idea of buying an ultra-portable as a back up or for certain usages. However, that would only be after the main laptop. Which might be a wee bit mad.
