Need a laptop, Suggestions?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Now that school has started back up, I need to buy a laptop. Now, I know a lot about desktop computers, but not much about laptops. I do know reliablilty is much more important, since its harder to fix a laptop then a desktop… So, I need some help.

For school, I’ll mostly be using it to take notes, make up power point presentations, etc. However, I would also like something that I could play computer games on, and watch Movies/Tv shows. I would like to have at least 1 gig of RAM, and a somewhat large hard drive, at least 80 gigs, but more if possible. It also has to have built in wireless internet.

I’ve never looked to buy a laptop before, so I don’t know where to start looking for information on them. Also, I don’t know if I should get an Intel based or AMD based laptop. I would greatly appriciate any suggestions y’all might have.

2

First, I’d pick out a size. Small is good for portability, but it’s a pain in the ass to always be using a tiny little computer. I have a little 12" Sony laptop which is great for carrying around or going to the library to do some work, but the keyboard is uncomfortably small. It’s fine for occasional work, but I can’t really use it for lots of typing – after a page or two, my hands are too cramped to continue. There are some 14"-15" laptops that are a good compromise, being small enough to carry around easily, but large enough to use comfortably and house more powerful components.

Battery life is also a consideration. How long do you want to be able to use it without plugging it in? In general, smaller laptops have better battery life, since they’re built for portability. I think that Intel based laptops have the edge for battery life, as well.

What sort of games are you interested in playing? A lot of games will require a better video chipset than is standard in most laptops, and may not even be an option in the smaller laptops. The basic Intel integrated video processors are really only good for basic desktop programs. It’s fine if you’re just using Office and browsing online, but it won’t handle the latest big first person shooter.

Beyond that, don’t worry about the specs too much. Every laptop has built in wireless these days, and even the slowest modern processors are adequate for basic usage. They’re almost commodity items.

I have an older Sony Vaio, which is a very nice little laptop, if overpriced (Got it as a gift, won’t complain). My sister has a Dell e1405 that she’s very happy with. That, or the larger e1505 might be good for you (once configured). I haven’t been shopping around though, so I can’t say if those represent the best current values.

3

What price range are you looking at?

4

Not to start the argument all over again, but I really like my MacBook

5

Not to extend it, but I love my PowerBook. And every time I go to some developer conference or other geek event, I note that at least have the participants have a similar 17" PowerBook or similar.

That aside, if you must stick with a Microsoft OS, I think the Sony Vaio is the most durable and reliable of consumer-grade laptops. We used to get Dells at work and they had problems more regularly than a baby needs its diaper changed (though admittedly, this was partially due to security flaws in XP, the snoop/anti-virus/encryption software our IT department loads, and their frequent use and abuse). The Compaq laptops we’re getting now are even worse, and of poorer quality; you literally cannot watch a movie from DVD on them. (Not sure whether this is a failing of the admittedly shitty video adapter or the heavy resource burden of XP, but it’s obscene in my opinion.)

Alienware laptops are the bomb, and seem to be durable, but are huge and expensive; they’re primarily for the gaming and portable high performance computing contengent. My PowerBook is slim, light, durable, and rocks like a hurricane. But then, I do a lot of Unix/Perl scripting and tolerate WindowsOS only insofar as it lets me term to our servers and show PowerPoint presentations.

Stranger

6

I’ve owned several Dell laptops over the past several years and anecdotally can say that I love 'em. I’ve never had a problem with the product or the service…well there was a time that their off-shore technical support sucked but i understand that’s been fixed. I completely agree that the Compaqs are overpriced boat anchors.

The buying considerations that have been mentioned are all very valid. My recommendation would be to buy the highest grade of laptop you can afford. Whatever you buy today, there will be a bigger/better model tomorrow so just go with the best equipment you can afford and enjoy.

7

How much do you want to spend?

I tend to go with the slower chip speeds offered and spend money on RAM and hard drive performance.

You sound like you want to go for portability, so you wouldn’t want my 17" HP. I only haul it to and from the car, so it works for me.

I’ve always liked the IBM Thinkpad (now Lenovo) that I got from my job years ago. It’s a tight, solid little unit and it hardly seems to have aged since I’ve gotten it. I was seriously thinking of getting one for personal use but went with the HP. My old Dell has held up OK but not nearly as well as the thinkpad.

Do you have a preference for trackpads or mid-keyboard eraser type pointing devices?

What happens to me is I’ll see something that looks really cool and look for reviews. The reviews will always mention other models, other features, stuff that’s come down the pike since last time I bought a computer, and I’ll start configuring systems at HP, Dell, Apple, Lenovo, wherever else. I’ll go to a store to see them in the flesh, if possible.

Then I’ll go to the website of the company I want to buy from (last time it was dell, this time it was HP) configure the exact system I want and pull the trigger.

A week or so later, christmas time!

8

Ok, as for price, I’m looking at the $1,000-$1,500 range. Size doesn’t matter as much to me, I won’t be flying anywhere, so bulkyness doesn’t matter at all, weight is a little more important, but then, even the heavest laptop isn’t much heavier then some of the text books I have to bring to class. Infact I’ve never liked really small electronics, they always seem too fragile to me.

I want something that I can type comfortly on. I would like something that would last for at least 3 hours unplugged. Most places I would use it I’ll have access to power, if not, I want it to last at least 2 classes before I have to recharge it. I prefer strategy games to FPS, so I’ll be playing games like Civilization 4 or Galactic Civilizations, however I’m thinking integrated video won’t suit me, but it doesn’t have to be a powerful video card. RAM is a lot more important to me, I would need 1 gig at the minimum. I would like more though, but not if it costs me in other areas. As I said in my OP, a somewhat large harddrive is important to me, since I’ll want to keep a decent selection of games and movies/tv shows to watch, along with a nice selection of music. However it doesn’t have to be REALLY large, since my desktop has 750 gigs of space (or it will once my new 500gig drive from Newegg comes in).

And most important, I want the computer to last. I’ll be bringing it to school everyday, and back home. I’ll be using it around campus, so I want it to be able to survive a fall, and I don’t want to buy a new laptop anytime soon, till I’m out of school at least, so it has to last around 4 years or so (even if its obsolete by then).

I’ve never had to buy a complete computer before, I’ve always built my own desktops, so I don’t even know anything about the big box brands, who to buy from, who to avoid, etc. So thanks for all of y’alls help so far.

Oh, and longhair75 I do want a Windows OS, just since my desktop is Windows and all my programs are Windows.

9

I’m strictly a PC person. But a friend of mine picked up a 13"MacBook a few months ago, and he’s tickled pink with it. I will say, it’s an impressive machine, and it seems to be well thought out. Nice and small, light, portable and has lots of little toys and gadgets (iLife, MacSaber etc). The only things I don’t like about it is;

A) Not enough expansion ports (only 2 USB, 1 video, and no cardbus)

B) I can’t stand OS/X. I’ve been running nothing but Windows since 3.1… OS/X just doesn’t seem… Right to me. I’m no fan of MS, not by a long shot, but I use Windows because I’m used to it, and there’s still a lot of things that I do that can only do in Windows I’ve even used Knoppix and it made much more sense to me than OS/X. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t OS/X to work for me. On the other hand, my friend picked it up extremely quickly, and now likes it more than Windows. … And yes, I know that Macs are no longer stuck with Apple’s OSes anymore.

I almost bought one. It came down between a 13" MacBook and a decent tablet PC. They were about the same price.

I ended up going with Gateway’s CX2724 tablet PC. I really like it, especially for school. I can take notes without having the screen between myself and the instructor. I don’t have to annoy people around me with the click-clack of keys while taking said note. Plus it’s great for drawing and doodling. If you’re any sort of artist, it’s awesome (I can’t even draw a proper stick figure, but it’s still awesome to draw on the screen) I haven’t had a single problem with it.

I would personally suggest you look in to tablet PCs, as the awesome quotient is extremely high on them. Second, take a look at Macbooks/MacBook Pros, they’re pretty nice, and quite popular (I live in a very Yupscale city. When we go for breakfast, we count how many people are working on Macbooks.)

10

You do realize that Intel-based Macs (i.e. the MacBook) can run Windows and Window Applications via Boot Camp (or a couple of other third-party apps) albeit with somewhat reduced performance. It ain’t a gaming machine, but it can handle most Windows applications with vim.

Stranger

11

Perhaps you can configure your own here.

12

Yes, but then he’s got to pay ___ for a Vista license (if his school doesn't provide copies for cheap/free) and ___ for Parallels if he doesn’t want to go through the hassle of rebooting to use his Windows apps.

Out of his $1500, that leaves him with about $1200 for the machine, leaving him with the cheapest Macbook: half a gig of RAM and a 60GB HDD. And the inability to play many games. And integrated graphics.

For $1500, you can get a pretty sweet notebook from Dell with a huge drive and plenty of RAM. I got an Inspiron e1405 a couple of months ago with a Duo 1.66Ghz, 100GB drive, and 1GB RAM for about $700. It’s got Intel graphics, but I’m pretty sure you can bump that up to an ATI Mobility or something. Still, the 1440x900 screen is handy, and mplayer plays DVDs without a hassle.

I’m not playing any games on the thing (other than Freecraft - I boot into Linux 99.99%) of the time - but so far, I’m pretty happy with the hardware.

13

One more thing: I spent an extra 50 bucks on my machine and got the 9-cell battery. It leaves an “ugly” 1-inch hump sticking out the back, so it wouldn’t be an option with a MB, but it gives me 7 hours of web surfing/note taking with the screen all the way up and wireless on.

So while all the Mac people at school futz around with AC adapters, I’m happily carrying nothing but the notebook itself, a pad, and a pen in a sleeve.

14

Yeah, the Mac is definitely not a gaming machine (Windows compatibility or no) but even the cheap iBooks (I don’t know about the MacBooks…haven’t used one yet) seem to have superior DVD playback capability compared to most consumer-grade laptops, and I’ve managed to do some cranking animations with Blender even on my 2+ year old G4. But it’s clear that the OP wants and needs a Windows-based machine, so I’ll bow out with just one last dig at Dells, with which I’ve had little but trouble. If I were going to buy a NIB laptop for XP/Vista, I’d go with the Sony.

Stranger

15

2.5 months ago, or so, I bought a Dell Inspiron 6400 Core 2 duo 2.13 gHZ, 2 GB RAM, 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon, 100GB 7200 RPM hard drive, DVD-RW, 15" widescreen truelife display (some more letters after it that I can’t remember now, the best Dell offers) laptop with Windows Media Centre (you don’t need XP pro unless you are in a domain, media cnetre has all other fucntionality) for about $1700 canadian, so I imagine it will be cheaper in the states. I love it. Its fast, and reliable (so far at least).

I highly recommend it.

I recommend against going any bigger then 15". Everyone I know who is in school and has a 17" hates lugging it around.

16

I am computer illiterate and I love my Macbook(I’ll never go back to windows), but I guess that’s out. Good luck with finding what’s best for you.

17

Or you want to use IIS on its own or part of ASP.NET development with Visual Studio.

18

Ah, ok, didn’t realize that. I don’t use IIS, and that was the only difference I could find. Thanks.

19

Bear in mind Microsoft will soon launch Windows Vista at consumers. Just in case it turns out to be as wonderful as Microsoft says (yeah, I’m not holding my breath either), you might want to make sure the new machine is Vista-capable.

You then have to decide whether to trust Microsoft’s own definition of “Vista-capable”, which was revised recently to make it seem most existing machines can run Vista. All I’ve heard says ignore the new specs, and go for 2GB RAM and the 256-MB video card. The machine Queueing described will do nicely. I just bought a similar Dell laptop myself (bigger hard drive, a few other extras, a free printer they insisted on throwing in); it was about $1500 list, I think. (I lost track of the list price, what with the employee discount I get from work, the holiday-shopping coupon I cashed in, and the sales tax, which added almost $100 by itself.)

With Dell at least, not-obvious matters like the warranty package can make a big difference to the price. Comparison shopping pays.

20

From what I’ve heard, the latest generation of Dell notebooks are actually pretty good, compared to their earlier POSs. My sister has had one for about 6 months, and it hasn’t had any problems. I’m happy with my Sony (they seem to make the only really sexy Windows-based laptops), but they’re on the more expensive side. This model looks like it’s what you want, but it’s at the top end of your price range. Obviously, do your own research, and comparison shop.

Now, for the technical recommendations. The gig of ram you want is probably a good idea. It certainly can’t hurt, given how cheap memory is these days. For a processor, there’s probably no reason to spend extra for a faster version, though dual core is a good idea if you multitask a lot – the slowest Intel Core 2 Duo is probably good choice. Get some sort of video accelerator. You won’t need anything powerful for those games (I’ve run them both on my laptop), so maybe go with an ATI Mobility x1300 or a Geforce Go 7300 or the more powerful x1600 or 7600.

I wouldn’t worry about Vista at all. So far, I see absolutely no reason to upgrade from XP. I certainly plan on sticking with XP until I replace this computer a couple years from now.