Attention all you Computer Experts!!

[N/A®]

Guys, can you express your opinion on recommendations for a laptop? :confused:

I need make, model and all the other 'stuff' that makes a laptop good. Im looking at buying a very very fast one and up to date with everything. Please recommend what you think is the best so i know what to look for when I go to the shops..

Much appreciated..

[gts4]

Hi Mate,

First question is do you really need a laptop?

Reason i am asking is they lose value as soon as you buy them, They are very expensive to upgrade and will be out of date in 3 months.

Second question is what will you be using this laptop for ie: Internet, Games, Work, Word Processing?

With most applicatons you can get away with a Low to Mid Range laptop.

Therefore it will be no use to you buying a $4000 laptop when you can pick up another that will do the same job for $1500.

Let us know

[zakalwe]

Since the models change weekly I can only make broad suggestions!

Good Brands -

Toshiba & IBM are excellent.

Fujitsu, particularly the dearer ones, are very upmarket & stylish.

Dell can be good value but tend to show their age i.e. they can get "used looking" quite quickly.

A friend just bought an Acer & it's quite a nice device, although questions remain about Acer service & support.

I would not buy:

Sony Vaio - used to be stylish when they were titanium, now they're plastic...

HP/Compaq - surprisingly bad machines from a pair of big names. Expensive & depressingly unreliable.

Pioneer & other small time "yum cha" specials - often appear good value but service, particularly O/S, may not exist at all.

Anything by Apple - if you are spending someone else's money maybe, otherwise ridiculously dear & the software is too!

For myself, I would buy an IBM, & I'd pay for the extended warranty (3 years). If I was spending over $5K I'd have a Fujitsu.

As has been mentioned, a laptop will depreciate quickly, although not more quickly than a desktop PC. Make sure you really need one before spending 3 to 5K, & make sure it's a fresh model not something about to be superceded.

cheers

Z

[N/A®]

Thanks guys, some good info there. To answer gts4's question, yes i definately need a laptop for travelling. Basicly will be using it for word processing, internet & storing/dowloading music etc... It will be my companion overseas so i need it to have basicly everything. No games.

Please recommend some number ie: 60GB etc etc!?

Thanks again.

[MADGT4]

One of the computers i run at home is a Toshiba laptop (Satellite Series)....

One of the comment before about being out of date basically straight away is true....

But i'm happy with mine does everything fine!

Came with everything i needed.........

P4 2.6GHZ Processor

512MB RAM

32MB Nvidia Graphics card

3 USB ports

CD Writer/Re-Writer/DVD Player

CD Controls/Windows Media Player Controls on the front (Easy Skip/Play/Stop/Pause functions)

Network Card etc

Internal Modem (But its just easier to use the network card for braodband(if u have access traveling))

So i personally would highly reccomend as Toshiba laptop as the choice to go with....

We took our last laptop overseas when we went and its just so much easier if you wanna store pic's etc from ya digi cam too burn CD to listen to in a walkman or transfer songs to a MP3 player....

Some of the new ones i have been looking at when we update our laptop soon are one like this which you should check out....

Toshiba Satellite Series

[Ash]

i just got a new Toshiba Tecra M2 it is awesome, small, and light.

centrino 1.7 so roughly 3.4Gig p4

512 ram, upgade to 1 gig for $250

80Gig HDD

goes well!

only $2500

[Ash]

oh another note: i have had heaps of laptops over the last 6 years or so,

Toshiba are by far the best, ibm is good too, both my compaqs died in 3 months but i wouldn't get anything other than a toshiba...

and if they are traveling you would probably want something like the Tecra toshiba, mine has been dropped, sat on etc, its running fine, (and i only had it for 2 weeks), its got bluetooth, wireless, Gigbit ethernet and anything else you could ever need.

Ash.

[someonestolecc]

You need to tell us what you intend to do with it a bit more exactly. With laptops there are always going to be trade offs in teh price range, the trick is "intelligent system design". This basically involves maximising the features that you will use, and minimising the ones you will not (or use less) in order to leverage the price.

I would, as a general rule, stay away from any video cards that have shared memory. I would also have a rule nothing under 512mb ram total system memory.

I wouldn't use the processor speed as a yardstick. This is not a true indicator of the practical speed and anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about.

For example my pentium mobile 1.7ghz is the same speed or faster than a mate's "centrino" 2.8gig most of the time. This is because the battery saving feature of his computer throttles the processor speed to 800mhz (lowest step) thereby reducing the voltage fed to it and saving the battery. If he ups it to 1.8ghz to be on the same level it chews through the battery quicker than mine - i bought this one because nothing i do on it requires over 1.8ghz of mobile pentium processing power.

To make use of his full 2.8ghz he'll need to be plugged into the wall and that's fine but most of the apps still run slower cos his system came with 256mb of ram (and he didn't upgrade). He tells me his harddisk is bigger than mine (80g vs 40g) but his spins at 4800rpm, mine at 5200. A small difference but all that adds up and my pc is for the most part quicker and cost a lot less money. To add to it I use 30g he uses like 2gig (typical).

This scenario is typical - as people get a computer on the processing speed.

So if you get a big hdd you will get a small screen, if you get a good video card it will have a small hdd, if you have a big processor speed they give you not enough ram. Laptops are trade-offs - the trick is leverage what you do with it, your budget, then make sure all the variables are as most utilised as much as possible. What I mean by this is unlike my mate's laptop, which has a great processor but everything else is a bottleneck, the bottleneck should be as close as possible to the max of all the other parts if you know what I mean.

After HP/Compaq integrated I've recommended them for my clients and have not had any bad stories. I also believe for bang-for-buck they represent some of the best buys. I myself use an Evo series Compaq.

All computers depreciate. I wouldn't even bother thinking about resale but then again I use my pc till I buy a new one, and then I use the old one to do other stuff for me.

Sony Vaio imo are expensive (too much so for the spec).

Basically these are my specs (and you could probably have this setup for $1.5-2k).

pentium mobile 1.7ghz

512mb ram

cdrw dvd combo drive (replaceable)

single pc card

jbl tiny speakers

10/100 onboard network and some onboard soundcard.(its got a modem too but never used it)

15.1" visible UXGA

Oh and this thing looks great, is stable as, is light, thin (for what it has/doesnt) and a sweet keyboard. These should be part of your criteria.

Also since you're goin overseas you want an international model < keep this in mind it always help when people where you are know what you're talkin bout.

For around 2k http://www.cworld.com.au/info.php?ID=116358 would be a good thing to compare to but remember it doesn't have enough ram you will need to upgrade with another 256mb stick minimum. And that one does share it's ram for it's video card but if you don't play games and only stay in windows applications you won't notice the difference.

On the other hand a little bit more expensive http://www.cworld.com.au/info.php?ID=114620 that would be nice as it has a great video card, not shared ram, enough processing but again you'd have to get them to put another stick in for more ram. The trade-off on this computer however is if it's the case I'm thinking of it's a bit chunky.

If you had hell money http://www.cworld.com.au/info.php?ID=113096 *drool*

Also don't be afraid to haggle. You can always get a mouse thrown in or a laptop bag, or drop the price, or price off the ram upgrade etc.

If you need any specific help just PM me and ill look over it tell ya what i think - i don't think i've explained everything here

[paulr33]

dell

[N/A®]

The Fujitsu Lifebook LBE4010-AA019E0B0 looks nice. But is it fast enought? And for that money, are there better ones around?

[Pva_Glue]

I am using TOSHIBA Protege range. No doubt its good for Uni work as well as work applications. Its the best compact and practical laptop I've used.

sorry I dotn play games on labtops so I dotn know how TOSHIBA handles gaming applications.

[TEAMSHADOW]

also be wary of where u buy ur laptop....

im not saying dell is a bad company...but they sure as hell screwed up my order...

laptop was 3.0ghz p4, 1 gig ddr ram, 128 meg ddr geforce, 60 gig hdd

this laptop is used for fast processing cos like most ppl, dun wanna wait for programs to load long etc...

"we're sorry sir but ur laptop is still in the warehouse...we're having trouble finding a courier to deliver ur computer, sorry about this"

2 weeks was the promised delivery date.... 6 weeks it took in reality...that and my fone bill went into the hundreds thanks to chasing up them fags demanding to know where da f*k my purchase went...

just dont shop online....

[SeriesIIGTST]

work issued me with an IBM T40 notebook machine. It rocks. Bluetooth, WiFi, DVD/CD-R, plenty of ram, plenty of HDD space. Swoite moite

[P1E]

I would not buy:

Anything by Apple - if you are spending someone else's money maybe, otherwise ridiculously dear & the software is too!

Actually, I just ordered an Apple iBook and one of its main selling points was its price. If you want a portable laptop for the reasons you specified, then I would recommend an iBook for sure.

[Busky2k]

I have a Fujitsu Lifebook P-(Something). Its a great lil laptop with everything you need. I recommend it!

If you are in for a laptop, make sure its;

-Intel Centrino

-512mb RAM

Those 2 specs I find are the most important if you are not into playing games. At work, we have BenQ laptops. They're not bad, but bloody noisy and battery life is lousy. Ones a celeron, the other is a Pentium 4-M....

IBM make great laptops too, ditto with Dell and Toshiba.

Good luck!

[someonestolecc]

Centrino isn't a must imo. Infact I prefer an off-board 802.11 wireless card (but years of drug abuse have made me paranoid so I like being able to physically rip something out) plus you gotta remember those frequencies could give you cancer

On the other hand if you routinely use wireless and you don't want a thing stuck out the side then yeah centrino would be great but it's nothing an off-board $60-70 wireless card can't do.

As for me never having a problem with Compaq's I should say a couple of hours after posting my last message in this thread my display conked and I lost every second vertical line.. THAT SUCKS!!! heh but yeah first time that's happened to me and is a damn coincidence but still not happy!

Dells = cheap n nasty imo.

What's your budget NA? I'll try to find ya something you can work off.

[lwells]

My experience is that Toshiba (particularly there better stuff, ie. Tecra range) make good laptops, and Apple makes great laptops Sure they are more expensive, but don't forget if you go to a qualifying educational institution you get a nice big educational discount which makes them more reasonable.

Only experience with Dell was bad. I have heard Sony is flashy, expensive, and has crappy support and proprietry firmware that's a PITA (stops you upgrading OS, etc).

LW.

[someonestolecc]

Iwells is right on the money in my experience.

Apple DO make great laptops but yeah that's if you can put up with Mac OS. I'd be okay with a max os x I guess cos atleast you can then take off mac os x and run freebsd but other than that.. yeah..

[saff_cossie]

If you havent sorted a laptop yet, PM me and I will see what prices I can do you on one as I can get hold of quite a few. Not Sony though.

[VL-TRBO-RB20]

get an apple ibook!!! apples rock pc's suck!