Jump to content

Which Laptop to buy?


Recommended Posts

it seems that every laptop is built in China with unreliable Chinese components, so only the brands that actually have high specifications have better than average failure rates.

 

 

 

What a generalization If you look at the inside of most of the laptops today you will notice the small component size, IF they do not add enough packing around these item to stop the chassis from bending and twisting. Even from environmental bending(Heating and cooling)

 

Go with a company that provides lots of R&D to the laptop and not flashy boxes.. And large warantee. (Screen mainly)

 

It is not the componets that fail it is that the components are placed in an environment they should not be in.. (Called cost savings and lack to testing..)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • Replies 76
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

The type of laptop that you get really depends on the company that you buy from. There are relatively few companies that make super solid laptops, while now a days there are a lot of companies that make laptops just to make a profit. For example, while IBM's laptops aren't great in the hardware side of things (their workstation uses an aging FireGL T2), they are built to last.

 

I'll tell you one thing: DON'T GET AN HP NOTEBOOK if you want Linux compatibility. The school I attend gave us HP Compaq nw8240 Mobile Workstation, and using Windows on it was perfect. However, Ubuntu wasn't compatible with the display, Fedora had its own problems, Solaris wouldn't install, and it took a couple of days to get Mandriva working right. Not only that, the material used is pretty cheap (mostly polished plastic).

 

I speak from experience: I owned a Thinkpad 600 two years back. The actual notebook was from 1997 or 1998, and until I sold it in 2003 that laptop looked absolutely perfect. Everything was functional, and I had to worry about nothing. Compare that to MANY laptops in my school (same as mine) failing within the FIRST THREE MONTHS of operation. Now that's fresh.

Edited by AcuraRBKG6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Why not support companies that support linux, this is when Linuxcertified have came from and they just downgrade their premium prices to regular. And they are totally supported.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Guest Joseph
Why not support companies that support linux, this is when Linuxcertified have came from and they just downgrade their premium prices to regular. And they are totally supported.

I agree with you completely! Supporting Linux friendly hardware vendors is a way to get more vendors to improve Linux support. I also suggest contacting hardware vendors who don't support Linux and tell them why you have not purchased their product.

 

To the point, my top two choices for a Linux friendly laptop is number one, the ThinkPad line of computers. I have not tried any produced by Lenovo, but the two that I used that were produced by IBM (R31 and R40) were very Linux friendly. My second choice is the HP nx6110 laptop. Its marketed as a corporate rather than a comsumer laptop, but is supports Linux very well. The Broadcom based wireless card works very well with ndiswrapper and it supports WPA encryption. Mandriva is a particularly good choice for this laptop since it supports multiple networking profiles at boot up. If you don't want to roll your own with this laptop, you can order one from Spidertools.com. Its a small company that publishes books on many Linux topics and offers a small selection of laptops with Linux pre-installed. That's how I got my current laptop. I'm writing this while connected to my wireless network at home. Just my two cents worth.

 

Joe

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would also just like to throw in that the new Intel Duo chips are both extremely powerful and require little energy. While I love AMD, I find it hard to purchase an AMD at this point because they don't offer an all in one package like Intel does with the Centrino. While I can't state how well the new Intel notebooks will work with any sort of linux flavor, I will recommend waiting for the new Centrino Duo laptops to start rolling off the shelves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Hi

 

I am looking for a laptop that will run Linux and have £1000 ($1852) available. I have been doing some research and have found a site called http://www.emperorlinux.com that offers laptops pre-installed with a number of distributions. They offer Dell, IBM (Lenovo), Sony, Panasonic and Sharp machines. They are an American company and being in the UK this isn't particularly useful to me, but the list of laptops they offer is. This means I could buy one of the models from a UK source and install one of the distros they would install such as Mandriva 2006. For example they offer a Dell D820 or Latitude X1 which I could buy for £1099 and an IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpad T43 for £1097 (PC Magazine Editors' Choice).

 

I haven't bought anything yet but the information is very useful.

 

Regards,

tgk

Edited by TheGreenKnight
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For example they offer a Dell D820 or Latitude X1 which I could buy for £1099 and an IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpad T43 for £1097 (PC Magazine Editors' Choice).

I would go with IBM (Lenovo) - the Thinkad range are robust, have good battery life and look better than any other PC laptop. Me, I'll stick with my Mac though :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would go with IBM (Lenovo) - the Thinkad range are robust, have good battery life and look better than any other PC laptop. Me, I'll stick with my Mac though :)

I hate being the political guy here, but lenovo latest announcement that they wont support linux and also announce a multi-milion dollar with Microsoft so who knows what went on that deal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another report said that one guy claimed this, but that they were continuing with their Linux support.

 

Typical media stories, never know who to believe :P

 

For me, never had any problems so far with my Toshiba laptop, had it almost 4 years now, nothing failed as of yet. The odd pixel missing on the screen, but normally expected with LCD. My wife's Acer is OK too, albeit a Celeron M processor.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you buy a Lenovo, you should only buy one of the Thinkpad-line, they are still built under the IBM-specifications, their other models seem to have some serious quality problems, at least lately I hear more and more complaints about declining quality

 

And yes the Linux-Story seemed to be a bit media-hyped

 

I had no problems with hp omnibooks so far (but make sure to buy their business-line, no pavillions)

 

toshiba and acer have good quality too, at least I had never any problems with them

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

I have a Dell D600 with the Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG and worked supperb. The modem I have not tried to make it work since I have no use for it. Has a Smart Card reader that is not supported, have not tried yet the Infrared. The rest works great and play Enemy Territory with it.

 

The other is a Panasonic Toughbook CF-29. Works on Mandriva 2006 and 2007 No issues here beside the Touch Screen is inop and the Touch Pad performs not too good for my taste. On MS the Touch Pad still not to my taste. So this behavior is on both OSs. The Touch Screen works on MS. I use a Optical Mouse and works supperb.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The first thing to consider is why you need a laptop.

What is the purpose of the lapop?

 

The second question is how much you wish to spend......

 

That's about it...

From the minute a laptop is on the shelves its already outdated and having taken many apart they are pretty much the same on the inside down to the boards and circuitry.

 

If you want portability then a 12" IBook is a good bet... if you want power then a desktop is a better bet.

Unless you intend to use it as a laptop and use the battery then its just throwing money away... so battery life for me is important ....

 

Disk performance is always lousy anyway, even the newer 7200prm drives are nothing like a real disk. The effective usefulness is limited by battery lifetime, once the battery is gone then the replacment cost usually outweighs just buying a newer laptop...

 

Either way you are pretty much buying a luxury item that will be worthless in a year. Course they are lots of fun.... but laptops are made to be disposable not upgradable and there is more to upgrading than dropping in a new CPU. Think about the screen...when the laptop dies you throw out a perfectly good screen? Batteries cost a fortune to replace... and about all you can salvage is memory, disk and CPU. The rest is scrap.

 

If you want to do "work" then running a office suite is not so demanding and any $500 laptop is up to that.

If you want to run games then .... IMHO you have more money than sense... course its up to you what you spend your money on, some people buy $500 jeans....personally I'd much rather have a state of the art laptop... I'm just saying this not because you shouldn't buy a laptop BUT that you should realise what you are buying. If you realise all that and still want one then see rule #1.. what do you need it for?

 

If you want to transport it then weight and whatever you need to plug in to get it to communicate counts...(unless of couse you have a assistant who carries your bags)

 

If I was buying a laptop now I'd probably go for the 12" Ibook with an external screen at home... because its light, good battery and doesn't need stuff added to do the basics...anything much bigger (I have an old Amilo D) just gets left at home because of the weight....

 

What I look for is something portable, good battery life and able to play a DVD easily in hotels or trains/planes. Anything else is best done on a low end desktop much faster and cheaper.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm getting a 12" laptop from www.transtec.ch - it comes with linux preinstalled (novell/suse enterprise desktop 10) and the same hardware with MSWin would set me back almost 300CHF more (~250US$), so I'm certainly not paying the WinTax...

It's a Core 2 Duo, fully linux supported and certified.

 

Transtec can also be found as www.transtec.de .co.at .co.uk and as ttec.nl and then some.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm getting a 12" laptop from www.transtec.ch - it comes with linux preinstalled (novell/suse enterprise desktop 10) and the same hardware with MSWin would set me back almost 300CHF more (~250US$), so I'm certainly not paying the WinTax...

It's a Core 2 Duo, fully linux supported and certified.

 

Transtec can also be found as www.transtec.de .co.at .co.uk and as ttec.nl and then some.

aRTee.. forgot but I owe you this link from a long time ago

 

www.keynux.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share


×
×
  • Create New...