ideal laptop recommendations?

[Eric De Mund]

Hello,

I don't recall the first requester's name, but, hello. I always ask
people if they're going to be carrying the machine here and there or
are, instead, going to be using it in one place. If the machine is going
to be travelling back and forth to work or back and forth to school on a
regular basis, I tell them to go down to their local mom-and-pop compu-
ter repair place and talk to pop. Or mom. Have them tell you what brands
and models you should avoid. And then ask them why.

When I did this in 2000, I learned that Dell laptops and, to an even
greater degree, Sony laptops were flimsy, flimsy, flimsy. They suffered
a lot of internal breakage because the boxes were not solidly construct-
ed. The manufacturers skimped on materials and strength, and the results
were just what you'd expect: expensive repairs that just weren't possi-
ble for the end-user to do himself.

On the other end of the spectrum, IBM ThinkPads and Toshiba laptops
were, according to pop, built like tanks. I ended up running with his
recommendation, and bought a ThinkPad 600 2645-51U off of eBay (pop's
used ThinkPads were a bit overpriced, but I buy enough stuff from him
that he was ok sharing his advice with me gratis). I've enjoyed it,
trouble-free, ever since.

Regards,
Eric

p.s. Don't ask me how reliable or easy to use the trackpoint mouse is; I
don't know. I hate it and don't use it. But I'm fair; I dislike touch-
pads with equal fervor! I pack an optical mouse in the case, and always
use that, instead.
--
"Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction--from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can
be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work."

Eric De Mund <ead at ixian.com> | Ixian Systems, Inc. | 53 49 B2 23 AF 6C 20 81
http://www.ixian.com/ead/    | Mountain View, CA   | ED DD 4C 81 AA C9 D1 A5