ideal laptop recommendations?

[Laszlo Vagner]

Darryl Okahata wrote:

>"Jesse D. Guardiani" <jesse at wingnet.net> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I have yet to hear from a single sole who actually owns a Sony or Dell and
>>isn't happy with it. Sounds like a bunch of "buy IBM" propoganda to me.
>>
>>I know a programmer who owns a Dell laptop and is VERY happy with it.
>>    
>>
>
>     My previous laptop was a Dell Inspiron 7500 and, while I did
>consider getting another Dell as a replacement, my Dell laptop wasn't
>exactly problem-free:
>
>* DVDROM died after a year-and-a-half or so.  I ended up paying to have
>  this fixed, but I've forgotten if Dell's warranty did not cover this
>  (I had a 3-year warranty), or if I just could not wait.
>
>* Battery died after 1-2 years (sorry, it was a while back).
>  Admittedly, this isn't too unusual for laptops ....  ;-(  Not covered
>  by warranty.
>
>* The plastic over the right-side display hinge cracked and broke off.
>  (If I recall correctly, the entire hinge became broken, and so the
>  display was largely supported by only the left-side hinge.)  Fixed
>  under warranty.
>
>* A large, vertical-column-shaped area (~1.5-2" wide) became
>  "discolored" on the display (from top to bottom).  My guess is that
>  the display connector was getting tarnished, and reseating it would
>  probably have fixed it.  (However, the laptop was out-of-warranty, I
>  didn't feel like disassembling the laptop, and so I used this as an
>  excuse to dump my 3+ year-old laptop.  ;-)
>
>On the plus side, Dell's repair service was quite good (I only used it
>once, though).  I've heard a lot of horror stories about Sony's, and so
>I now try to avoid Sony whenever possible.
>
>     Although I did consider Dell, I ended up getting an IBM Thinkpad,
>largely because I found a deal that I couldn't pass up.  It's very well-
>built.  Also, replacement parts "should" be easy to find, although, as I
>seem to have one of the "rarer" Thinkpads (an A31), I'm not sure if this
>is true for me.
>
>  
>
I had very good luck with toshiba, seems like its very stable and after 
3 years everything still works
fine, i got it dual booting freebsd and win2000, the only shortcoming is 
the lack of
serial port and the lucent winmodem. its is an s2805-401 700mhz P3 with 
15 inch display
that is clear and bright.

needs a cd burner though.