ideal laptop recommendations?

[Jason Andresen]

Jesse D. Guardiani wrote:
> Eric De Mund wrote:
> 
> 
>>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.
> 
> 
> I really don't know of a single "mom-and-pop" place around here that sells
> laptops. In my experience older folks are terrified of the things.
> 
> Truthfully, I don't know anyone around here that sells IBMs either.
> 
> 
> 
>>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.
> 
> 
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
>>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 don't know about that. I looked at the Toshibas yesterday at Bestbuy.
> They're made of the same grade plastic that the Sony is made of. Perhaps
> things have changed a bit in the last 3 years.

Well, my workplace loves these Dell Latitudes.  I've had two now, an 
older 400Mhz version and a newer 1.2Ghz version.  Additionally, I've 
used several of the older (<400Mhz) versions of this laptop (we reuse 
old equipment in the labs).

The 400 Mhz version (it has a 90 degree angle for the little joint that 
sticks up where the screen attaches) was a piece of junk.  The keyboard 
screws fell out (and the keyboard was jumpy as heck), the fan was 
constantly in danger of failing (it seemed to rub no matter what I did), 
  and the whole thing ran hot.  I never dropped the laptop or abused it 
and it still seemed ready to fall apart when I traded it in.

The new 1.2Ghz version seems to have fixed some of the problems.  The 
troublesome fan has been replaced by a blower that intakes from the 
bottom of the case.  If you have this in your lap, you'd better sit with 
your legs tightly together, because if you block the intake hole the 
laptop heats up in short order.  On that note, the laptop gets rather 
warm even when properly ventalated.  The whole case feels a fair bit 
sturdier than the old case, and I havn't had anything fall off yet.

The older (<400 Mhz) laptops are actually pretty nice too, and dirt 
cheap.  They were built fairly solid and still use all of the same 
accessories (drive bays, batteries, AC adaptors) that the modern laptops 
do.  If you buy one, you can buy a couple of the modern batteries (the 
ones that came with it will be dead anyway) and get hours and hours of 
use out of your laptop.  FreeBSD will support all of the hardware too. 
It's not very good for heavy computation, but for coding and web 
browsing they're just fine (although you will want to put more RAM in 
them generally).


-- 
   \  |_ _|__ __|_ \ __| Jason Andresen        jandrese at mitre.org
  |\/ |  |    |    / _|  Network and Distributed Systems Engineer
_|  _|___|  _| _|_\___| Office: 703-883-7755