Looking for the best laptop (1 Viewer)

[John Thomas]

As the title says, I'm in the market for a laptop. I'm not too up-to-date on the laptop market and would appreciate any help/advice you guys & gals could throw my way.

What I'd like to know is how each manufacturer stacks up against each other and the best bang for the buck.

Thanks in advance!

 

[David_Sietsema]

if you have money to blow.....you might check out the New intel "centrino" laptops. IBM's centrino laptop has 6 hour battery life. It has a price tag of around $3000 though i think.

check out anandtech.com for reviews of a few centrino laptops, if those interest you at all. otherwise, there is a lot of other stuff to choose from. If compaq still made them, i would recommend the 2800T, i'm typing on one right now and absolutely love the thing, but they disconinued it when they merged with HP.

Hope that helps a little

- David

 

[Steven K]

I've always belived that Dell makes the best laptops on the market... I currently have a P4 1.8 GHz laptop with a 17 inch XGA display (1600x1200), 1 GB RAM, 60 GB HD, and 8x CD-RW, 64 MB GeForce 440 (all this thanks for work ) It's a sweet machine, but it's heavy as hell (partly because I have 2 batteries). When I got this machine ~10 months ago, it set the company back almost $4,000, not to mention the high-cost of wireless internet access.
I haven't had any problems with it, with the exception that the CD-RW drive appears to not be fully compatable with Padus DiscJuggler... but it's not that big of a deal.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

There's a bunch of us that have/are going though looking at the various laptops out there at the moment and the general consensus is that the Dell's offer the most bang for the buck when you look at the warrenty, processor, battery life and features. I ended up with a Dell 5100 and am quite happy with it. If I could have afforded an IBM that would have been my first choice but they were considerably more expensive even though my connections at work. That said the only thing I'd change about my Dell is I wish I'd got the internal wireless NIC instead of the PCMCIA card since I know one of these days I'm going to break the antanae...The Dell 8500 widescreen notebooks look very nice as well and several of my friends are likely going to be buying that model

 

[Thomas Newton]

Apple iBook with Combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW. (Max out the RAM in the aftermarket.)

Or Apple 12" PowerBook with SuperDrive if you want to have a notebook that can burn DVD-Video discs of home movies, and price is not as important.

 

[Mike Sogge]

15" Titanium PowerBook G4

Perfect screen size, great performance, unparalleled style.

 

[John*Jones]

I was in your position 6 months ago and after much research I decided on a Dell. Not because it was "the best", but as someone else mentioned, it was the best bang for the buck. Back when I was searching, Dell offered the most options as far as configuration goes. Also, they frequently offer deals online and there are always new coupon codes floating around on the deals page to use. Just my two cents.

 

[Masood Ali]

15" Powerbooks are really nice.
Also check out the new widescreen Dell laptops.

 

[John Thomas]

Thanks for all the input. About bang for the buck - what speed of processor, amount of memory, hdd storage is the best for the buck in laptops at this time?

I'm not in the market for Apple laptops though. There's no reason other than I'm more comfortable with PCs.

 

[Patrick Larkin]

i'm a laptop convert. i used desktop pcs my whole career until a few years ago.

the most important thing for me is the box itself. how heavy, how thin, how big is the screen. if you want high performance, you should buy a desktop.

that being said, you should use the Apple 15" Powerbook as the model and find a PC laptop similar to its specifications. the 15" Titanium is simply the finest laptop I have ever owned. (I think Apple worked from the Sony VAIO as its inspiration)

 

[Scott L]

If money isn't a problem grab a Thinkpad or Toshiba over a Dell. If something goes wrong with your Dell just try to contact customer support, you'll pull your hair out sooner or later.

 

[Brian Ruth]

John:

If you want that DVD-friendly widescreen aspect ratio without having to get an Apple, Best Buy has their own private-label laptops, with a couple of widescreen models. They're between models at the moment, and likely sold out, but they are still worth a look if you plan to watch DVDs on your laptop.

 

[Parker Clack]

Dell is going to be having some serious deals on their laptops in the next few days that are going to be on our Deals page. You may want to check them out.

Parker

 

[PaulEB]

What features in a laptop should one look for to maximize DVD viewing performance? I have a Dell Inspiron now. I want to upgrade to something smaller and lighter.

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I'd load up on the things you can't easily change so buy the fastest processor, largest screen and best video card you can...everything else can be upgraded later on. For DVD viewing Dells new widescreen 8500 model looks great.

 

[Max Leung]

I've got a Toshiba Satellite 5100. 1600x1200 15" display, Geforce 440, 512 mb RAM, P4 1.4. Great machine. Battery life sucks (1.5 hours if I'm lucky), but I always have it plugged in anyways. I love the display.