Greg_R

Recommendations for laptop

What brand would people recommend for laptops? I would like to get a product without a bunch of garbage on it (AOL, special drivers for proprietary HW, etc.). Dell and other companies (IBM, etc.) are famous for this. Alienware used to be my go-to suggestion but they seem to be having major user support issues right now. Falcon NW (and similar companies) are exceptional but very expensive. Does anyone make a good quality laptop with a clean build anymore? I'm looking for max performance and a $2k-ish budget. Battery life is not a huge issue.

Yes, I've looked at Apple but there is proprietary SW that I need to run on a PC. The SW will work on the Apple (with the emulator SW) but its too slow...

Suggestions?

Greg
My DVD Collection

Andrew Pratt

Re: Recommendations for laptop

Before leaving apple completely you could run Boot Camp and dual boot between XP and OSX...or run XP in parallels.

For PC suggestions take a look at ASUS. I ended up buying a W3J a few months ago and generally really like it.

SethH

Re: Recommendations for laptop

Andrew is right that if you run XP in parallels you really shouldn't see any slowdown.

Beyond that, your best bet is to buy a good computer and just format it as soon as you get it. This really doesn't take too long to do. My personal preference is for IBM (Lenovo) as I think they make the best-built laptops available today.

Carlo Medina

Re: Recommendations for laptop

I'll third most of what's been said. I have 2 WinXP machines, 1 AMD64 laptop, and 1 Macbook Pro. I spend most of my time on the Macbook Pro which I just bought after never owning an Apple product (but I did use my college roommie's Mac back in the early 90s). Using Bootcamp, I can say it's also my fastest Windows machine (and 2 of the WinXP machines are about a year old).

But if you don't go that route, then yes, reformat your XP laptop w/ a clean copy of XP, to get rid of the junk that manufacturers preload onto your machine. That will improve performance significantly.

Thinkpads used to be the best. My old workplace recommended them to incoming MBA students because of their quality and reliability. Lenovo took over and I've noticed the nice hardshell surfaces are starting to be replaced by plastic. Not an indictment, but you should be a little wary in case Lenovo is trying to cut corners in order to be competitive. Back when IBM made them, they were 2x the price of normal laptops and now they are coming in at more competitive prices, but that will always come at a cost.

Good luck!

Paul_Sjordal

Re: Recommendations for laptop

It's been a long time since I've been around the innards of a laptop, but I used to repair a lot of them for a company in which laptops were seriously abused in unusual ways (high and low temperatures, high and low humidity, dirt, food, lots of banging around). In my experience IBM laptops are solidly built and less prone to damage under rigorous conditions.

Apple laptops are a hit or miss kind of thing. Some of them are sturdy, some flimsy, but all are a pain in the [bad word] to take apart if you have to repair them. I can't tell you how often those stupid PowerBooks lacerated my poor fingers.

Standard caveat about laptops:
Since you've owned a laptop before, you probably know this already, but I make this same warning in virtually any discussion of private laptops: laptops can be a lot more expensive to repair than equivalent desktops. Do consider that carefully before spending your own money on one.

“It’s great to be known, but it’s even better to be known as strange.” —Takeshi Kaga