gosilver Posted February 12, 2008 Share Posted February 12, 2008 Looking for direction on new laptop I need to buy... Cost not an issue - company purchase I use it mostly for Mail Word Excel Powerpoint and graphics work Need portability, connectivity and robust unit with fast process power Last laptop was ultra light Sony. Worked sweet until I dumped a starbucks in it. I'm inclined towards Mac OS. Looked at new Mac Air online. Not sure about battery life and connectivity... Open to either Mssrs Jobs or Gates offerings. Any suggestions? Thanks all Link to comment
Aluminum_Butt Posted February 12, 2008 Share Posted February 12, 2008 My company uses Dell Latitude D430's in the light category. We've had fantastic service from the whole Latitude series. If you're prone to dumping Starbucks on it (I have, too), Dell offers "Complete Care" as an addon to the warranty...covers all forms of accidental damage. Link to comment
steve.foote Posted February 12, 2008 Share Posted February 12, 2008 My company uses Dell Latitude D430's in the light category. We've had fantastic service from the whole Latitude series. If you're prone to dumping Starbucks on it (I have, too), Dell offers "Complete Care" as an addon to the warranty...covers all forms of accidental damage. +1 I also have the D430 with a solid-state hard drive. It barely weighs 3 lbs and makes no noise. Excellent battery life too. Link to comment
sgendler Posted February 12, 2008 Share Posted February 12, 2008 The Mac has been confirmed to actually deliver battery life reasonably comparable to what was claimed. Web browsing and office productivity apps while listening to mp3's resulted in 4.25 hour battery life. The only concern really is needing a second battery, which isn't really doable on the Mac as it stands today (though someone will surely make an external battery pack that plugs into the power port). As for connectivity, I can't imagine what kind of issues you might be expecting there. It'll connect to any network any other machine will connect to and will interact with windows services just fine. But if all you use are office productivity apps, there's not much benefit to OS X, either. Yeah, the user experience is slicker, but you'll have an initial learning curve to deal with, not to mention needing to buy software you may already own on the windows platform. I'm all for spreading the mac love around, but you don't really sound like a prime candidate. If I were you, I'd be shopping price point rather than operating systems, given your limited needs from the software side of things. But I'm an AAPL shareholder, so buy a mac, please. --sam Link to comment
gosilver Posted February 12, 2008 Author Share Posted February 12, 2008 Owner of G5 in office plus iMac at home. (You prolly owe me money at this stage...) So I'm ambidextrous so to speak. Link to comment
waylap Posted February 12, 2008 Share Posted February 12, 2008 Not trying to hijack here but, I need a new laptop too. I only need something for email and websites like this. No video games etc. Oh!, and I need a cheap one ( inexpensive) but small to carry on the bike for wireless internet on the road. Any ideas? Link to comment
steveknapp Posted February 12, 2008 Share Posted February 12, 2008 I've been drooling over that new air book. But I'm loving my new-job issued thinkpad way more than old-job-issued Dell stuff. The 12" T61 looks solid. I've got a much larger screened version of the T61. Dump coffee in it, it drains out the side and keeps the internals dry. Link to comment
Mr_Ed Posted February 12, 2008 Share Posted February 12, 2008 I'm partial to IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads. Maybe you should check out there T and X series. Link to comment
velomoto Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 I'm a HUGE Apple fan but I couldn't recommend the new Mac Air. Why? No 1394 or ethernet ports and a single USB 2.0 port to "share" for any accessories. Add to this some first generation problems which are well publicized on the internet. Give Apple a generation and they should have the bugs worked out and (hopefully) more connectivity options. What would I recommend? If going Apple, consider the Macbook with a 13" display. If you want something smaller then go for a Dell as they seem to have the best service. If you're looking for the best possible performance in a PC, make sure to get XP installed on the ultra portable as Vista is just plain slooooow. Ironically, at one time the fastest Vista notebook tested by Computer World was a Mac! Office is available for Mac's and with Bootcamp or other "virtualization" software such as Parallels will allow one to run about any Windows app on a Mac. The only catch is one needs an XP or Vista license. One additional note regarding mixing Starbucks and laptops - lemonade inside a laptop is also bad. Link to comment
velomoto Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 I'm partial to IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads. Maybe you should check out there T and X series. Some of the new Lenovo's don't work well at all if one removes Vista and installs XP. Dells seem to do much better. At work we have not migrated to Vista so new PC's which arrive with Vista are wiped clean and XP is installed. Link to comment
steveknapp Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 I'm partial to IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads. Maybe you should check out there T and X series. Some of the new Lenovo's don't work well at all if one removes Vista and installs XP. Dells seem to do much better. At work we have not migrated to Vista so new PC's which arrive with Vista are wiped clean and XP is installed. They do still allow a factory XP image, the Lenovos. Link to comment
Art.. Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 I'll confirm that the Lenovo T series is a robust machine. I do heavy duty 3D cad work and I run a T60P with 2 gig of ram and it has not let me down yet. On airplanes, on construction sites, in the truck, in the dock at home connected to a 20" flat monitor. Link to comment
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