Laptop choices
Jan. 20th, 2003 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciphergothI finally narrowed the field to a few candidates and mailed my work a comparison chart:
http://hacks.ciphergoth.org/laptop-compare.html
All of them have 256 Mb RAM, a 12.1 inch 1024x768 TFT screen, an Intel PIII-M processor, onboard 56K Winmodem, 2 USB ports, 1 Type II PCMCIA slot, VGA out port, no serial port or floppy drive.
I really want the Portege!
Update: ...but it turns out there aren't any in the UK at all! I just tried all the resellers Toshiba recommends, plus dealtime.co.uk and pricewatch.co.uk, and none of them have them in stock. I just tried Toshiba themselves, and they say they'll contact me when they have them in stock but it could be two to three weeks, which could be a bit problematic. Aargh! If it comes down to the Dell or the IBM, which should I go for? The weight inclines me to the Dell...
http://hacks.ciphergoth.org/laptop-compare.html
All of them have 256 Mb RAM, a 12.1 inch 1024x768 TFT screen, an Intel PIII-M processor, onboard 56K Winmodem, 2 USB ports, 1 Type II PCMCIA slot, VGA out port, no serial port or floppy drive.
I really want the Portege!
Update: ...but it turns out there aren't any in the UK at all! I just tried all the resellers Toshiba recommends, plus dealtime.co.uk and pricewatch.co.uk, and none of them have them in stock. I just tried Toshiba themselves, and they say they'll contact me when they have them in stock but it could be two to three weeks, which could be a bit problematic. Aargh! If it comes down to the Dell or the IBM, which should I go for? The weight inclines me to the Dell...
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Date: 2003-01-20 07:38 am (UTC)...
Date: 2003-01-20 07:38 am (UTC)Mmm. Public sector spending. Mmmm.
I want a laptop. You should tell them that you're such a hard worker that you need one for each hand. And give one to me! ME!!
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Date: 2003-01-20 08:06 am (UTC)The portege is nice; but I've always had a softspot for the keyboards on the Thinkpads.
I'm almost of the opinion that the keyboards are the most important parts of laptops, it's certainly been the deciding factor in all the laptops I've had/borrowed/used.
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Date: 2003-01-20 08:27 am (UTC)*Thinks* did IBM ever launch their "butterfly" concept laptop? (that's the one where the keyboard expands sideways as you open it...)
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Date: 2003-01-20 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-20 08:34 am (UTC)Pavlos
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Date: 2003-01-20 08:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-20 09:10 am (UTC)Or, in short, "Go for the IBM"...
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Date: 2003-01-20 12:34 pm (UTC)I've had some horrible Dell experiences, but only with their desktop machines. I've never had a horrible ThinkPad experience, though, and obviously I see a lot of them.
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Date: 2003-01-20 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-20 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-20 03:37 pm (UTC)Other thing I thought about is to check the hardware in each for linux compatability. Even if you will mainly be running windows, linux compatible hardware is generally better as it has built in processing rather than using 'soft' functionality on the system processor. In particular, have a look at the XFree86 compatability for the graphics
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Date: 2003-01-20 02:20 pm (UTC)My second choice when I was looking was Toshiba as I felt the IBMs in the 2ghz range were a little expensive. I do know of thinkpads that have lasted 10 years plus and are still in use running linux. They seem very rugged indeed. The dell C400 which is similar to the one you are looking at was a little plasticy when my dad bought one. The cd drive connects through a docking port that was really unreliable. It's basically one of their internal drives in a slip in plastic case and an extension lead plugged into the connector in the drive unit. As it's an internal connector, there were no locking tabs which has been added to the plastic case and the connector wobbled about 30 degrees total. Not so good.
When I was looking at Toshibas I found the university ordered toshiba from http://www.getech.co.uk/ (http://www.getech.co.uk/). They may have the portege.
Other than that, why the price difference for the ibms? Do you have to pay hundreds more for wireless? Especially when an orinoco gold is only £60, I wouldn't bother with an internal card as the range is severely limited in comparison to external ones. The cheaper IBM seems to have a great battery life too.
If you can persuade work, get an extra battery. Dell have a really cool hot battery swap that you can do in standby without shutdown. I get around 6 hours on my C640 with both batteries. An external wireless card is good, as is an access point for your flat (I recommend the linksys wap11 rev 2 upgraded with the dlink 950+ firmware hack). A nice small optical mouse and a second ac adaptor are handy too.
Hope the info helps
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Date: 2003-01-20 08:24 pm (UTC)Looking at your choices the Portege does look like the best and what I have seen and heard of Toshiba laptops recently its very nice. My SO has a toshiba from a different range than the portege cos she wanted serial/parallel ports and a bigger keyboard. However in light of availability problems eeek.
I am using an 2 or 3 yr old Dell latitude (CPi A range) and despite it being a lovely machine the SODIMMS are not a standard spacing apart so if I wanted to expand the RAM then I'd have to get expensive kingston RAM which is less wide than a standard SODIMM (grr). You might wanna check that if you're going for the RAM expansion options.
I've run slackware and the knoppix distro of linux on this Dell latitude without problems and once I'd updated the BIOS it worked nicely with PCMCIA stuff... Nice keyboard too.
Trying as many of the keyboards out as you can sounds like a good option. I have used laptops since the mid 90's some with less nice keyboards and it really does make all the difference to its overall usability. I don't recall you having especially large or tiny hands but other factors such as irritating shaped enter keys, badly places cursor keys and how similar the keyboard is to your current/familliar machines is an issue I've come across. Your local PCW (spit) often have laptops on display for the keyboard prodding and its amusing to watch them try to sell things to you as if you're stupid.......
Good luck with machine hunting.
Natalya
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Date: 2003-01-21 07:32 am (UTC)