Buying a laptop
Jan. 14th, 2006 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciphergoth
A few months ago I poured coffee into my beloved Thinkpad, and the screen died. It turns out that no-one can get hold of replacement screens for a ThinkPad X30, which is a bit sad. I've been using Jess's laptop in the meantime, but she's getting a bit sick of it, and anyway I need one to take to Belgium. I don't like to buy big expensive things without gathering the wisdom of the lazyweb!
I have only one really strong requirement: it has to be light. Around 1.5kg is good, lighter is better, anything above 2kg is right out. In particular, please don't advocate any Apple laptop that weighs above 2kg, which I think is all of them.
The next most important thing is battery life. Everything else is just the usual tradeoff of features and suchlike. All light laptops have 1024x768 screens, except the Dell/Samsung WXGA ones that have 1280x768. All laptops you can buy new come with Bluetooth, WiFi, built-in Ethernet, and so on. 512Mb RAM will be plenty for most of the things I want to do. It doesn't seem to be possible to determine for sure which ones support WPA2, sadly; I'm just hoping that means they all do. Similarly, it seems to be very hard to find out how good they will be with Linux, but they're all usually OK. I'm assuming the warnings against Vaios from a couple of years ago stand (I've done this before).Any recommendations? A whole bunch of options are listed here. So far these seem to be the main contenders:
| Model | Price | Mass | Battery life | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dell Latitude X1 | £1042 | 1.15kg | 3h06 | 1280x768 screen. I am typing at one right now! |
| Toshiba Portege M300 | £1012 | 1.6kg | 6h10 | |
| Toshiba Portege R200 | £1262 | 1.3kg | 4h40 | updated to add this one - seriously seductive shiny and current favourite |
I welcome your thoughts! But please let me re-iterate: DON'T TELL ME TO BUY A MAC!. I know it's an inevitable consequence of pretty much any computer-related question, but I did specifically ask for a reason.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-14 10:58 am (UTC)Don't pay £1012 for one, you can get one from Misco with 768MB memory for £770 including VAT and delivery! Despite being supposedly 3-day delivery at that price, they caught me out by attempting to deliver it the next day.
The best thing about the Porteges, IMO, is that they have excellent keyboards for the size. The M300 keyboard isn't quite as good as my previous (Portege 2010) but is still better than most laptops I've used. Also, my SO has a Dell laptop (not Latitude series) and the fan is horribly noisy, whereas my M300 is totally silent, virtually all the time. I think I did hear the fan once when I was compiling something, but it's normally silent.
Misco link