Computers

[BJ Laster]

Come this spring when school gets out i'll be ordering a laptop for college.



I was just curious as to what ya'll use. We've never owned one, only desktops



we just ordered a new Dell Desktop. Our gateway has been giving us trouble and it was just easier to get a new comp than get this one fixed.



I was thinking about getting a dell, i've never really heard anything bad about them and i've heard the customer service is good.



What laptops should i look at?



Thanks



BJ

 

[Jim B]

BJ

I know some others will disagree but im not a big fan of the dell laptops. Not too long ago i did an evail of Dell, IBM, Compaq and Toshiba for work. I wasnt impressed witrh the overall quality of the machine. The keyboard was spongy, the hinges on the lid were weak and look extremly failure prone(durability testing later proved this) the whole machine had a cheap overall feel to it. I wasnt too impressed when i benchmarked them either compared to the others. I was even lass impressed with the compaq. We ended up going with IBM for a few reasons. One was quality, its evident the moment you pick it up that its built to a higer standard. The number two reason was price, they are right there with Dell and the others. The last was performance, given all the machines were the same spec, cpu speed, ram, hdd size etc the IBM performed better. In the case of the compaq it was 20% better. The users at my company treat laptops pretty rough and the IBM has stood up to it for the last three years.



One thing to teink about when you shoose a laptop is they arent really upgradable, Just the Ram and HDD but you cant upgrade the cpu. To get your money's worth out of it you will need to keep it for a while. Get a good one now because fixing them is expensive and you really want it to last.

 

[Greg Meyer]

With a caveat, that the business is going to China sometime in the near future... We have had the best luck with IBM Thinkpads are far as durability and reliability...

 

[Al Greco]

Go with an IBM laptop not because I work there but because I think they are the best ones out there. They are a little pricey but hold up well and you can get replacement parts fairly quickly. You won't need a top of the line laptop for college so go with a midlevel model like the "R" series. I have 3 laptops at home and they are all wireless which may be an option at your school. Also check out ebay as IBM has a site that sells refurbished laptops that come with a warranty for much less than what you can buy them for on IBM.com. I have the following models which would be more than adequate: T40, T30 & X41

 

[Corey Carrico2]

My company has had the best luck with IBM and Toshiba Notebooks....both internally and selling them to our customers.



Avoid Dell in my opinion....all you have to do is look at how little they spend in R&D compared to the others to form your own opinion on how well they will be able to support "their" product. In the past most Dell's were rebranded Acers....I am not sure about todays models though.



-Corey

 

[Larry Anderson]

BJ...I was a Production Manager for 6 years at a large depot Repair Center that repaired both Dell and IBM laptops. I would go with the Thinkpad, in my opinion a more solid laptop and we saw less IBM's (400-500 a day) as opposed to the 800-1000 a day for Dell....LA

 

[Christopher Laurencio]

BJ, I have been using a ThinkPad T40 for one year now and it's been flawless.

 

[XMYTRUCK XMYTRUCK]

Very simple, An Apple Ibook or PowerBook, You can't go wrong you will have the power of unix, and OS that was designed for that specific hardware. It's like fine-tuning your bass boat to make sure everything works like it should.

X

 

[Ethan Book]

Well, just because I can I want to throw this suggestion out there. Get an iBook or Powerbook. Their resale value is great (I have a 4 year old iBook that I bought for $500 a little over 1 year ago and it is still worth $500). The operating system is so easy to use, you get free bonuses like iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, and probably soon you will get iWork, viruses...what are they! Spybots...spywho? My older one does everything I need it to do. It runs Word perfectly, I use it for iTunes, iPhoto, and more. I've made movies on it with iMovie and then burned them to DVD with iDVD on an external drive...just click and go. And, if you get a newer one...at least a G4 you will be able to make your own music with the free included software GarageBand. Plus, since you are a student you qualify for the education discount from any of their retail stores or on-line. And finally, as a college student you need an iPod...I'm not even one and I NEED my iPod! A iBook and an iPod is the perfect match for school. You can use your iPod for listening to tunes and then you can store your huge presentation on it and take it to your class.



So, there you go...that's my two cents and I can tell from the previous posts that it's not even worth that much around here because of all of the PC users. But, to put in some perspective when I went to college I thought I needed a PC because that is what the rest of the world used. Well, I bought a Dell (bad choice) and used it for 2 years...what a waste of time! Then for the last two years of school when I was doing internet classes and more stuff in my major I had a Mac and everything was great in my world!

 

[Donnie Matney]

I had a friend who used to work CS at Dell. She said she would never buy a Dell. Also I have a buddy in IT for a major bank and they bout Dells for the tellers. I know they are not notebooks, but he is always working on them. They were supposed to have an agreement/warranty that Dell would come out on site to work on them. After the sale they told them the banks were to far away for them to send techs to repair them. In the banking bidness you need those computers up and running all the time. Just my 2 cents..I would go w/ the think pad. But I thought I heard they were phaising them out in a few years??



Donnie

 

[Bob G.]

I have two Dell desktops (Dimension 2400, XP) at home and have not had any problems. Gonna buy a third one to replace the antique Compaq Win98 system that my daughter is currently using. For <$550, I think they are a good computer, considering they came with a 15" flat panel monitor, 512Mb ram, 40Gig HD, free shipping and $50 off. I have no experience with Dell laptops. We use company issued IBM T40s at work and they area a great laptop so far.



Bob G.

 

[Texas Transplant]

My son's Apple (Mac) computer system that we paid HUGE amounts for when he went to college, sits in a closet somewhere. And it had been upgraded.



Be smart, and get something that is cost effective, and that most people use.



Trust the info that you got here. The other question revolves around IBM selling their products. Not sure that the same quality/service/etc will still be with the Thinkpad line, down the line.



Tex

 

[Jim B]

Jody,

when i did my eval we really put these machines thru the ringer. I work for a research company so when i give something to my users they put it thru its paces. When we did out eval we did unspeakable things to these machines and bought and scrapped 20k worth or machines in the process. We put them in a shaker machine, and measured how much force it would take on the cover to bust the screen, break keys, tear the hinges loose etc. we dropped them in and out of bags you name it we really beat these things up. The flimsiest built of the bunch was the compaq, the dell wasnt too far behind. The IBM t30 i tested is the only machine that survived and i still to this day use it as my personal machine.



On another note we do have dome Dell precision 530's that have been pretty good for the most part. The only improvement i can see thosre machines needing is a steel case instead of plastic. They work pretty well overall.



Also the Dell support model dosent work well for us. Currently we have 2 onsite techs from our VAR that repairs any hardware problems and 6 software techs. The way things would have worked out with Dell is we loose the hardware guys and out regular techs would have to do most of the troubleshooting over the phone with Dell support. With the 530's we currently have in house that has proven to be a pain, 50% of the time the tech that is sent brings the wrong part and the whole process starts over. We have had machines down for days and weeks in some instances. Thankfully we got hot spares to keep engineer downtime to a minimum. The way things work with out current provider we can have a failed machine back up in less then an hour, all the parts are in house.



Tex, from what i heard from IBm there are no plans to change anything for at least 5 years down the line. Someone correct me if im wrong but i was told that the company that bought the computer line has been making IBM laptops and desktops for IBM for quite some time.

 

[Ethan Book]

Texas Transplant...



What kind of computer is it? I may be intersted in it. Also, how long did he try it...just like everything else it does have a learning curve, but I have used mine in PC communities for years now and I have no problems working with or sharing with other people.

 

[Dan J.]

I had a top of the line Sony Vaio crash 2 mos. out of warranty and got the "so sorry" from Sony. I bought a Dell Inspiron and have had great luck and no complaints on the laptop for almost a year now. I do wish they would not direct market through an overseas outsource.

 

[TrepMan]

I'm with IBM Like Al, and agree with the Thinkpads. I've not run anything but in the last 8 years (and that's 2 Non-IBM companies I worked for at the time). With only problems with an older i series PC.



BJ - IBM has a friends and family purchase program that allows non-IBMers to get employee discounts. If you want to drop me an e-mail i'd be happy to get you a link to the employee purchase site and you can see the prices and deals they offer. Again i get NO $ or benefit off this, just offering a friend an option.



Trep

 

[BJ Laster]

Thanks everyone!!!



I like the fact that the IBM can withstand a little punishment!



I'm sure that Dell makes a nice laptop, but i think IBM is going to be the better product for me.



Thanks again!



BJ