Laptop Question

[pacfan]

Greetings my fellow Packer Rats,

I am shopping for a laptop. Having very limited computer knowledge I was hoping somebody here could give me the “scoop” on the laptop market. What to look for and what to avoid.

I'm looking for a laptop that is lightweight, good graphics and good connectability. Speed is important and memory size, from what I've read so far, isn't an issue. I need a machine that will survive some major usage over the next three years (going to Law School). Don't know much about clock speed or FSB or whatever the processor is/does.

What brands should I be looking at/avoiding? Macs are not an option and price is of some concern.

Thanks in advance.

[packinpatland]

Our family swears by Dell. So many good deals to be had.

What law school?

[Freak Out]

Budget?

[pacfan]

Budget?

Law School: Wisconsin

Budget: under 3G's. Somebody said get a 3-year warranty.

[GBRulz]

pacfan, you would be surprised how loaded of a laptop that you can get these days for under $1500.

I'm not going to preach as to what kind of better, blah blah blah but I have had a few laptops over the years. The one I have now is probably my fav. It's a Sony Vaio, 15" screen, it's lightweight, thin, good battery life. 2 gigs of RAM, 160gig hard drive. 256MB Video card, Bluetooth, DVD/CD burner and one of the most fantastic displays that I've ever seen. Purchase price $1599 4 months ago, which means it's probably $1299 somewhere else now!!

I highly suggest getting 2 gigs of RAM. Or ones that are expandable to that size. I believe Toshiba is expanable to 4gigs of RAM. Especially now with Vista being already installed. Vista alone takes up about 512MB of your processing speed. Other than that, all you can really do is look around and get a feel of what you like. I wouldn't worry about hard drive space too much as you can always buy an external for more space and more important, to back up your notebook.

Don't buy the extended warranties and don't buy a Dell !!!

[Joemailman]

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought it would be about lap dances. How disappointing.

[Partial]

The warranty is a good deal on laptops because of battery replacement. Batteries can die out pretty quick.

Look at the Dell Latitudes and search google for coupons. You can get some that are up to 600$ off (after spending like 1500 or something).

Dell's Latitude series are built much better than the inspirons so it'll last you longer and hopefully give you less grief if you take it on the go with you.

Coupons though, look hard for coupons!!


Current specs should be an Core 2 Duo, unless you game I wouldn't worry about graphics unless you game. Then, you might want to go with a XPS. As for storage, don't go bigger than 120 because any bigger and the data density is too great and they are sllloooowwww.

Spending 3000 on a laptop is a waste of money. It'll be obsolote in two years anyway. A better bet would be spending about 1000 now, and upgrading for another thousand two years down the road or so. Trust me, you'll get much better value all around this way.

Head to West Town mall if you get a chance to test out some machines. They have a dell kiosk there with tons of laptops. Some have glossy displays and some have matte. See what you like.

Don't buy their, though. Use your online coupon that you find and save yourself a wad of cash.

[Partial]

pacfan, you would be surprised how loaded of a laptop that you can get these days for under $1500.

I'm not going to preach as to what kind of better, blah blah blah but I have had a few laptops over the years. The one I have now is probably my fav. It's a Sony Vaio, 15" screen, it's lightweight, thin, good battery life. 2 gigs of RAM, 160gig hard drive. 256MB Video card, Bluetooth, DVD/CD burner and one of the most fantastic displays that I've ever seen. Purchase price $1599 4 months ago, which means it's probably $1299 somewhere else now!!

I highly suggest getting 2 gigs of RAM. Or ones that are expandable to that size. I believe Toshiba is expanable to 4gigs of RAM. Especially now with Vista being already installed. Vista alone takes up about 512MB of your processing speed. Other than that, all you can really do is look around and get a feel of what you like. I wouldn't worry about hard drive space too much as you can always buy an external for more space and more important, to back up your notebook.

Don't buy the extended warranties and don't buy a Dell !!!

Consumer reports recommends extended warranties on laptops if they aren't more than like 20% of the cost or greater (over 5 years) because laptop batteries have very sporadic life, especially the lithium-ion polymer ones they are switching to (away from standard lithium-ion).

[retailguy]

I've got a Thinkpad T42 and a T43. I love them, wouldn't trade them for any other laptop on the market.

My T42 cost me 1200 two years ago.

My wife is currently attending law school and swears by her Vaio. She opted for the small version with the 12.1 in screen and it weighs somewhere about 4.2 lbs. It's not anywhere close to as sturdy or durable as my IBM's, however, it is a nice machine.

My thinkpads are heavier, the t42 has a 15in screen, and the t43 has a 14.1 in screen. probably 5.5 lbs or so.

DON'T buy a warranty, you can buy a battery for about 100bucks if you look diligently online. In fact, I bought a replacement for the t42, new for about 45. off ebay. It's not an IBM battery, but who cares?

Warranties are about 80% profit... with 25 to 50% of the cost going as a sales commission. VERY RARELY does the consumer get their money's worth out of a warranty/service plan. When you think about it, that kind of makes sense, since if the company lost money, the price would go up.

[GBRulz]

Partial, Consumer Reports says otherwise. In fact, they even took out a full page ad in USA Today warning consumers about buying them and why they are a waste of money.

Post your source though, I'm curious as to why they would be saying two different things.

[Partial]

RG not that it is on topic, but Consumer Reports does in fact recommend extended warranties on laptops, treadmills and grills. Margins aren't nearly as high on those three items.

But, anyway, back on topic, the Thinkpads are very well built machines. Not as good as they were under IBM, but Lenovo has done an adequate job at keeping that line premium.

Dell Latitude is a business class of notebooks designed to compete with the Thinkpads. They do a very admirable job.

Sony's have very good construction as well.

Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro are very nice as well. The regular MacBook is more than adequate for just about any task and when paired with your student discount is quite affordable.

Don't buy retail. Buy online. You can avoid tax if they don't have a retail outlet in Wisconsin. Plus then you can use the aforementioned excellent Dell coupons.

[retailguy]

I've got the IBM version. The Lenovo versions are not as nice, but still better than most "so called" business laptops out on the market.

I had a Latitude, and will NEVER have another one. It gave me nothing but grief, and Dell support was USELESS. I gave it away for a couple hundred dollars and have never missed it.

I suppose if I had bought an "extended warranty" at 80% profit, then they'd have talked with me, but, if they had built a better machine, I'd have NOT needed a warranty, now would I?

[Jimx29]

All the active coupons form Dell:

http://www.edealinfo.com/dell/

[MadtownPacker]

Stay the hell away from Dell!!

I agree that the extneded warranty is not a bad deal. Make sure to get the premium one that covers accidents and in about a year make sure to break it on purpose to cash in and likely get a newer model one.

Too bad you dont live around here, I know a guy that knows a guy that... well you know.

[Merlin]

I have used DELL laptops (Inspiron, Precision) for the past 8 years and never had any issues with their support. If you tell the support person that you are in IT and don't want the usual "reboot" instructions they give novice users, you get expedited to someone who speaks English that knows what they are doing. And believe me, the first level support is for someone who doesn't know where the start button is. The forums for DELL are also full of information for just about any question you have.

My wife has had good luck with the Latitudes at her job. Everyone in our company uses Latitudes accept myself and our Network Engineer because we need the beefy machine for testing & development. They all are happy with them.

I have sent 2 out of 5 in for warranty work and I got the machine(s) back in 3 business days with no charge to me. The last two have had the on site warranty with DELL coming out within 4 hours and replacing a bad RAM stick.

DELL is always running specials on their warranties. With my desktop at home I got a 4 year on site warranty for less then $200 on a $2000 machine. I believe their specials run 7-10 days and they come back around every so often.

Sony and Toshiba make nice laptops but the do not have on site warranty service like DELL.

IBM isn't worth the money they charge for the name.

HP is a decent machine but ever since they merged with Compaq, I wouldn't buy one. I have had nothing but crappy luck with anything named "Compaq" accept their servers.

Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY A COMPUTER FROM BEST BUY. In fact, don't buy any computer products from Best Buy at all. My kid worked there and the local store is supposed to be one of the best in the country and they don't have a friggin clue about computers, parts or how to fix them. Their job is to sell you stuff, period.

Whatever you buy, make sure you take it to someone you trust to clean up all of the bullshit software you don't need. Computer companies have been loading more and more on machines and frankly all it does is drag the system down.