Gandaar

Hello all !

I have... a new job... better hours... more pay... better benefits... and a management position!

One of my first official acts as the MIS Administrator is to get a new laptop for myself. I would like a machine with Windows XP Pro, 4GB RAM, 150+GB 7200 RPM hard drive, 17" LCD display and perhaps some other accessories.

I know many of you have laptops and have developed opinions, likes and dislikes about them. Please share with me so that I can make a decision.

Thank you in advance!

Gandaar

Cados Evilsbane

I like a WUXGA screen personally for gaming and workspace (get a good GPU though and maybe some reading glasses =). WSXGA will serve you well too though if needed.

Consider a built-in "N" wireless adapter for future-proofing (beats buying a whole new add-in card when "N" is widespread and you want the faster intranet file-sharing benefits - not an expensive add-on with many laptop manufacturers).

I would have mixed feelings about getting an expensive high-def optical drive in a laptop atm, you might be better off with a standard DVD-RW drive (with Lightscribe.. it's cool).

Just a few personal preferences.

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akipt

Well, not sure if you care about the brand or not, but I personally like the Lenova Thinkpads (old IBM hw). I've had good luck and good service with a T30, X35, a T40, and am using a T42 now. Looking to upgrade it soon...

Dell's I had bad luck with their support, though I hear they've gotten better lately.

'grats on the job

Sanchek

They aren't a great bargain, but I've loved the quality of the Sony laptops I've owned and supported over the past decade or so.

Gandaar

With the announcement that Wally-World made concerning HD-DVD, I may wait a bit and see what shakes out. I don't necessarily need a high-def DVD, but it would be nice. Mainly I'm wanting something with a large screen that I can work on for several hours at a time and not strain my eyes too much... and of course it has to support games.

I'm not going to get crazy with price, but I don't mind spending $$$$ on a good laptop. I guess the main issue I am seeing right now is that most laptops seem to be limited to an upper end of 150-160GB hard drives. I realize space / weight is at a premium, but a little larger hard drive would be nice.

I'm not crazy about Dell's service record either... most of the computers in the plant are Dells... something I am going to be changing. Already called them on two separate incidents and it took them forever to resolve the issue. Granted they were out here within the specified time, but it took a lot longer than I thought it should to fix the problem. After all... how long does it take to swap out a hard drive on a desktop? Took them two days and three trips back to their office... I was not impressed.

I don't want to get into that sort of situation with a laptop.

I know that every manufacturer has their claims about performance, but how does that relate to the real world? What kind of performance issues are you running into?

Thanks in advance....

lokase

Gratz on the promo Gan!

Cheers,

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Quiet and stealthy Lokase slips into the forest to resume the hunt.

Taleren Bloodsong

I've had great experience with Dell's support over the last year. Granted I don't have them do onsite repairs, I do them all myself, but they overnight ship any warranty failure for me to replace. They've been for the most part very responsive to email questions, and have been prompt with any quotes I've asked them for.

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Sixee

We use Dell where I'm at, and we generally don't have that many customer service issues.....
That having been said, my personal laptop is a Toshiba that I am very happy (other than the Vista O/S) with.

Conga Rats on the Promo, Gandaar. You hiring for a do-bee tech out that way? When are you gonna open the firewall at work so the EQ servers can me reached within the N/W?

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Gandaar

I'll be hiring a couple of interns (read that as part-time slave wages) in the near future, but a full-time tech later on. As far as EQ... well... we run a piece of software called Spector360... logs everything done on the local machine. Now I can probably get away with having Yahoo messenger and streaming music playing... but somehow I think EQ might be pushing it a bit.

Has anyone had experience with some of the "off-brand" laptops? There's a PC Club close by and they have their own "brand" of laptop that is reasonably priced even when loaded with nice features. It looks a lot like a Sony laptop... but I don't want to jump into something I'm going to regret later. Any thoughts?

Thanks

lokase

Toshiba, we love ours.

You may want to take a quick look at apple as well. A friend has bought into Apple recently after being a avid Windows geek for years. The ablility to run any version of Windows within the Apple kernal has sold him on the technology.

Cheers,

__________________

Forest Stalker of the 80th Season
Quiet and stealthy Lokase slips into the forest to resume the hunt.