• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

New Laptop But Which One?

Danny99

Danny99

Vice Admiral
Admiral
I'm trying to figure out the best one for me and its proving rather difficult as I have Apple friends on one side and PC ones on the other.

I'm in my final year of theatre production at university and while right now the laptop would be used for Internet and Word Processing, who knows what the future could hold. It may need to run programs like AutoCAD later on.

I found this one online:

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/prodd...0108454&logon=&langid=EN&CMP=NLC-email_weekly

which has good price and seems decent.

What do you guys and girls think?
 
Well, I will add that Apple's are more of a future proof bet for you at this point since you'll have the ability to run both OSX and Windows. Other laptops can't make that claim.

But really, it all comes down to your budget.
 
Personal experience says don't buy from HP. They screwed me over repeatedly, denied it, and basically after a year of horrible experiences, their customer service rep told me I was lying. My sis had equally bad experiences.

I've never had a problem with their printers, but the laptop I bought from them was the worst purchasing decision I've ever made.
 
My cousin bought a Toshiba, and it gets a fair bit of use and travel, and it seems to be long lasting and hard waring, as it certainly doesn't get soft treatment at all. If you need something thought won't break down if you cough on it wrong, this is the one.
 
Remember that every manufacturer (other than apple) generally has two major line of laptops. One is their budget consumer line, and the other is their more business oriented one. Usually they have similar specs but the business line is considerably more expensive. That money usually goes into the designing and engineering of laptop. They're generally lighter, smaller, and built to a higher standard than the budget machines.

Personally I'd go with Apple. But then that's just me and my biases. :P Plus you can even run Windows if you want(don't know why you would)/need(stupid unknown proprietary apps) to.
 
Do yourself a favor and go here:
www.notebookreview.com

There is a FAQ which you can fill out and in effect gain better perspective once you specified what exactly will you be doing with the laptop in question.

I wouldn't go for MacBook myself.
Too limited when it comes to upgrades (yes I'm talking about notebooks, but this is also valid for desktops), and I find it's OS useless for my needs really (because I can do the same and more in Windows) ... not to mention the fact it's extremely overpriced for what it can do.

What's your budget exactly and what do you intend to do on the laptop in question?

If you expect to run programs such as AutoCAD in the future then you should focus more on CPU power (as such programs are more cpu intensive).
Integrated graphics would be adequate for those programs and are better for the battery life overall (not to mention that they produce less heat).

I recommend you try finding something with Centrino2 cpu /Montevina chipset.
Those are the latest in notebook tech, are more battery friendly, produce less heat and much more efficient compared to the earlier generation.

Again, it depends on your budget as well, so you would probably do better going on notebook review, filling out the FAQ so the people there can help you a bit better.
:)
 
I'm looking at somewhere between $700-$1200, however I'd consider spending more if it was something necessary or super cool.

Where was the FAQ's on the site?

I'm really low-tech, so easy answers are better.

Thanks for the help!
 
After having been a Windows based person for many years, I ended up switching to Mac over 2 years ago. Mainly because I keep having numerous problems with PCs and Windows.

I got a MacBook Pro - haven't had a single problem with it. I it 2.5 years old now. I can still run programs like PhotoShop and FinalCut with no problems - no long proocessing times.

Also seeing that you are in the creative arts arena I would recommend a MAc laptop for you.
 
Ever consider a netbook? those are cheap and hell you don't have to worry about it breaking. It is cheap and you can buy another one.
 
I've been very pleased with my IBM (now Lenovo) ThinkPad T42. The build quality is excellent; these machines can take a beating. My T42 is over three years old and has yet to have a hardware error. Heck, last week I spilled coffee all over the keyboard and the built-in drain system diverted the coffee out of a drain hole on the bottom of the computer. The motherboard was undamaged. The drain system does not include the touchpad, however. Thus, my old touchpad was a casualty of the coffee spill, but replacement was simple given ThinkPads' easy disassembly, aided by a highly-detailed Hardware Maintenance Manual provided free of charge by IBM/Lenovo.

Current Lenovo-branded ThinkPads retain the well-known durability as far as I know. However, you will be paying roughly 20% more relative to other laptops.

I also echo the sentiment of avoiding Dell. Their laptops are poorly made and prone to failure.
 
I've got an older IBM T23 and this baby has travelled with me on business for most of the year and its a real trooper. I would certainly buy another Lenovo if I had to. Solid units and the above poster was right, the tear down of these machines is pretty simple, and if you do god forbid damage something, parts are pretty easy to find on eBay. I use my T23 for most everything now, while my similarily aged Dell tower that's a tad faster and has better video sits inside a computer desk acting as my 'file server' or if I absolutely have to run some video that needs more balls than this laptop can do. But I run Photoshop, Poser 4 and 6 on it, Flash, Front Page, MS Office, and other various programs and it runs it all pretty decently. Not a speed demon but it does the job. And this is an OLD unit, 1ghz with 384 megs of ram. So y'know honestly buy a Lenovo. It'll pay off in the long run, really.
 
^ Greetings, fellow ThinkPadder! :) The tear-down of ThinkPads is indeed quite easy, which is a boon for those who like to tinker.

At this stage, I've upgraded the motherboard (for the GPU), processor, HDD, optical drive, and memory on my machine with great ease. My laptop's a bit long in the tooth, but the 2.0 GHz P-M, 2 GB RAM, 100 GB 7200 RPM HDD specs are still sufficient for a marathon MATLAB data processing session.
 
Tim M said:
I also echo the sentiment of avoiding Dell. Their laptops are poorly made and prone to failure.
Click to expand...

Yeah, mine's the proof, I hate this piece of shit.
And I do everything I can to take care of it.

Toshiba with Windows Vista Premium is next for me,
my mom's had a Vista PC and notebook and for two
years and both are excellent.

Oh and I had a ThinkPad when I was a little kid.
It was a 90's model of somesort, my very first
computer and I loved it.
 
I recommend this Macbook. If you're looking to do engineering/drawing applications, a Mac can't be beat. http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook?mco=MTE3MzM

I say upgrade to at least 2 GHz processor, and >200G harddrive, if you can swing it. Get iWork (great for word processing, web page creation, etc), and a 3 year protection plan (Macs don't fail as often as PCs, but when they *do* fail, they fail *hard*).

I have two of these types of Macbooks, and even the slower one is very fast. Whenever I hear a growl from SPOCKED when he's attempting to browse the internet or view his photos, I know that's when his McCaffee has started to download definitions. Avoid PCs for this reason! Their speed is cyclic, with respect to whether resources are being snarfed by anti-virus software. And they're annoying --- always these Windows popup notifications of this or that. Grr.
 
Dukat the Halls said:
I have two of these types of Macbooks, and even the slower one is very fast. Whenever I hear a growl from SPOCKED when he's attempting to browse the internet or view his photos, I know that's when his McCaffee has started to download definitions. Avoid PCs for this reason! Their speed is cyclic, with respect to whether resources are being snarfed by anti-virus software. And they're annoying --- always these Windows popup notifications of this or that. Grr.
Click to expand...

To be fair, that can be addressed by using a different virus scanner (McAfee is a resource hog) and adjusting preferences to get fewer popus. Plus, it has nothing inherently to do with PCs, since one can use other operating systems. I work in an engineering lab, and most of the data acquisition and analysis software won't play nicely on a Mac (if it is available at all), so PCs are the way to go. A Mac would be a good choice for graphic design or video editing, though.
 
Best way to go is the Mac, these days... and you're talking to somebody who last year would have encouraged you to get a Dell. Mac users are far happier with their investments lately than PC users are with the bloated Vista. Me? I have a Sony Vaio but I run Ubuntu 90% of the time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top