laptop rant

[@dmin]

I went laptop shopping today and would have purchased a HP DM3-2010US but it had designs etched into it with swirls... I want a plain brushed aluminum laptop with decent specs and realistic price. It seems no one makes what I want.

I don't really need a laptop as my field/personal dell d630 can handle anything(even has RS-232 port on it?) I have it pushed to the max as far as up grades go.

I would love a Dell Adamo black 13 or Mac Air(I would not use osx on it though) but price is too high. I love the new dell Lat's and Precisions but my dell is just as capable.

Is it me or has no one made a sexy laptop recently. I have a ancient "2001" Toshiba M3505 and it is awesome but toshiba destroyed the portege line since then. I also loved the Fujitsu Q2010.

Thank you for listening to my rant that the mircocenter sales rep wasn't interested in. Its 2010 and the laptops seem to be bulky and plasticy and have weird designs in them. Its a shame.

[PurdueGuy]

My wife & I have been laptop shopping for her recently, and have been similarly frustrated, but not by a lack of "sexiness", but by all too common poor ergonomic designs:

a) Keyboards that are very difficult to feel if you have your hands on home row, hard to feel where one key ends and the next begins.

b) Touchpads that have no distinguishable edges, so your finger could wander off of it and you'd have to look down to know why the mouse stopped moving

c) Touchpad left/right buttons that are indistinguishable by touch from the touchpad itself

d) Touchpad left/right buttons that hinge from the middle, so you have to push down on the far left of the left button, and the far right of the right button

e) Touchpad left/right buttons that aren't distinguishable from each other, so you can't feel where you're at, and you have to look.

I'm also not a fan of touch-sensitive buttons for media control. Give me real buttons any day.

[vonVeezelsnider]

Take a look at some of the Business Grade laptops sold to the public. They don't have a lot of wacky nonsensical patterns and whatnot. I recently bought a Toshiba Satellite Pro L650, lots of power, but no glossy crap and the availability of even getting a matte screen texture.

Edited January 7, 2011 by vonVeezelsnider

[Drew Dowdell]

I had this.

I really like the laptop, but it fell apart over time from hard use.

[FAPTurbo]

Lenovo's 'Thinkpad' brand is the one to buy if you want something that is actually purposeful. If I need a new laptop, it'll be one of theirs, as the build quality is excellent, and they focus on actual usefulness, as opposed to 'features' that are there to 'wow' the customer when perusing Best Buy.

[Drew Dowdell]

I have a Lenovo Ideapad U350 that I bought last November to replace the Ferrari. I'm very happy with it.

[z28luvr01]

Take a look at some of the Business Grade laptops sold to the public. They don't have a lot of wacky nonsensical patterns and whatnot. I recently bought a Toshiba Satellite Pro L650, lots of power, but no glossy crap and the availability of even getting a matte screen texture.

Yes. Last year I bought a HP Elitebook 8530w that takes everything I throw at it (so much so that I sold my desktop and bought a dock for it). It's got a stainless steel top cover and palm rest, and its damn near indestructible. Once I dropped it once on my basement floor and the corner of the LCD hit first, and there's only a barely noticeable ding on the case. Nothing happened to the LCD. If I get bold I'll take the LCD apart and try to get the ding out.

With the dock and about half the option boxes ticked, it came to around 1700. Elitebooks start around $1100 now.

[Robert Hall]

I've been very happy w/ my Dell Studio XPS. Love the backlit keys and battery life. Running 64bit Win 7 Pro...it's a great general purpose around the house laptop and also a developer machine...I'm enjoying it for development as much as my old Mac Book Pro. It's my 3rd Dell (have had a couple Inspirons).

Only drawbacks are the heft and the glossy black lid that gets covered w/ fingerprints, etc.

Another current laptop I like is my sister's new Toshiba Satellite Pro, I've used it a bit, seems quite nice also. She also has a 2006 vintage Satellite that still works great, albeit slower. I've had a couple Toshiba Satellites in the past (1995 and 2007 vintage) w/ mixed results.

[Croc]

I've been very happy w/ my Dell Studio XPS. Love the backlit keys and battery life. Running 64bit Win 7 Pro...it's a great general purpose around the house laptop and also a developer machine...I'm enjoying it for development as much as my old Mac Book Pro. It's my 3rd Dell (have had a couple Inspirons).

Only drawbacks are the heft and the glossy black lid that gets covered w/ fingerprints, etc.

Another current laptop I like is my sister's new Toshiba Satellite Pro, I've used it a bit, seems quite nice also. She also has a 2006 vintage Satellite that still works great, albeit slower. I've had a couple Toshiba Satellites in the past (1995 and 2007 vintage) w/ mixed results.

I too love my Studio XPS.

[Nick]

My Thinkpad W500 has been amazing since day one. I am a bit biased though because my dad works for IBM, so I have always been surrounded by Thinkpads (and I get a good deal on them as well).

Is it fancy looking? No. In fact the design has remained relatively unchanged since, well..forever. It is by no means 'sexy', but it is a clean looking design. Very 'business' and 'professional' in appearance. No silly graphics or flashy colors...just flat black. This thing could've played a role in 2001 ASO. The only thing I could want more with it is a better screen which they have seemingly resolved in newer models (shame they don't offer the ips flexview that they used to offer on older thinkpads...that was a great screen.)

The trackpoint is probably my favorite part about it. I can't stand using touchpads. In fact, mine never gets used.

[SAmadei]

I have a Lenovo Ideapad U350 that I bought last November to replace the Ferrari. I'm very happy with it.

Oh, Really?

I thought the Ideapad Tablet thing was pretty neat... but I'm afraid it might be too gimmicky or delicate. I really put my laptops through hell, and I expect them to last 5-6 years... usually running nearly non-stop.

The latest batch of Thinkpads from Lenovo have left me unimpressed, build-wise. I have been pretty loyal to IBM Thinkpads for a while and was happy to see Lenovo continue on... but I fear my hopped-up Z61P will be the last of the breed for me. They will stay in the running, assuming they keep the trackpoint and some decent video. The W701DS makes me drool. Also important to me, is the ability to continue running Linux on my laptop... and I've heard the latest Lenovos are a bit trickier to get set up fully working... I love the idea of running a massive Xen cloud system off a 16G laptop. LOL.

My GF recently got a i7 based Dell Studio 17 about 8 months ago... and its a pretty sweet setup for the $$, and so far has demonstrated itself pretty hardy. Its going to be very hard to compare the high end Thinkpads to it, if I'm spending my cash... I hope to still milk my Z61P for a couple more years or con the next employer into getting me a monster Thinkpad.

Edited January 8, 2011 by SAmadei

[frogger]

Asus has some nice designs.

[Z-06]

I have had 3 Dells.

All have been great. The current one is a Dell Precision 6400 workstation - a 17" monster with 8 GB Ram, Quad Core Proc, and 1 GB Video with two 250 GB HDD. Built like a tank and weighs like one.

Dell has given some thoughts in its workstation systems. I like the Alienwares too.

[Satty]

IPad.....

[@dmin]

Satty, should be slapped!

Sadly I always resort to the dell adamo but don't want to pay $900 for a netbook. I will probably settle for Lattitude 13 though.

I loathe buying technology. Even though I love Technology...

As far as Latitudes vs Think Pad's.... Dell has the upper hand in this current market. My boss always asks me for a purchase request on a laptop and it will be a e6410 but I'm trying to save them money by keeping my abused D630. Its so nice to walk up to a cisco switch that's down and use the console port. DB-9 to DB-9. with no crappy usb adapters.

[Justin Bimmer]

I just bought an Asus Republic of Gamers computer. It looks like a stealth bomber.

[vonVeezelsnider]

I've been very happy w/ my Dell Studio XPS. Love the backlit keys and battery life. Running 64bit Win 7 Pro...it's a great general purpose around the house laptop and also a developer machine...I'm enjoying it for development as much as my old Mac Book Pro. It's my 3rd Dell (have had a couple Inspirons).

Only drawbacks are the heft and the glossy black lid that gets covered w/ fingerprints, etc.

Another current laptop I like is my sister's new Toshiba Satellite Pro, I've used it a bit, seems quite nice also. She also has a 2006 vintage Satellite that still works great, albeit slower. I've had a couple Toshiba Satellites in the past (1995 and 2007 vintage) w/ mixed results.

This is my fourth Toshiba laptop since 2003... The only one that kinda sucked was the A100 I had. Otherwise the others have been good.

[banister]

I am still using my Toshiba Tecra R950 SMBN23 laptop since 2011. It comes ready packed with a premium US Keyboard that has ten keypads, headphone and microphone jack and advanced Wi-Fi wireless networking. Being amongst those strong music fans I can say this device has served me to the right standards. Luckily the price of this model of Toshiba laptops is ideal for those guys who are just mean on their spending (just economical like I am).

Edited September 12, 2013 by banister

[banister]

I am still using my Toshiba Tecra R950 SMBN23 laptop since 2011. It comes ready packed with a premium US Keyboard that has ten keypads, headphone and microphone jack and advanced Wi-Fi wireless networking. Being amongst those strong music fans I can say this device has served me to the right standards. Luckily the price of this model of Toshiba laptops is ideal for those guys who are just mean on their spending (just economical like I am).

[David]

I just replaced my 6 year old DELL. Wish I could have gotten another one, but DELL lost out on SPEC and PRICE to Lenovo. I now have a nice shiny W530 with i7 vPro and 16gb ram. Dual 27" monitors on the docking station. Dual SSD drives. runs fast and is just solid. Very happy with it.

I agree that DELL or Lenovo you cannot go wrong.

[Robert Hall]

My Dell Studio XPS died after a couple of years...I replaced it earlier this year w/ a Toshiba Satellite, works pretty well though Windows 8 is pretty awful. Still have my 5 year old personal Mac Book Pro, my work Mac Book Pro is almost 2 years old now though it's been upgraded to 16 gb ram. I've been ambivalent about Macs in the past, but I really do like using one on a daily basis..even though the aluminum case gets warm and it is heavy, it's very reliable (and of course has unix command line goodness inside).

Edited September 12, 2013 by Cubical-aka-Moltar

[Drew Dowdell]

I have a Lenovo Ideapad U350 that I bought last November to replace the Ferrari. I'm very happy with it.

I am *still* using this laptop. I upgraded the drive to an SSD and put 8 gig of ram in it. It's no gaming rig, but it's light, rugged, and still has great battery life. I want a new machine, but can't justify replacing this one.

[SAmadei]

Still rocking my Thinkpad Z61p. Batteries are going bad, so I might get a new battery and try to get another year from it.

[FAPTurbo]

My next laptop will likely be a MacBook Air, providing Apple puts in a higher resolution display. So much of my work is based in Google's cloud so I can be OS agnostic. I can't argue with 12+ hour battery life with basic usage.

[pxyc]

I have an MSi GT60. A little big, but portable. I have it because I like gaming, but I move around a lot. I can fit it in a backpack along with all my accessories and stuff and take it wherever I go.

[rosa]

I bought my laptop recently and it's a simple Gateway because i'm not into fancy things. Your story soundsjust  like that of my son's. At present, he doesn't own a laptop because no one makes what he hopes for. I wish you lots of luck in your search.