OT: notebook shopping

[Michael March]

I want to 2nd the Mac recommendations..

Mac's have little touches that make them worth the few extra dollars. Off
the top of my head, here are two things I find make their laptops worth the
dough:

1. Design touches.. I have a Asus gaming laptop right now.. Specs and
performance wise it awesome but its physical design is horrendous. The USB
plugs are all in the back of the laptop (retarded).. its power cord plugs
deeply into the back too.. The other day I tripped over the cord and the
laptop went flying across my desk.. Apples on the other hand have this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagSafe

2. AppleCare.. in my experience its a GREAT warranty service.


On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 6:07 PM, Vaughn Treude <vltreude at deru.com> wrote:

> Kurt Granroth wrote:
> > Vaughn Treude wrote:
> >> The finalists:
> >> Dell Inspiron 1520 - with all the options I want it's around $1500.
> >> (But one of the reviewers claimed its physical construction was
> flimsy.)
> >> Toshiba Tecra A9 - also around $1500 with options.
> >> Lenovo ThinkPad R61 - the fully-loaded version is on sale for around
> >> $1200.
> >> Mac Book Pro - the 2.4GHz 15" version, with the high-speed drive
> >> option, is $2100, a bit out of my range. I _could_ set it up
> >> triple-boot with XP (and Linux, of course) which would bring it up to
> >> $2200. But I've always admired the Mac's design, the fact that OS X is
> >> based on Unix, and the Mac's excellent video-editing software. (I've
> >> been unhappy with the hassle of setting up this kind of stuff on
> >> Linux.) So I'm still considering it, but don't know if it would be
> >> worthwhile.
> >>
> >> At the moment I'm leaning toward the Lenovo. As far as I can tell, its
> >> primary drawbacks are relatively short battery life, and the fact that
> >> it is (IMHO) one butt-ugly machine. The battery isn't that big of a
> >> problem, as I have two externals I bought for my ailing Sony, and I
> >> can live with ugly.
> >>
> >> Any comments or relevant experiences any of you could share?
> >
> > I've had a number of iBooks, Powerbooks, Thinkpads, and other laptops
> > throughout the years.  Right now, I have both a Powerbook and a Thinkpad
> > which are used very regularly.  Which do I think is better?
> >
> > Absolutely no question at all: the Powerbook.  And this is an older
> > Powerbook, even.  A new MacBook or MacBook Pro is so much better that
> > it's barely any comparison at all.
> >
> > At this point, I use my Thinkpad solely for development work.  Mind you,
> > it makes a great development laptop and if there was no Powerbook or
> > MacBook, it would even be a great laptop overall... but since it doesn't
> > exist in a vacuum, then I can't possibly recommend it.
> >
> > A lot of this has to do with just using a laptop as a laptop.  You can
> > get things like suspend and the like to work under Linux... but it
> > doesn't work well.  For instance, on my Thinkpad T43, I had suspend
> > working when I closed the lid initially, but it stopped working a year
> > ago and I haven't been able to fix it since.  I can suspend directly
> > through the openSUSE K-Menu, though, so no big deal.  But even then, it
> > takes a good 15 to 30 seconds to suspend and another 15 seconds or more
> > to resume.  I don't even have to *think* about suspending and resuming
> > with my Powerbook.  It just works and it works seemingly
> instantaneously.
> >
> > Oh, and my T43 also has some weird barely supported PATA-to-SATA bridge
> > for the DVD drive.  It works, but DMA doesn't.  Which means that I can't
> > watch DVDs on that drive and all disk access spikes the CPU.  YMMV may
> > vary.
> >
> > The ATI chipset on my T43 works well enough.  I got one version of Beryl
> > to work with 3d-goodness, even.  Lately, though, compiz is far too slow
> > to use on it.  Dunno why.  Heck, one version of the ATI driver even
> > refused to work in anything higher than 1280x1024 (a non-supported
> > resolution).  And even when the driver does work, it's buggy and prone
> > to crashing.
> >
> > It goes without saying that the Powerbook is rock-solid reliable and
> > Leopard 3d-goodness works without any muss or fuss.
> >
> > I could go on and on...
> >
> > Linux works well for me as my primary desktop, as my development
> > platform, and as my servers... but I will never use it willingly as a
> > consumer laptop OS.  It just has waaaay to much work needed to be done.
> >
>
> That's some very interesting feedback. That's kind of what I was looking
> for, something I didn't have to fuss with. So the Mac may be worth the
> extra money. I like to work on my writing in my spare moments, so it
> would be nice to have it hibernate/unhibernate very quickly.
>
> My current notebook, a Sony Vaio, runs Linux pretty well, and I didn't
> have to go through too much trouble getting the basics running, though I
> did go through a couple of different distros until I found one that
> "just worked" for most things. The most frustrating thing is that I
> never got my old wireless PC card running under Linux, so I'd end up
> rebooting to Windows 2000 to do that. Though the Sony did work quite
> well for me, they currently seem to be one of the more expensive
> notebook sellers- and if I'm going to splurge, I'll buy a Mac.
>
> Vaughn
>
>
>
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