Laptops

[Danadelfos]

I need personal opinions on the best company that makes laptops. I talk to so many people and there is so many different opinions. What do you think? And why?

[Me]

It all depends on what you want to do with it. For everyday stuff, Toshiba is a good brand. If your into high end gaming, then Alienware or a similar high-end custom manufacturer will fit the bill better.

This thread has been found at the wrong memory address. Relocating....

[Frank]

I'm sure that whatever the trouble may be, the good tech-savvy boys of the ToO can help you! *is wearing her "I love tech-savvy boys" t-shirt at this moment*

[Trillspots]

Well, I'm not a guy, but...like "Me" said, if you can list what you're needing the laptop for, and your price range, I could make some suggestions.

-Trill

Edit: Scolds Frank... This is a christian forum. (The tech guys are mine!!!)

[Danadelfos]

I want something that is pretty fast for web and word processing. And just a few games. And probably around 1,000 dollars

[Me]

You'll probably have to settle for something like this.

You won't do too well with HL2 or Doom 3, but you'll get moderate gaming performance. To get something that will actually do pretty good with games, you'll have to go up to around $1300

[H34TH4R]

i have a toshiba laptop i think there the best.

[Mr Sarcastic Cow Man]

I have been very satisfied with my Compaq R3000; It only has a nVidia GeForce 4 420 Go 32M I got the Athlon XP-M (It usually comes with an Athlon64). It runs America's Army decently well on Gentoo Linux, but my FPS on Windows is pretty low. I paid about $650 for it (Gotta love Ebay... Or at least the deals ). Basically, I would recommend HP/Compaq for value and because they tend to really stand behind their products.

Edit: You might consider the R4000.

[COWBOY OF TEXAS]

*cough* Apple *cough*



-Cowboy

[Mr Sarcastic Cow Man]

*cough* Apple *cough*



-Cowboy

Apples are nice but they are also 'spensive.

[Me]

And they're also slow. And unstable.

[Sonuna]

I have a Toshiba which, while not exactly memory-ful or cpu-ful, is the Indestructible Laptop. It's been dropped down stairs, had water thrown on it, survived massive amounts of car riding and being stuck under miscellaneous objects (most heavy)... It's quite amazing.

[EK]

I currently use an iBook which is VERY good....I had a Toshiba....it had a Celeron processor and ran on Windows 98.... >_>

[Mr Sarcastic Cow Man]

And they're also slow. And unstable.

They're slow in that the OS doesn't use the hardware efficiently, or that some of them are not equipped with adequate hardware? I'm not quite sure what you mean by "unstable"; they are obviously far more stable than any Windows system... Edit: Ok, the word "any" is not called for there.

I'm not a strong supporter of Macs (I prefer Linux), but your statements seem a bit broad...

[Shadowpaw]

I used a Mac in the States and that computer crashed on me more than anything I've ever used. I lost so much work to that system on a daily basis. Obviously not all computers are created equal, and I can't judge an entire OS based on one bad experience, but it definitely wasn't the promised land of OS's that I was lead to believe. My brother right now has a powerbook, and while his is generally stable (as far as I know), he reformats his drive every 4 months to speed the machine up because it just doesn't cut it once he's installed a few things.

My Windows XP machine, I've had zero stability issues in the past 3 years... not even one crash, and I leave my computer on 24/7 except for the odd occasion I have to reboot after an installation or Windows Update. I've got nothing but praise for my Windows machine. But if you get me started on the Solaris and other UNIX based machines I use at school, you'll never hear the end of it from me . Windows 95 and 98 I had a lot of headaches, but Microsoft has made leaps and bounds with their operating system and I'll have it no other way at this point... besides, I'm a gamer!

[Me]

And they're also slow. And unstable.

They're slow in that the OS doesn't use the hardware efficiently, or that some of them are not equipped with adequate hardware? I'm not quite sure what you mean by "unstable"; they are obviously far more stable than any Windows system...

I'm not a strong supporter of Macs (I prefer Linux), but your statements seem a bit broad...

Slow: I'm not sure exactly what it is, but they are slower than just about any modern pc I've ever used. Seeing as the x86 build of OSX blows any G5 out of the water, I'm inclined to believe that this is caused by inferior hardware. As an example take Jarred Land of DVXuser.com. He had always been a pc user, but he had heard so many good things about macs, that he decided to give them a try. The bought the most tricked out G5 that he could (at least 4gb of RAM, dual processors, the whole shebang). After two months, he gave up and sold the thing on Ebay. It was far slower than his X2 4800+, and he couldn't put up with it. The only thing he ended up liking was the keyboard.

Stability: I seriously don't know where people get the idea that macs are stabler. I had to admin nine of them in the tv studio my senior year of highschool. They were brand new, never connected to the internet, virus free, etc. I crashed the first one in 20 minutes, and about 3 more times in the next 15. And that was just while running iMovie (as an aside, it was also painfully slow, having to prerender everything). Thus began a painful year of some of the worst computer experiences I have ever had. I couldn't even begin to count the number of Freshmen that lost projects, or the number of times the computers crashed while burning a DVD. And it wasn't only this generation of macs. I've had experience with several other ones.... and they were just as bad, if not worse. Step forward to this year. The edit lab at college. We're sitting there in Intro to Audio, working in SlowTools. The lab is half mac, and half pc (I was fortunate enough to grab a pc). As I sit there editing, person after person kept crashing the "uncrashable" G5's. Not a single PC went down. Also, on the pc side, I've never really had instability problems, except those that were related to bad drivers and hardware.

[/end rant]

[Mr Sarcastic Cow Man]

I used a Mac in the States and that computer crashed on me more than anything I've ever used. I lost so much work to that system on a daily basis. Obviously not all computers are created equal, and I can't judge an entire OS based on one bad experience, but it definitely wasn't the promised land of OS's that I was lead to believe. My brother right now has a powerbook, and while his is generally stable (as far as I know), he reformats his drive every 4 months to speed the machine up because it just doesn't cut it once he's installed a few things.

My Windows XP machine, I've had zero stability issues in the past 3 years... not even one crash, and I leave my computer on 24/7 except for the odd occasion I have to reboot after an installation or Windows Update. I've got nothing but praise for my Windows machine. But if you get me started on the Solaris and other UNIX based machines I use at school, you'll never hear the end of it from me . Windows 95 and 98 I had a lot of headaches, but Microsoft has made leaps and bounds with their operating system and I'll have it no other way at this point... besides, I'm a gamer!

Well, I don't know what Mac OS you were using, but I was referring more to Mac OS X. I'm not going to say that I don't believe you when you say that your Windows XP machine has never crashed in three years of use, but if it's true, you are one in... quite a few . I know Windows XP is a lot better stability-wise than earlier versions, but it's also extremely bloated, and on a slower machine its chances of maintaining stability are much lower. I use primarily Windows 2000 (for the few things that I need Windows to use), which is much less bloated than XP and virtually the same otherwise.

As far as Linux, and Linux-based operating systems, some distros are not so great, some are too advanced for some users; I'm not going to defend all distros, nor does someones bad experience with one or few distros of Linux (often brought upon by their poor preconceptions) indicate much about the OS itself. I will say that IMO Linux has the potential to be (and is in many cases) far more stable and efficient than any version of Windows; you don't think TheToO is hosted on a Windows machine do you?

[Mr Sarcastic Cow Man]

Sorry, didn't see your post...

And they're also slow. And unstable.

They're slow in that the OS doesn't use the hardware efficiently, or that some of them are not equipped with adequate hardware? I'm not quite sure what you mean by "unstable"; they are obviously far more stable than any Windows system...

I'm not a strong supporter of Macs (I prefer Linux), but your statements seem a bit broad...

Slow: I'm not sure exactly what it is, but they are slower than just about any modern pc I've ever used. Seeing as the x86 build of OSX blows any G5 out of the water, I'm inclined to believe that this is caused by inferior hardware. As an example take Jarred Land of DVXuser.com. He had always been a pc user, but he had heard so many good things about macs, that he decided to give them a try. The bought the most tricked out G5 that he could (at least 4gb of RAM, dual processors, the whole shebang). After two months, he gave up and sold the thing on Ebay. It was far slower than his X2 4800+, and he couldn't put up with it. The only thing he ended up liking was the keyboard.

Well, like I said they are expensive; if you get the a top-of-the-line mac, it won't be slow, but you can very easily buy a slow PC too.

Stability: I seriously don't know where people get the idea that macs are stabler. I had to admin nine of them in the tv studio my senior year of highschool. They were brand new, never connected to the internet, virus free, etc. I crashed the first one in 20 minutes, and about 3 more times in the next 15. And that was just while running iMovie (as an aside, it was also painfully slow, having to prerender everything). Thus began a painful year of some of the worst computer experiences I have ever had. I couldn't even begin to count the number of Freshmen that lost projects, or the number of times the computers crashed while burning a DVD. And it wasn't only this generation of macs. I've had experience with several other ones.... and they were just as bad, if not worse. Step forward to this year. The edit lab at college. We're sitting there in Intro to Audio, working in SlowTools. The lab is half mac, and half pc (I was fortunate enough to grab a pc). As I sit there editing, person after person kept crashing the "uncrashable" G5's. Not a single PC went down. Also, on the pc side, I've never really had instability problems, except those that were related to bad drivers and hardware.

[/end rant]

I'd like to know what Mac OS this was (If it was an old OS I could be comparing it to Windows ME )... I'm assuming these "PCs" are running Windows?

Like I said I'm not really inclined or qualified to debate for Macs, but I know that a lot of people have had very good experiences with Macs.

[Me]

It was OS X. Lol. And just for the record, 9 was even worse. I have also experienced a wide range of macs (everything from cheap ones, to tricked out G5's), and must honestly confess that I haven't ever seen one that couldn't be outperformed by a pc built for half the price.

XP is definitely bloatware, but with a few hours of tweaking, much of the bloat can be prevented from loading on startup. Case in point; my video edit station (running XP Pro) boots up in 22 seconds. This is from POST to functional desktop.

For the record, I will join you in saying that Linux rocks, because it does.

[gimp80995]

For the record, I will join you in saying that Linux rocks, because it does.

*prefers Linux as well* I am in the process of getting a laptop to use for school stuff. Though considering my budget, I'll be doing good to get something that works .

Peace Out

-Gimp