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Hardware

Comparative Laptop Reviews? 369

Posted by Cliff from the knowing-what-you-get-before-you-buy-it dept.
clambert asks: "A few co-workers and I are in the market for a new laptop, but it's been incredibly difficult to try and explore what's out there. How do Sony's warranties rank up against Dell's? Can I get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the new Toshibas? What model IBMs feature DDR memory? There doesn't seem to be an AnandTech/Ars/Toms for the notebook market, and short of filtering through all the marketing hype on every {brand}.com, its tough to find out what systems offer what specs. Are there any comprehensive resources out there for those of us in the market for a new laptop?"
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Comparative Laptop Reviews? More

Comparative Laptop Reviews?

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  • Easy as this really (Score:2, Informative)

    by yatest5 ( 455123 )
    Epinions Laptops [epinions.com]

  • Dell (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by warmcat ( 3545 )
    Dell laptops are very good and reasonably priced - this is being written on one.

    But have you noticed just how much advertisting dell do in print and online media? Often they have the inside front cover and two or three pages inside a magazine. This makes it almost impossible for the publication to say anything bad about their products.

    As I say, they are generally nice machines, but perhaps this has something to do with the lack of comparative reviews.
    • I would have to disagree with this statement:

      But have you noticed just how much advertisting dell do in print and online media? Often they have the inside front cover and two or three pages inside a magazine. This makes it almost impossible for the publication to say anything bad about their products.

      I subscribe to several magazines, and yes, some do seem to be lenient on their advertisers, but there are some publications out there who stick to their guns and call a spade a spade -- one recent review blasted Dell for shipping a P4 system with DDR SDRAM rather than RDRAM due to the performance hit. So making a blanket statement such as this is not accurate.

      • Re:Not always true (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dublin ( 31215 )
        As someone who used to be a program manager in Dell's portables group, I can tell you that Dell has a number of product marketing people that ensure that a special competition lab prepares machines for tests (they get tweaks the rest of us may never see, both hardware and software, mostly drivers), then carefully follow-up on the testing and results reporting/weighting to ensure that Dell is always at or near the top. (You'll notice that weight itself is seldom given much weight in notebook tests that include Dells, primarily because they have historically tended to be on the pudgy side - the Latitude CP family contains a half-pound of *screws* for cryin' out loud...)

        This isn't meant as a slam at Dell - I suspect nearly all other OEMs do this as well, but this is an area in which Dell makes it a point to execute even better than usual. It's simply not possible to be important enough to get a "test machine" from Dell and not have some PM continually looking over your shoulder throughout the testing. Is that undue influence on the results? I guess that depends on your perspective...

        As for the advertising stick, I've never seen it used, but then, it doesn't really have to be, now does it? When everyone *knows* you're carrying a big stick, you have the luxury of being able to speak softly. (TR was right about so many things...)

    • Re:Dell (Score:2, Interesting)

      by diametrag ( 411003 )
      Well, I have to disagree. I am a tech support person at a resonably large educational facility, and I would Never get a Dell. They are reasonably priced, but we have had more serious hardware problems with Dells than any other laptop. For instance, One 3 month old Dell's display just died. Many of the 2-3 year old laptops have had their motherboards replaced. I am sure there are some good Dell laptops out there, but out of the 5 new Dell laptops we have bought since January, 3 have gone in for service.

      As my boss says : "Dude you got a dell...Dude you're going to Hell"
      • My company recently migrated to Dell Laptops from IBM thinkpads (I'm writing this on a Dell Latitude). My impressions so far -- The Dells are light weight and powerful, have nice screens a decent performance (mine is a P3 1gHz). Win2K and Mandrake work perfectly on it. The downside is durability and quality. We've had a few Dell laptops not work out of the box.. Damaged in shipping presumably. Also, we've had to replcate a few CD drives, a few motherboards and even memory on one of them. Some users complain that the keyboard and mouse buttons feel cheap and plasticy, but that's just a subjective thing. Over all, I like the Dells, but I think you will have slightly higher odds of getting a bad one than you would from other manufacturer's (same goes for Dell desktops). They have a pretty good waranty, so that may not be a big issue (just a pain in the butt for us IT guys!). I would check the hardware compatibility list at Redhat if you intend to run Linux.
    • I do most of my software development on my Dell Laptop these days, typically running Linux, Oracle or Postgres (depending on project or client) and AOLserver if I'm doing web/db stuff.

      I love the portability. I've been working out of my house for about fifteen years, and my current laptop is the first machine I've owned that truly lets me work where I want to work. When in town, that typically means local coffee shops, where I've met several other people who do the same thing.

      I owned the first portable Unix system out there, an old Sony News with a monochrome display, 240MB SCSI hard drive, 24 MB RAM, MIPS 3000 CPU, and built in ethernet. Not bad for the late 1980s. It weighed a ton (20 lbs? something like that) but fit under an airline seat.

      That introduced me to the notion that portable computing was reaching the point where professional software engineers could consider cutting loose from traditional work environments.

      Today's laptops are amazingly good. Oracle on a laptop? I would've laughed ten years ago.

      I bought my Dell refurbished, saving about 30% while still getting the same 3 yr warranty they offer for new machines. If you can find a refurbished machine that fits your needs you can save a few bucks this way.

      Mine will be three years old this summer, and it's starting to show slight signs of flakiness.

      I'm not particularly hard on it but I do use it for several hours nearly every day, lug it around in my bookbag along with a bunch of other junk, sling it under the seat on airplanes, in the trunk of the car on road trips, etc.

      I almost never use the big padded carrying case I bought with it. The plastic's fairly well marked up from traveling snuggled next to camera bodies and the like, so it is subjected to a certain amount of wear and tear.

      But it continues to work, day in and day out. Can't ask for more!

      Mine has a 14.1" screen. A friend has a more recent Inspiron with a 15" screen and it's noticably more bulky and heavier than my Latitude. Not sure I'd trade the screen space for the additional bulk, though obviously no screen can be too big.

    • Re:Dell (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Com2Kid ( 142006 )
      Bull, Dell places fall limiters on your parts selection to increase their profit margins.

      Example, Pentium 4 Laptops are only available with Geforce4 video cards unless you get the one [dell.com] (/. is SOOO going to mess up that link, it is a link to the Inspirion 8200) model that they have that comes with a video card that is NOT insanly powerful AND has a Pentium 4 chip on it.

      This model also happens to need a lot of 'other' upgrades to bring it up to the range of the next cheapest laptop and then you end up paying the same price (or greater) then the bottom most default configuration of the next laptop one level up but without a good video card.

      it is insane.

      Their Pentium 3 based laptops are decent enough, but for anybody who wants to do a lot of CPU intensive work and NO gaming AT ALL, well hell, heh.

      That and they only sell Intel kit, Dell has a significant dedication towards caring more about what Intel says then what AMD says.

      Getting a well built laptop is NOT easy, and often times to get a REALLY well built one you have to deal with yee as old technology.

      See Here [dolch.com] for an example of this tendency. Yeesh. Who knew that waterproofing could cost so much? ^_^

      Here is another example [ruggednotebooks.com]

      Yeesh. That much money and it can just stand a water STREAM. Ugh. Nothing about full immersion. :(

      Anybody know of an x86 laptop that has a 15" screen, 1ghz+ chip, assloads of ram, and is fully submersible? No? Until they make one I am not buying a laptop. :(

  • Same thing for whole PCs nowadays (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ergo98 ( 9391 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:07AM (#3393732) Homepage Journal
    Indeed, even for whole systems it's very hard to find comparative reviews these days (i.e. a Dell XYZ versus a Gateway ZYX), and I would gather that the reason is that there are so many options out there, and the models change so frequently (or are badged in a country specific way, which we see a lot in Canada), that it's impossible to stay current (not to mentioning very difficult to get them all together: Pretty much limited to the very large publishers like ZDNet). Instead, the review sites target whatever new singular piece of hardware is out: A nice granular little review for a timely piece of hardware such as the new Athlon XP 2.2 or the WD 8MB cache harddrive -> It's easy to review something so contextual as you know what the readers are looking for.

  • A resource... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Grape Smuggler ( 569838 )
    If you are going to use the notebook computer as a mobile device (meaning that you travel with it), then I recommend checking out mobilecomputing.com. One of the best resources for notebook computing and PDA's also.

  • If you trust their opinions... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:11AM (#3393749) Journal
    Listen the regular cnet and zdnet sites usually have reviews of laptops. They are not as tech centered or as unbiased as other sources IMHO. However, they make for a good starting point.

    If you are going to use an alternative OS (linux or BSD for examples obviously) then check out a quick google search first to see people's impressions of the compatibility. This is a good idea anyway since people often sprinkle general comments into these and give you an idea of the quality of the product.

    Finally, unless you are going for a Dell please go to a computer store and browse. Laptops are very personal machines and pointing device preference and the feel of the keyboard beneath your fingers as well as general layout of special buttons and the brightness and clarity of the screens are something you need to get a feel for first-hand.

    If you get a Dell or other mail-order product it also gives you a point of reference so you know what to look for. For example if you try a box out at a store and realize you can't live without at least 15" screen or something.

    I have Dell Inspiron 4000 and have been very happy with the quality of the product. SuSE 7.3 installed with no issues and Sax2 did a better job than Dell in figuring out my video settings.

    Castle Wolfenstein looks damn good.

    ________________________________________________ __

  • opinion sites work... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CheechBG ( 247105 )
    From my experience (2+ years in retail computer sales) the best laptops you can buy are ones that you cannot see, like a Dell or a Toshiba Tecra. (This is changing, however, their Satellite's have gotten very good recently, check out the 5005-s507, s504, or, if you want to go all out, s607) I would try cNet, they usually have some ok reviews on notebooks, or browse the opinion sites, keeping a air of cynicism since some of these people will bitch up a storm because they didn't know how to turn on the computer.

    Personally speaking, if it were my money, I would go Toshiba. Great unit, low price, warranty extensions available through them for 3 years full accidental damage, the whole bit.

  • TiBook (Score:4, Insightful)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:13AM (#3393755) Homepage
    Couldn't be any happier with my PowerBook G4. Runs Mac OS X great and works well with Mandrake 8.2 PPC. Plus it's one cool looking notebook! 8-)

    iBooks are nice, but they use G3 CPUs... Mac users are waaay better off with a G4.
    • ...is that in three or four years you will have to invent a reason to buy that really cool newer version, as your old computer will still be running just fine...
      • Except that Apple now uses the same (lower end, usually) standard PC parts for all of the components. SCSI disks are optional, IIRC, but except for the board itself (and goodies like FireWire, AirPort, and that magic super DVD drive or whatever) and the power supply, you are pretty much getting the same thing you would in a lower end PC (i.e., PC100 RAM, smallish IDE disk, slowish PCI bus).

  • Thinkpad.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by THEbwana ( 42694 )
    I've previously had Compaq and Dell laptops. I've had a IBM Thinkpad A21P for about a year now. - I must say that it is the best laptop I've ever seen/used. It's display is a dream. Sound,graphics card, pcmcia, networking (miniPCI + Dlink DWL650) worked out of the box when installing linux as well as FreeBSD (installing Win2K or NT means hunting for drivers online ).
    /m

    • Re:Thinkpad.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by vlag ( 552656 )
      Thinkpad T-series are the best notebooks I've ever supported. BUT BEWARE: If you're buying for corporate deployment, BUY THE WORKHORSE MODEL. The others are discontinued too fast. Workhorse models are usually available for a whole year at least. I love the T-series though. Wow.
      My personal notebook is a Vaio. Too new to say how well it will last, but so far, it blows everything I've ever seen away. Before that, I had a Toughbook. If you want a notebook that will last forever, go for this. I used it for 3 years, now my 8 year old cousin has been abusing it for almost a year with zero-ill effects. They are nearly indestructable.
  • First you must make sure the laptop is 'Linux-Ready'. Take a look at the Standard Certification [linuxcare.com] at LinuxCare [linuxcare.com]. So that you can see whether your favourite Linux distro fits with your laptop of choice. Then proceed to google for the linux support for the rest of the devices.

  • I love my powerbook (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:16AM (#3393766) Homepage
    Yes, I know - only one mouse button.

    But otherwise, my Powerbook is a great machine. I can put Yellow Dog Linux on it if I want just Linux. Or if I want a good BSD system, like the song says, "Boom...there it is." Runs the major apps I care about (MS Office (yes, I know...but it's a business thing), Adobe Acrobat), runs the apps I make (Perl), has a great display, DVD playback, and if you plug in a monitor in the back, you can make it work as a secondary monitor (instead of just a mirror, which is kind of cool). Instant sleep-off, sleep-on just by closing the lid. (Most Windows based laptops I've seen get *very* pissed off when you put them in sleep mode, what with the PCMCIA slots getting redected and all.)

    Modem, 1 G/100/10 Ethernet built in, Airport built in (you can turn it off if you're worried, or get an Airport and bridge it to your local network at 128 bits encryption - sitting in the living room surfing the net was never so much fun ;) ). There's a Firewire port in the back so you can plug in your DV cameras and the like - again, sat there in the living room with my wife and tweaked my daughter's birthday party video.

    Other than the mouse thing - and you either get used to doing Control-Click for secondary mouse stuff, or when you have it at a desk you plug in a little USB mouse - it's been a rock solid machine.

    Oh, and it plays Icewind Dale great too. (Baldur's Gate runs all right, as long as you boot into OS 9, because the bastards haven't Carbonized BG I yet.)
    • Or if I want a good BSD system, like the song says, "Boom...there it is."

      Uhh... that's "Whoop there it is"...

      Airport built in (you can turn it off if you're worried, or get an Airport and bridge it to your local network at 128 bits encryption - sitting in the living room surfing the net was never so much fun ;) )

      The Airport antenna is built into every new Mac (desktops and laptops), and they all have an internal slot for the Airport card, but the Airport card itself is an extra $100.
      • Nitpicky, I know, but....

        The new TiBooks come with AirPort. And they have a nifty $100 rebate on an AirPort BaseStation.

        Lovin mine. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I betcha it's the only laptop you can buy with Unix not only factory-installed, but as the primary OS. Ya just drop a little icon onto your taskbar for Terminal, and it's just like home.

        If you want to work WITH your computer instead of ON your computer, it's a great choice.
        • Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I betcha it's the only laptop you can buy with Unix not only factory-installed, but as the primary OS.

          You're wrong. Tadpole Technology [tadpole.com] makes portable SPARC servers and laptop SPARC workstations. They have horrible battery life and they cost a fortune, but they're the only way to natively run Solaris/SPARC binary (proprietary) applications on a laptop computer. The new Tadpole laptops cost something like $20,000 or more, just for reference. You won't be buying one of them unless you really need it for something really specific.

          They come preinstalled with some version of Solaris. The other OS's you could run on them would be either Linux or NetBSD. But you wouldn't buy one for that. You'd buy one to run binary only Solaris applications that only run on the SPARC version of Solaris and not Solaris x86.

          Cryptnotic

      • Or if I want a good BSD system, like the song says, "Boom...there it is."

        Uhh... that's "Whoop there it is"...

        Actually, it's "Whoot! There it is!" (by 95 South) or "Whoomp! There it is!" by Tag Team, who followed up their smash hit with the underwhelming "Here it is, Bam!" and "Whoomp! There it went!" (Seriously, I'm not joking.)

        Yes, I went to High School in the early 90s.

        -Isaac

    • Airport built in

      Handy for travel, I imagine, but must make the notebook a lot bigger?

      • From IATA.org:

        OSX: Kosciusko Airport, Attala County, MS, US

        So Apple is Still in bed with MS... ooops! that is MS as in Mississipi, right?
    • There was point in time when I wanted a PowerBook G4.. and well, I bought one (400mhz). However, I became fairly sick of it after a while.

      The Ti case was kind of cool looking, but quite weak . Disite that fact that I treated it like a baby, it aquired a dent, scratches, a missing foot, and a slight curve to the monitor's backing. CD's also seemed to need a bit of help loading after a few month.

      I also found the 5400 RPM harddisk and the 16meg Rage 128 to to be quite a let down as well.

      No doubt, it was revision "a" machine, and this stuff happens with new toys. However, some of these case and hardware problems still exist in the current batch of PowerBooks. It was nice machine with a TON of features, however I can't seem my self looking at another PowerBook anytime soon. I think I'll stick with my DPG4 box.

  • Why (I think) laptops aren't as well-covered (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:18AM (#3393772) Homepage Journal
    Most of the sites mentioned (like Ars, Anand, Tom's, and so forth) are targeted towards the "enthusiast" market. They're the people who go out and but new motherboards, video cards, and so on, and they tweak constantly. You don't see too many reviews of actual, brand-name computers on those sites unless they are doing something truly unique.

    Laptops, for the most part, appeal to two groups of users - corporate shops and students (granted plenty of exceptions). Enthusiasts don't seem to buy as many laptops, probably because of the performance compromises virtually all laptops make. You can't readily upgrade anything on the typical laptop except for RAM, HD space, and Cardbus devices. There's no CPU swapping, no video card upgrades, and overclocking is kind of pointless on a laptop (though I had a PowerBook 3400c once that I overclocked from 240 to 270 MHz).

    What coverage there is of laptops has usually been in the "mainstream" print publications like PC Magazine, but they don't even go there too often.

    When it's a situation like yours, with multiple co-workers getting laptops, usually it's a pretty simple answer - your IT department will give you a Dell, Compaq, IBM, or Toshiba and tells you to love it. At least you guys get to pick!

    As for our shop - Compaq Evo N600c laptops. They're pretty slick. As for me (IRL), I use a TiBook 667 as my main computer at home, and it's most wonderful indeed.
    • Most of the sites mentioned (like Ars, Anand, Tom's, and so forth) are targeted towards the "enthusiast" market. They're the people who go out and but new motherboards, video cards, and so on, and they tweak constantly.

      No kidding. My wife asked for a laptop a few years back - to quote, "You won't hork around with it". Some folks just don't care to have a hard drive, video card, etc upgrade every few months.... sigh

  • The best place to compare... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcwop ( 31034 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:20AM (#3393784) Homepage
    that I know of is CNET. YOu can select laptop models and click the compare button. While not every detail enough to easily narrow things down.

    Click here for example [cnet.com]

  • Research, My Boy... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vjmurphy ( 190266 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:22AM (#3393793) Homepage
    The problem is that the person isn't looking to find a laptop that can run anything: they are looking for a laptop with great specs. I don't think that's the way to buy a laptop.

    When my wife and I decided to buy a laptop, we sat down and discussed what we wanted to do with it. After that, the specs wrote themselves, and we could move on to finding compatible machines.

    For example, she wanted to run Evercrack. I wanted screen real estate for work application. So a 3D accelerator, 512M RAM, and 1600x1200 display were part of the specs.

    Did I eventually want to run Linux on it? If so, then maybe a laptop with no proprietary hardware (as it turns out, I don't want to run Linux on it, though, at least not for a while).

    Finally, after determining what we wanted to do with the laptop, we spec shopped for the machine, using C-Net, USENET, vendor sites.

    In the end, we narrowed it down to the high-end Vaio and high-end Toshiba. Both had comparable specs, the Vaio was slower, with larger screen size (same resolution, though) and a slightly better 3D card (mobile radeon 7500).

    We went with the Toshiba, though: GeForce4Go (but the video card can be swapped out, apparently, which was a big plus), SD/Smart Media readers built in (for digital photography and swapping files to my Zaurus), Firewire. So we got a machine with great specs, but that does what we need it to do (plus more).

    Of course, the Everquest thing should have tipped me off. I think I've used the laptop once since we've gotten it. Silly wife. ;)
    • When my wife and I decided to buy a laptop, we sat down and discussed what we wanted to do with it. After that, the specs wrote themselves, and we could move on to finding compatible machines.
      Which is actually the only way to buy any system. When I was a consultant, this was the procedure I tried to follow with my clients.

      Which never worked. There was always some fancy -- and basically useless -- technology that my clients just had to have. One reason I'm no longer a consultant!

    • What model was it exactly? I was just looking at Dells and Toshibas yesterday, and alot of those features are what I want (except for the cpad thing).
      And if you dont mind, what did you pay?

  • Because laptop users are zealots (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Brento ( 26177 ) <brento.brentozar@com> on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:29AM (#3393816) Homepage
    As somebody who's been using laptops for the last ten years as my primary machine, and as a guy who's surrounded by mobile salespeople and execs who live on laptops, the reason why you don't see comparison reviews is because most of us are zealots about one or two brands.

    The salespeople at my shop are absolutely married to their Sony Vaios, because they look sexy, they impress clients, and they're very lightweight. They don't care about things like driver support or warranty, because the tech crew handles that, and they always get a new one every year anyway.

    The network admin crew loves Dells and Toshibas, because they're solid as rocks and the driver support is much better, with pretty regular driver updates.

    You're already seeing lots of people slap up their opinion here, but notice that it's all opinions - not hardware comparisons. Us Slashdotters are subject to the same hardware fanatacism that my cohorts are subject to. Whether you want integrated 802.11b, big hard drives, big memory support, whatever, you can always find it in any brand. Everybody's doing basically the same thing, and the performance is within 10% of the next guy.

    • Everybody's doing basically the same thing, and the performance is within 10% of the next guy.

      And in spades, too!

      It cracks me up to see some of the "comparisons" in some of the print publications which show glossy colored bar graphs that end up within about 2% of each other.

      So much of modern PCs are really the same in terms of performance. The PC mags are for computer buying like Car & Driver are for car buying - sexy performance tests and "the experience", but little in the way of real life "going to the grocery store" durability.

      What they can't or won't show are statistics on driver fragility, what percentage have to get returned for warranty work, etc. I guess that doesn't sell computers (or advertisers).

    • I dunno bout Windows, but my PCG-505GX works great under Red Hat 6.x/7.x...didn't even have to get a new pcmcia driver :}
    • I work in a corporate environment where people back in New Jersey who've never actually been on the road decide what laptops we're going to have out here in the field. So they pick machines that are powerful and have lots of features like built-in CDROMs and floppies and big screens and fast processors, which are all nice things to have for a machine that sits on your desk, but if you actually take them on the road, I want a machine that's lightweight and underpowered, and the only thing I'll spend more weight on is extra batteries. A few years ago, they were getting machines with the fanciest screens they could find, which meant fewer pixels and stunning 32-bit true color. Sorry - that's nice for Photoshop, but if you've gotta spend extra on screens, give me more pixels so I can read more text, and 8-bit color is fine. Dead-Tree Magazine Reviewers have similar tastes to the REMF\\\\ headquarters bureaucrats - their idea of a non-poweruser notebook is 5 pounds, just as their idea of a "budget home pc" is $999.


      I don't need speed - the only things I burn CPU on are Microsoft Office and (in the past) The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. I need something I can carry on the train without breaking laptop-bag straps all the time, and without breaking my shoulder. The one good thing about overspec'd overweight devices is that since the folks back at headquarters are cheapskates and don't give us new toys every year, at least they don't get obsolete as fast :-) But I need something I can use on the train every day and haul on airplanes as long as that stays legal.

      Over the years, we've used a variety of vendors - Toshiba, Dell, IBM, and back when we sold computers, OEM NEC machines with AT&T Death Star logos on the front. Unfortunately, we've always seemed to have been doing Toshibas when my machine was up for refresh - they've mostly been heavy unreliable pieces of junk that aren't made for the physical abuse that laptops get on the road, and they've got quirky power management that tends to have real trouble restoring from power-save mode without having to reboot half the time. Fortunately, my current-generation machine died, and the backup they've found me is one of the Portege7020s - the battery's ancient, so battery life is too short, but the machine's lighter and thinner than its faster predecessor :-)

  • I haven't used Sony, but they have a SuperSlim [sonystyle.com] Pro series that is very light-weight and seems to have good features, including FireWire and video out.

    I have used and supported Dells and Toshibas extensively at our University, however, and they both seem to be rock solid machines. Although the Dell might have a slightly better looking display, I think I favor the Toshibas a bit more. They are a little sleeker looking and they just seem to be incredibly stable. (We are running Toshiba Satellite 1805's (new), 2800's (old) and 2060's (moldy)). Kudos to them for redisigning their touchpads, which have incredible accuracy in their newer models.

    Note: We are a Windows 2000 only shop.
    • I was shopping for a laptop for a while and I just could not find anything that fit the bill for me. I'm a cheap bastard so price was definately a big consideration, but I also needed a decent size hard drive as well as a good amount of memory. Due to what I need the laptop for, I did not need the biggest or the best, just a utilitarian box that would let me work.

      Make a long story short, I looked through magazines for the ads seeing what was there. Nothing tended to catch my attention. I figured before I would give up I'd go check at Best Buy and CompUSA.

      While I was at Best Buy, a Toshiba rep happened to be there for his monthly "make sure everything looks good with the product visits" and we started talking. Basically after chatting for about an hour, we both decided that their cheapest model, an 1805 would do everything I needed and more. It had 256MB RAM, 20GB HD, 1.1Ghz Celeron, the screen was nice and bright, and everything I needed was built in. All, tax included, for under $1000.00.

      It came with WindowsXP, so I took it home, booted and within about 45 minutes had Mandrake installed (I love the DVD copy of the ProSuite!).

      I love my toshiba 1805 with linux.

  • 3 tips (Score:3, Informative)

    by ghostlibrary ( 450718 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:40AM (#3393862) Homepage Journal
    I tend to favor the main brands (Toshiba, Acer, IBM Thinkpad). You'll find that most Linux-ready laptops are also the better-made onee. I think this is because the linux laptop FAQ is weighted towards laptops that use decent hardware that has drivers available, so you get less off-brand internals.

    After 8 laptops (varios purchases, various sources), my two recommendations are:

    1) Make sure it has a 3 months warrenty. Most problems happen immediately (manufacturer flaws that appear during the first days of use). Most accidents happen during the first month (while you learn the 'stresses' your laptop can handle).

    2) Never get reconditioned (or used) laptops unless they include a new battery-- battery replacement is expensive.

  • avoid the M$ tax. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gukin ( 14148 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:43AM (#3393875)
    From what I understand, there are only three or so
    notebook MANUFACTURERS. Dell, Sony etc. take these notebooks, slap their trademarks all over
    kick up the price by 50%-150% and force you to pay the M$ tax.

    Scan http://powernotebooks.com to build your own.The above link has a perfect score in http://www.resellerratings.com (makes me a _little_ nervous) but they have a nice range of books from minimal SIS chipset based to the lateses P-4 DDR units with 64Mb DDR radeon video. All in the $800-$1700 (US dollar) range.

    For a narrower range of notebooks but with better prices, pop over to http://www.mwave.com and poke on notebooks in their catalog. mwave has very good ratings in http://www.resellerratings.com (more realistic IMHO) and will let you configure your notebook without the M$ tax.
    • I bought a Sager from powernotebooks.com several years ago, and they were so nice that I can easily believe they have a perfect rating at resellerratings.com.

      Prices were lower than from Sager itself, I bought with *no* operating sysem installed, no problem, and when I suspected a hard drive problem near the end of the warranty period, I had an actual human person at powernotebooks.com who hooked me up with an actual (knowledgable) individual, named tech rep at Sager, and instead of forcing me to send the unit in for repair and having it out of action for a few days, they shipped me a new hard drive against an RMA for the old one.

      As far as comparative reviews, I don't know about you, but once I get above the basic specs vs. price balance for what I need, the rest of my laptop buying decision is totally subjective. I am interested in screen appearance and keyboard feel more than anything else, and I strongly prefer a touchpad to the little mini-joysticks in the middle of the keyboard.

      How can a reviewer possibly rate how *you* will like this keyboard or that keyboard?

      The most useful vendor-to-vendor comparison would probably be durability, and the most authoritative place to get that information would be from the third-party warranty/service policy companies. I suspect that most/all of them are under NDA, but when I get a little time free I'll make some calls, see if I can't pry some information loose, possibly write a story about laptop durability for NewsForge.

      - Robin
  • Is there anywhere that will custom-build me a laptop? I know it will be quite expensive, but as long as the price of the laptop is less than the price of the equally powered desktop plus $750 I would greatly consider it. I'm just one of those my computer my way kind of people.

  • Multi boot on a TiBook. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:52AM (#3393911) Homepage
    If you've got the dough and want something that'll last with some "ooo" factor, get a TiBook with OS9, OS X and YellowDog Linux.

    That's what I got in January when they finally started to deliver a CD-R & RW burner in 'em. (I HATE not being able to back-up.)

    I can only recommend it. My G4/667MHz 512MB RAM 30GB disk is great.
    • It's too heavy - the things weigh 5 pounds or so. And the screen doesn't have enough pixels, though it's otherwise gorgeous. The battery life rocks - I don't know if I believe 5.5 hours in the real world, but it should scale pretty well with the 2-3 hour promises for many other laptops. So it's about long enough for an across-North-America airplane flight. Being able to connect the Firewire to the back and use it as a disk drive for your desktop Mac also rocks, and in traditional Apple fashion, there are a lot of things that just fit together nicely and make it a friendly environment.

  • Simple for me (Score:3)

    by ciryon ( 218518 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @08:58AM (#3393938) Journal
    I simple took a visit to Apple's homepage and once again realized that they are the creators of the finest laptop computers around.

    As simple as that.
  • PCWorld has a Top 15 [pcworld.com] list broken down into Power and Value categories. They also cover the pros and cons of each.

  • Yet more experience/opinions... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jantheman ( 113125 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @09:19AM (#3394015)
    I'm currently using a A21p (850 PIII) as my main machine. I've had it since March '01 with no probs.
    Reason: 1600x1200? You cannot really argue with that.
    Also, these IBM's have video in too! (Tosh's don't by default (I've just checked))

    The previous one was a 770z (March '99? I think I get a new one every 2 years. That had a 300 PII I think), which at the time had the highest resolution (1280x1024) and that's still going strong on someones desk (the battery's dead by now).

    Previous to that, it was a Tosh' Tecra something-or-other 166 (Nov '98) which is still running as a router somewhere in the organisation. (how's about that for reuse then :)

    Unfortunately, there isn't anything with a higher resolution of 1k6 x 1k2 yet (prove me wrong) but I'd get it as soon as it came out.

    Other collegues typically have Vaios (crap video cards (CStrike-wise)) and Dells (the little Inspiron 2650's ok, but too small).

    & the one I've got my eye on is the A31p but I'll wait for the 2 or 2.1 Ghz P4 (Q1 '03 roll-out, methinks) + it'll take the Ultraport camera I got for the last one too!

    After saying all that bollocks, I think that if this is your first laptop, the main things to ask yourself is:

    "How long's the warranty? (Y'know you'll drop it more often/earlier if it's shorter)"

    "Trackpoint or scratch&sniff?"

    "Will it scale up my display on the LCD if I drop the resolution (IOW: play CS) , or does it only show up the middle 30% of the screen?"

    "Can I carry it easily? (e.g. I don't feel like a dickwad with a 3kg 'top in a rucksack, or am I a neo-PHB who looks cools with a teeny briefcase)?"

    "Will it run Linux/BSD/OS-of-choice?"

    I'll shut up now & get on with....
    XOR EAX,EAX
    PUSH EAX
    RET
    .
    .
    ;lame I know...

  • I've had several Sony Vaio notebooks, and have been very happy with them. They are not the cheapest, but the build quality is good and they look the part, and they work nicely with other Sony kit.

    I've currently got a PCG-GR215SP. I want to put Linux on it but am afraid that it might have proprietry hardware that will screw up the install. Has anyone reading this got Linux running on one of the latest Sony Vaio machine? I know people have done it on earlier ones, but can't find anything on the web about installing on a machine like the PCG-GR215SP.
  • I'm in the market as well and I found this article pretty helpful [pcworld.com]. To summarize, unless all you do is hack audio/video, it's a waste of money to get a P4-M w/ DDR memory, despite the faster bus, etc. Photoshop and AutoCAD tests were actually faster on the PIII-M.

    I was leaning toward the Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 [cnet.com] until I read this [mobilix.org]. Running linux is a must, so now I'm considering a Dell Inspiron 8100 [dell.com].

    Both of the above have UXGA (1600x1200) displays. I originally tought I wanted a Powerbook G4 [apple.com], but am not convinced that I can be productive on a 1152x768 display. My development environment looks like this: Left 1/3 of the screen is an Eterm [eterm.org] running screen [gnu.org]. Right 2/3 is XEmacs [xemacs.org]. A higher resolution means more code visible at a time and/or a more readable font.

  • Linux and laptop (Score:5, Informative)

    by AtomicBomb ( 173897 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @09:36AM (#3394110) Homepage
    At the end of the day, many of us would like to check the laptop for "linux compliance" before actually purchasing the machine.

    I found these 2 site quite useful:
    Linux on a laptop [linux.org]
    UniX with Mobile Computers [mobilix.org]
  • The 10-20% performance difference between laptop models is nothing compared to the ergonomics and quality of the hardware. Remember, this isn't a box sitting under your desk which you can connect any keyboard or monitor to - once you buy it, you're going to have that box sitting on your lap, be staring at that screen, and be using that keyboard for hours per day. (Unless you're using it docked all the time, in which case it's more like a luggable desktop.)

    That's why laptop owners are so religious about their machines - this is an area where idiosyncratic unexplainable personal preference really is the most important factor. It's also why comparative laptop reviews are generally useless. Go out and get your hands on a bunch of different machines - that'll tell you more than any magazine article.

    That said, PC Magazine's Support and Satisfaction Survey [pcmag.com] will give you some useful hard data on laptop reliability, and reading lots of comments on epinions can give you a dim impression of common trends in owner experience.

    My personal experience: I bought a ThinkPad T21 about a year ago, but I found the keyboard painful to use and had to sell it. (Which is a shame, considering how good previous IBM and ThinkPad keyboards have been.) Compaq has a good keyboard, but Compaq sucks for build quality, reliability, and service. I tried HP and Toshiba models at a local store and was unimpressed with their ergonomics and general quality. I recently used a Dell Inspiron 4100 for a month - it was cheap, and the three-year CompleteCare service plan is awesome, but I found the machine itself to be mediocre in every way. Mediocre build quality, mediocre ergonomics, mediocre screen, a little too heavy, and really ugly.

    I'm now using a PowerBook G4 - it has a few quirks, the main one being that it's not i386/Linux :-), but aside from that it's a a pleasure to use. Lightweight, excellent quality, gorgeous screen, and everything Just Works smoothly out of the box with a tolerable operating system, unlike the many hours I usually spend getting all the random quirky hardware in a PC laptop working under Linux. And there's no Windows Tax.

  • Dynamism.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by spencerogden ( 49254 ) <spencer@spencerogden.com> on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @10:11AM (#3394302) Homepage
    If you are looking for a high end laptop, I would definitely check out Dynamism [dynamism.com]. They have great service, and offer some very cool machines. There comparisons are purely spec based.
  • One thing I really REALLY need in a laptop that I am buying is no friggen OS pre-installed. I have only had self built PCs and even when I used windows ... well, I got it the cheap way. Now, my copy of XP is a student license and I don't even use it - and I sure as heck don't want to pay for it twice when the price of the laptop is already pretty damn expensive. This is not a pro-linux troll - its a statement that I am a cheap bastard!

    After that - price is my major litigating factor. I am just not in the money. The current laptop I am looking at can (humerously enoug) be found @ www.walmart.com. Since my girl works @ wal-mart I am hoping to get the 10% off it so its only a $900 laptop (p3 1ghz, dvd - not a bad little laptop for the price).

    Built in 802.11b is important, bluetooth not so much - but I can live w/o tho since I can get the adapter

  • Anand Covering Laptops (Score:5, Informative)

    by OctaneZ ( 73357 ) <ben-slashdot2 @ u m a . l i t e c h.org> on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @10:17AM (#3394344) Journal
    In the last month Anandtech [anandtech.com] had begun reviewing laptops with the same rigor with which they approach everything else! While they have only covered 3 laptops so far, I think the reviews are exactly what a technical person wants to read when they are trying to make an educated decision.
    They have covered the:
    Asus T9 [anandtech.com]
    Toshiba Satellite [anandtech.com]
    and just today:
    WinBook N4 [anandtech.com]

    I am really glad to see someone as trusted at Anand filling this niche!
    -OctaneZ
  • Go AlienWare. They by far have best service and warrenty that I have yet to encounter. Not to mention the coolness factor. Who else has a 2.4ghz LAPTOP [alienware.com] for under $3000?

  • Linuxcare Labs certification reports (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Paul Komarek ( 794 ) <komarek.paul@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @11:34AM (#3394935) Homepage
    If you are interested in GNU/Linux laptops, you can narrow the search quickly via [linuxcare.com]
    Linuxcare Lab's certification reports. As usual, GNU/Linux-related docs are useful descriptive than the manufacturers'. =-)

    -Paul Komarek

  • Personally, I'd wait two weeks (until WWDC [apple.com]) and see what shows up here [apple.com].

    ~jeff
  • Otherwise you're just paying for all the advertising and marketing budgets.

  • Rabid Laptop Testimonials... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @12:17PM (#3395258)
    As long as we are on the subject of rabid laptop testimonials, I'll tell you about my laptop.

    A Tadpole SparcBook 2, from 1993. A neat little thing I got from my company and it still works great, though I no longer have a working battery for it, it is neat to boot up for nostalgia's sake. Built in SCSI, AUI Ethernet, etc. Anyway, the funny thing is my home was robbed and the laptop stolen. I tried to call pawn shops to report it, and they all had the same question (so, is it a Mac, or a PC, I would say "saprc, running solaris, and they would ask "is that a DOS program? Does it say anything about intel on it? A latop *has* to be either PC or Mac, so you probably have an old 286 or 386 or something" Describing this thing to pawnshops was painful., eventually I just said if it is a laptop and you can't tell what the hell t is, it's probably mine). As it turns out, no one would buy it and they guy got caught two years later and couldn't even figure out how to turn it on, and I got it back intact. Still works great, though I'm looking for a cheap PC laptop replacement, since the SparcBook 2 is getting long in the tooth. Mac platform looks like they approach Sun quality on laptops, but is too expensive, oh well.
    • I have the solution to your battery issue.
      http://home.earthlink.net/~gaite/energy.ht m
      http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/SolarPow ere dAccessPoint
      http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/to uring/laptop.h tm
      http://www.roadwaves.com/toys.html

      Have fun.

  • Speaking as a tech... (Score:3, Informative)

    by gkbarr ( 124078 ) <gkpcs@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @12:21PM (#3395285) Homepage
    I have repaired laptops for many years now, so here's my 2 cents:

    BEST - IBM ThinkPad T-series - All other laptops are playing catchup to the IBM T-series line of portables. They have the best weight/performance/features ratio of any laptop on the market. IBM offers a fully 3-year warranty that covers your laptop internationally, no other mfg does this like IBM. Since this is /. I should mention that you can load your favorite *NIX distro onto one of these without a lot of trouble.
    The biggest drawback to the T-series is the price - starting at $2400. If you can afford it, this laptop is king.

    Sony Vaio - Beautiful laptops that run great until you have to get them repaired. The backlog on parts from Sony is a joke - 3-6 months easy.
    Toshiba - They used to make great laptops, but have fallen in years past to mediocrity. A reasonable cheap solution.
    HPaq - Forgetaboutit. Neither HP nor Compaq makes a laptop I would purchase, period.
    Apple - The PowerBook G4 is beautiful, so long as you can stand running Mac OS. X is better... much better. The iBooks work well too. Apple repairs on laptops - mail it to them and get it back in a week fixed. At least you know it'll be done right.

    Hope this helps. Best of luck.

    • Laptops are a very personal thing. The ergonomics are way more important than anything else. In fact, you should ignore all the "horespower and torque" ratings and just focus on this.

      I chose my IBM because I tried a friend's and fell in love with the keyboard. I now prefer it to a desktop keyboard. I also really like the pointing device, especially in combination with the third "scroll" button.

      The 14" screen is the perfect compromise- just big enough for all day viewing at 1024x768. Bigger isn't necessary, smaller is too squinty.

      There's also an overall quality feel that's a notch or two above everything else, except Apple. Ti Powerbooks are beautiful.

      As far as I'm concerned, IBM blows everything else away. In comparison, my bro-in-law's Dell feels like a piece of crap.

      I'd still take a three year old IBM T-series over a brand new anything else. Speed, schmeed.
  • Don't forget comp.sys.laptops newsgroup to read users' reviews. Definitely use groups.google.com :).

  • This is buried so deep you probably will never see it.

    I have a compaq Armada E500 with the 1400X1024 LCD in a titanium shell,DVD,integrated 10/100, modem P-III 866 with 256 meg ram.

    EVERYTHING works under linux, setting up Slackware was effortless, I have the modem working, everything else working and X 4.2.0+ had the DRI 3d acceleration for the ATI card working again..

    No hardware on this INCLUDING the docking station works perfectly under linux.... it is an awesome machine for linux.
    • No in the No hardware line means ALL hardware works pefectly.

      I even have suspend working well (no effort involved) including suspending my 802.11 card (my compaq EVO sometimes didnt suspend the pcmcia cards.)
  • You can find out how your favorite laptop works with Linux by looking here:

    www.linux-laptop.net [linux-laptop.net]


  • Something to be really careful with is screen size and native resolution. Bigger is not always better. As LCD screens get bigger, their native resolution is higher too. A 15" screen with 1200x1600 resolution sounds great, but in fact the text will probably be too small. Putting that screen at a more comfortable 1024x768, it may look horrible, because it's not the native resolution- text may be a bit fuzzy, and pictures not as sharp and clear. A 14" screen at a native 1024x768 will probably look better, with more readable text, even though it's smaller.

    Most web pages these days are designed for 800x600, with some at 1024x768. So 1024x768 is probably best for most people. It happens to be the native resolution of most 14" laptop screens. Bigger screens are usually higher, and smaller screens lower. So 14" is probably the sweet spot.
  • Had my Dell Inspiron 8000 for two months when the video started acting skittish. Called Dell customer support. By 9AM the next morning the service representative was at my workplace swapping out the LCD. No muss, no fuss.

    I currently dual boot XP and Mandrake 8.1. At one point I was tripple booting 2KL,XP and Mandrake 8. No problems. The ATI M4 viedo card uses the generic ATI Rage 128 driver though in Linux. After a year Dell finally put out a decent video card driver with OpenGL support. Of course, newer models use GeForce cards.

    If you work for a big company you get a beefed up 3yr warranty if your company has an account with Dell (most do).

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