Six Laptops That Don't Burn

digihome writes, "An exploding laptop can really ruin your weekend, so here's a review of six laptops that are unlikely to blow up." From the article: "We evaluated everything from battery and air vent temperatures, AC power draw and battery life to performance and price... What we found is that there's a real difference among those notebooks that know how to take the heat without sacrificing performance."

misleading summary

[cbc1920]

I don't get how having a cool notebook translates into a battery that doesn't blow up. As far as I remember, the whole battery recall was because of a slight possibility of an internal short in LiIon cells. This had everything to do with manufacturing process and perhaps gravity, and nothing at all to do with the rest of the notebook. To suggest that these products avoided the recall because of their design is ignorant. They avoided the recall because they sourced different batteries.

Granted, a cooler notebook will result in longer batteries, since heat will reduce the effective capacity over time. That is the only advantage, from a power standpoint.

Say no more, Panasonic Tough Book

[Anonymous Coward]

I am already a big fan of Panasonic's Tough Book series. The fact that they earn high marks in yet another review, power consumption and heat dissipation, merely cements my opinion of them as a top choice notebook.

I would previously recommend ThinkPads, but even before moving to Levono the quality was waning. The only thing the ThinkPad has that is superior is a longer warranty. Always buy the longest extended warranty possible for a laptop if you actually take it back and forth to school or work. The failure rate is abysmal. I pretty much expect a laptop to last a year without repair which translates to expect having to buy a new laptop a year after the warranty runs out.

Dell XPS M1210

[NerveGas]

    Yeah, Dell has bad press lately. But that particular model uses a Samsung battery, not a Sony model. Very low draw, very good thermal characteristics. I've accidentally put it in my bag (which is a VERY snug fit) while running apps that kept it from entering standby several times - even after running in a sealed bag for a couple of hours, it's still running nice and solid. The bad and laptop were warm, but not at all hot. Having a Core Duo, 2 gigs of RAM, built-in mobile broadband, and still getting 5 hours of real-world runtime out of it are pretty nice, too.

Re:misleading summary

[joshua.e.jacobs]

I think the type of notebook does effect the chances of the battery burning. Toshiba said their notebooks don't have this problem despite using the same batteries because they're designed differently. Here's an article with a bit of info about the toshiba recall. http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_d tlView.jsp?soid=1501060 [toshiba.com]

Re:forget battery

[b0s0z0ku]

What is up with all the new laptops having that? My 4 year old $1000 laptop runs a 1400x1050 on a 15" screen but I can't find anything like that anymore that isn't over 2 grand.

1400x1050 on a 15" screen (for that matter anything above 1024x768) is useless on a 15" screen unless you have bionic eyesight. For us mortals, 800x600 is sufficient. If you need finer resolution, you're better off with an external monitor.

-b.

Re:misleading summary

[msormune]

Well of course they will say that, it's very good advertising. "Look we made our laptops better, they won't burst into flames!". And if a Toshiba laptop bursts into flames, they will say "Well, we were wrong about the design just like everyone else, let's just make a recall like the others". Toshiba has nothing to lose.

Re:Celsius v. Fahrenheit

[orasio]

Base 10 is much easier than base 12.
I would understand a base 2 system.
We have one measure for distance.
The meter. km, cm, mm, micrometers are just a way to not use the zeroes. The unit is the same.
You have lots of different ways to measure stuff. I don't know how you can tell right away which is longer, two and a half feet, or 27 inches. 29 ounces or two pounds.
Celsius and Farenheit is not that much of a problem, aside fromt he fact that it makes more sense to use water than CO2 as the base of an imperfect system, but it makes more sense to have a scale that is based on ten, and has some coherence.