What Laptop?

[Louise]

I am looking for a laptop and from what I have read IBM seems the best choice, although the cost is a bit of a problem I have asked around for an alternative and ‘Compaq’ was suggested but are they any good

[saviller]

I'm biased (since they pay my salary), but I'm onto my 5th now I think - all work supplied and improved spec as they have evolved, and I've yet to have a failure in the many years I've been using one - I use my laptop as my main machine all day every day, in fact I reboot it very infrequently.
I have a T40 at the moment and it goes everywhere with me - if I'm not at my desk, then I take it with me and connect via wireless around the site. At home I use wireless broadband for doing stuff like this.
Yes, you pay a more for the 3 little letters, but I believe its worth it

[mylesdw]

I've done some work for IBM over the years and always liked their laptops. Very solid and nicely engineered. Used to be rather heavy but that may not be true now. I liked the mouse control joystick thing much better than the touch-pad on my current Sony which is a pain in the arse. I don't know what the price difference is but I guess I would pay 10-15% extra for the IBM.

[RichardG]

Go on, buy a iBook (or even better a Powerbook) and to hell with the rest of the world!

Falling that, just bought a Dell for site work and its quite nice. Plain, but lightish and fairly powerful.

R

[Stan]

Had 3 IBMs never had any problem.Watch the model though as some of the small ones have very short battery duration before recharge.

[Grease Monkey]

I've always had a Toshiba of one type or another, usually the Tecra. Lightweight and a good screen.

Got given a Dell with a whopping 1400 x 1050 screen, but couldnt use it as all of the important keys (cursors, home, end, insert, delete etc were so far apart you'd get RSI moving you hand back and forth. )

They've now changed the layout and i'm using another Dell and while its much heavier than the Tosh, was much cheaper. :thumb:

Saying that, go for the largest screen res you can find. Dont bother with any laptop with a 1024x768 max screen size.

[Louise]

I have not had any luck with Dell :angry: over the years so that is definitely a no, no! I think IBM really is out of my price range (unless someone knows where I can get a bargain!) so if anyone has tried Compaq then do let me know!

[kenf]

Hi Loiuse,

I've had many different makes of laptop over the years, including Compaq. Never had any problems with any of them.

My current laptop is an Alienware (suppposed to be 'the' gaming machine and is currently one of the best spec on the planet so it will do anything bar make the tea) - but it's very expensive.

Basically, you get what you pay for. Acer make good, cheap laptops - the 2 that I had gave me no trouble, yet friends of mine with the same model say the screens get a bit dodgy (I put it down to the way they get abused - if you need a laptop to be very robust then go for something more 'heavy-weight').

Not being funny, but the main considerations are size and weight. Being a girlie, you'd probably not want a heavy titanium cased, 15" wide-screen beast - no offense. Oh and the other main consideration is the cost - Acers come in at under £575 for 2.6GHz with XP home including VAT.

Ken

[kevchard]

I use a compaq on a daily basis, it has never let me down, it is not that heavy an has a quick processor or whatever they are called. Being married to a net working engineer helps with all the wireless stuff. But for the price I certainly have no complaints.
Helen

[kevchard]

One piece of advice I would give is to steer clear of a celeron processor. If it is battery life you are after then go for a centrino, if it is power then go for a pentium 4/ AMD processor.
Cheers
KEVIN