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I need a PC laptop- </shame>

rdowns

rdowns

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Jul 11, 2003
27,397
12,521
OK, my company has OK'd me opening a new office in Denver (taking advantage of a competitor who is going out of business and pilfering their best people) so I'll be needing a laptop. Not relishing traveling to Denver 2x a month but I could potentially double my business and income. Anyway....

I need a very light laptop and would appreciate any recommendations. I'll keep an LCD, KB and mouse in Denver. I can pretty much buy anything I want. What should I get?
 
Umm.... just off the top of my head I like that ultra light IBM (Lenovo) thinkpad. I think it's the "T series." I know that alot of people love it and the keyboard is awsome. I personally really like sony viao notebooks. I can't remeber what their thin and light is called. But, I used one and was quite pleased. In general I prefer the Viao over the thinkpad, but I do like the thinkpad's keyboard.
 
rdowns said:
OK, my company has OK'd me opening a new office in Denver (taking advantage of a competitor who is going out of business and pilfering their best people) so I'll be needing a laptop. Not relishing traveling to Denver 2x a month but I could potentially double my business and income. Anyway....

I need a very light laptop and would appreciate any recommendations. I'll keep an LCD, KB and mouse in Denver. I can pretty much buy anything I want. What should I get?
Click to expand...


Dare I say it, a Dell Latitude or maybe even one of the new Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo notebooks. The latter can be had very well specced at good prices.
 
Personally I like the Thinkpad line from Lenovo. The build quality on those machines is good. Otherwise my vote will go for toshiba and sony.
 
I am in a similar situation. My company is mostly windows (as many are) and it does not make sense for me to use anything but a windows laptop for travel. I really enjoy the IBM line but the new sonys and Dell latitude models are nice too.
 
stay the hell away from fujitsu-siemens,will only cause you trouble
it has for me
i'd reccomend toshiba
or maybe a cool alienware laptop
 
I've noticed that toshiba is awesome.
the few toshiba laptops my family has owned are still going strong.
 
sk3pt1c said:
stay the hell away from fujitsu-siemens,will only cause you trouble
it has for me
i'd reccomend toshiba
or maybe a cool alienware laptop
Click to expand...

I second this. I had a Fujitsu laptop for nearly two years, and it's one of the big reasons I switched back to Mac. Miserable machine, first the hard drive broke, then the sound card on the motherboard, then the hard drive again... and they have pretty bad tech support. Anything goes wrong, you gotta mail the whole piece of junk in and you lose it for two weeks.

I would recommend a Sony laptop, or a Dell.
 
Maybe this isn't much help, but I don't understand why you need a PC laptop. Is it that they won't pay for a Mac? Do you by any chance already have a Powerbook? If so, I don't understand why you can't use Guest PC to use your windows apps?
 
If this is really a business laptop, then you want something that is tested in a business sense to work day in / day out, and also to have next-day service for those moments where it might break.

At my old job we used Dell lattitudes and we never had problems with them. As long as you get the business line of whatever company you're buying from, that's step 1. Step 2 is to pay the extra for upgrade support / warranty so that if you need a new drive or something, it's next-day, and you don't have to wait on hold.
 
You can't really go wrong with IBM (Lenovo) if it's business you're after. They're built like a tank, astonishingly lightweight, and their keyboards are phenomenol, even better than PowerBooks. The included onboard utilities are top notch. I had an X31 that I bought off EBay and it was awesome. In fact, I even thought the black casing was quite handsome. I'm not much for all the fancy two or three tone cases Sony, Dell, and some others use these days.

I've also had good luck with HP. Avoid their low end consumer line and go for the higher end business/consumer lines. I'm typing on a TC 4200 tablet from HP and it's lightweight, has a great keyboard (almost as good as the IBM), and was competitively priced for a tablet.

My other suggestion is to seriously consider a convertible tablet. Most are under 5 pounds, give you excellent flexibility to type or write and use electronic ink applications, and most cost not much more than just their laptop-only counterparts.

Let's face it: for business, Windows is not as elegant as Mac OS X, but it's not *that bad* anymore and it does do the job relatively well.

Good luck.
 
ozone said:
You can't really go wrong with IBM (Lenovo) if it's business you're after. They're built like a tank, astonishingly lightweight, and their keyboards are phenomenol, even better than PowerBooks. The included onboard utilities are top notch. I had an X31 that I bought off EBay and it was awesome. In fact, I even thought the black casing was quite handsome. I'm not much for all the fancy two or three tone cases Sony, Dell, and some others use these days.

I've also had good luck with HP. Avoid their low end consumer line and go for the higher end business/consumer lines. I'm typing on a TC 4200 tablet from HP and it's lightweight, has a great keyboard (almost as good as the IBM), and was competitively priced for a tablet.

My other suggestion is to seriously consider a convertible tablet. Most are under 5 pounds, give you excellent flexibility to type or write and use electronic ink applications, and most cost not much more than just their laptop-only counterparts.

Let's face it: for business, Windows is not as elegant as Mac OS X, but it's not *that bad* anymore and it does do the job relatively well.

Good luck.
Click to expand...


HP business notebooks are good. i have used 2 of them and the TC4200 is an excellent tablet PC. Lenovo is also having some sale so you should be able to T or the X series for relatively smaller price. Dell business line looks really ugly though. So for good service buy HP / Lenovo business sytems with one of those 1-2 day turn arround time support as mentioned in the other post.
 
Thinkpad Z60t. it's got a widescreen, and a titanium skin. I'd recommend the T43, but the Z60t is just as delicious, and possible better than the T-series. :)
 
Featurewise, the 12" Widescreen Dell (the 700m??) and 13.3" Sony Vaio are great, but they don't seem to be built well and aren't as reliable. That can't be judged by aesthetics, although the Dell and Sony do look good, IMO.

alexstein said:
Personally I like the Thinkpad line from Lenovo. The build quality on those machines is good. Otherwise my vote will go for toshiba and sony.
Click to expand...

The Thinkpad line has a great reputation, but does the Thinkpad line from Lenovo have a great reputation? Is it safe to say that now? I don't know.

I'd look into getting a T-series laptop, preferrably a 14.1" model, but don't quote me about reliability, because I don't know much about Lenovo. They're not the same. Maybe they cut corners to save money.........I don't know. All I know is that IBM didn't seem to do that. They were expensive laptops, but for good reason.
 
I haven't had any issues with my Dell Inspiron 700m at all. 4 pounds and a Trubrite screen.

Other budget options would be any of the Averatec laptops. The Averatec 1050 has a 10" widescreen and weighs about 3 to 3.5 pounds, even with an internal Combo drive.
 
From personal experience I would lean towards Toshiba laptops especially the Satellite or Tecra series, never had any problems with it. Also of note, as nice as Sony laptops look, I had one (I obviously fell for the looks) and some of my coworkers have it, and in my experience and from what I have heard they are not too reliable, CD-ROm drive failed, the so called XBrite screen displayed blurry text compared to Toshibas TruBrite.

And first thing you should do is install Firefox and use it as your default browser, eversince I did it, dare I say it, I like it more than my Apple 1Ghz Powerbook, as the TOshiba is more responsive and generally faster at quite a lesser cost. After my SOny fiasco, I dont care so much about the looks of the laptop as I care abotu reliability and SPEED.
 
It pains me to say but...

My vote would go to the Sony Vaio TX series. They're beautiful, small and powerful. Not only that Apple has apparently poached a fair number of Vaio
engineers for the new Intel based Mac laptops. If Jobs rates them, then so do I!
 
Abstract said:
The Thinkpad line has a great reputation, but does the Thinkpad line from Lenovo have a great reputation? Is it safe to say that now? I don't know.

I'd look into getting a T-series laptop, preferrably a 14.1" model, but don't quote me about reliability, because I don't know much about Lenovo. They're not the same. Maybe they cut corners to save money.........I don't know. All I know is that IBM didn't seem to do that. They were expensive laptops, but for good reason.
Click to expand...

From what I've heard, Lenovo products are just as good and the reviews on new Lenovo products are excellent. IBM still has their brand on them ("ThinkPads"). I'm wondering if Lenovo was subcontracted to build them anyways in the past and just decided to get in the game as their own brand when IBM sold off their division.

In fact, some reviews are praising Lenovo for finally getting some long time desired features into the very conservative ThinkPads (tablet function, widescreen, etc.).
 
ozone said:
From what I've heard, Lenovo products are just as good and the reviews on new Lenovo products are excellent. IBM still has their brand on them ("ThinkPads"). I'm wondering if Lenovo was subcontracted to build them anyways in the past and just decided to get in the game as their own brand when IBM sold off their division.

In fact, some reviews are praising Lenovo for finally getting some long time desired features into the very conservative ThinkPads (tablet function, widescreen, etc.).
Click to expand...

I second Thinkpads, they are really great, but you got to pay even more for them than an equivalent Mac.
 
Ok other than the fact we are heading to -8F tonight Denver isn't that bad. Just make sure you have moisturizer if your skin dries easy.

Support comments that you should go with the business line of product and upgrade warranty, with your kind of travel you won't have the luxury of just grabbing someone elses computer for a day etc.

Depending on your companies standards, the benifit to a pc vs mac especially here in Denver, you can go a few steps and find a place which can do pc support, for macs, there are 2 apple stores (not bad locations overall) & compusa and not much else.

As to brands... IBM T-43 (i think the latest) are very good and appear to have a real nice wireless setup, if i understand correctly the antennae is built around the screen and picks up alot. Don't know much about the X series and the like. We use alot of T4x's.

Sony apparently has some very nice light weight small laptops, one of Exec Directors just got one, from the pc techs, the screen is small and for day in day out use not easy, but if you have a dock with external screen etc it is a very good trade off. Especially when on a plane.

Toshiba used to have quality business machines, but i havent been at a company for a few years that has them so base opinion of what others are saying.

If you have time, go to some pc stores and get a feel for the machines, check out weight, ergonomics etc, the lightest smallest laptop in the world is useless if you can't use it properly. Given a dock in both offices, i would lean towards the smaller ligher ones as it will make travel easier and your bag lighter.

Welcome to Denver when you get here!
 
the few people i know that have bought small and light sony laptops have had to have them repaired for serious failier about once ever two months, one is on 4 motherboards the other is on 3 so far.
 
Thanks for all the recommendations.

Why does it have to be a PC? Stupid office politics. While I was successful getting a Mac for web testing and to do some marketing type work, support is non-existant from IT. The IT VP told me I would be on my own. In any case, I might just use my iBook and wait for an Intel Mac portable in the hopes I can boot into Windows. For our apps that don't work properly on a Mac, I will just use a spare desktop I plan on having in the Denver office.
 
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