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Laptop alternative to Apple

I've had Asus, Acer, Sony, IBM and Dell laptops.

Choose Sony if you want something reliable.
Choose Thinkpad if you want something more basic and more easily supported with BSD with the well-burnished myth of better reliability.
Choose Dell for a balance of cost and support.
Choose Apple if you want to run OS X or want it to be nicely designed (as opposed to well engineered, which Sony and Lenovo are). From the reliability I've had, build quality - or in fact quality of any description - no longer seems to be a compelling reason to buy Apple hardware.
 
eva01 said:
You are the first person I know that has had a vaio and not crap out on them within a year
Click to expand...
Mine made it to just about three years (except for the battery - it killed two batteries faster than it took WinME to crash). :rolleyes:

I did have to reload Windows at least once every 4 months (when I was lucky), but that has nothing to do with build quality or the OPs problem so forget I mentioned it...
 
Sesshi said:
I've had Asus, Acer, Sony, IBM and Dell laptops.

Choose Sony if you want something reliable.
Choose Thinkpad if you want something more basic and more easily supported with BSD with the well-burnished myth of better reliability.
Choose Dell for a balance of cost and support.
Choose Apple if you want to run OS X or want it to be nicely designed (as opposed to well engineered, which Sony and Lenovo are). From the reliability I've had, build quality - or in fact quality of any description - no longer seems to be a compelling reason to buy Apple hardware.
Click to expand...

I couldn't ask for more. Thanks.

laidbackliam said:
the intel macs won't run a BSD distro? odd
Click to expand...
I never really thought about it. I'm downloading a simular OS to what I want to run now to see it can boot. I was under the impression that Mac OS X Intel (and Gentoo Linux) were the only OS' that booted on Intel hardware.
 
I don't really get it. I didn't really have positive experiences with Thinkpads - underspecced, over burdened (even the 'subnotebooks'). Reliable sure (not that Sony has been any less reliable for me), but not as usable. The only guys I've talked to who seem to recommend Thinkpads are people who have never had anything but Thinkpads.
 
eva01 said:
You are the first person I know that has had a vaio and not crap out on them within a year
Click to expand...
When i worked in a major computer store 2 years ago we sold plenty vaios. Not one was ever returned. Ontop of that, my father is running a vaio lt with no problems. Hes the kind of user that will search the internet all day and download every single application available. Still runs fine.
 
My Toshiba Satellite is great. Cost about the same as a mac book but I think it does more (Not that I've had a macbook :p)
 
If I might ask, what kind of company is it that requires bizarre builds of BSD to run on user purchased hardware?:confused:

Anyways, for my 2 cents, you get what you pay for.... regardless of the brand, most of these computers are running with similar major components.
 
Either a Thinkpad (the T20 (c. 1999) was the only non-Apple laptop my family has ever owned, and before I got BootCamp running, it was what I would use to get windows-only content. Never put anything later than 98 SE, though), or a Sony Vaio. Before the MacBook came out, and I was very desperate for a laptop, it was either a vaio or a thinkpad. I would have purchased the 13.3" Vaio with the core duo (forgot what it was called), but it is very similar to the MB, except it has dual graphics (dedicated gpu, and GMA 950).

EDIT: put bolds in so you wouldn't have to read the whole post to see my recommendation.
 
the Toshiba satellites are BEAUTIFUL machines. The vaio's are overpriced yet good, Compaq/HP are fairly good and acer just sucks.

EDIT: Toshiba's are also built the strongest and least likely to break if it fell or what not, not that im reccomending you experiment with it.
 
Well, I have used these laptops in some sort of cronological order :

Gateway (I do not remember the model but it was horrible anyway)
Toshiba Tecra 750D
Toshiba Satellite 460CDX
HP Omnibook 6000
Compaq Presario V300
Asus Z70Va

Although I envy IBM's keyboard and construction, the price tag does
not convince me (I prefer to add a second keyboard at my lab since it
is where I work 80% of my time and save some money). also, the
Asus is really well build (as I said, many people use laptops without
checking where the cases come from)

About linux, you may be interested reading what other users already did :

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/sony.html

S.
 
eva01 said:
You are the first person I know that has had a vaio and not crap out on them within a year
Click to expand...

Same. All my friends with Vaio's had them in for service more than they used them.
 
Afternoon ya all,

I am completely new to all of the laptop debates and arguments. I have found myself in a warp of indecision not knowing which way to look out. Please, please, please stick with me, I am desperately in need of serious help. I know this story is long but I don't know who else to ask.

I want to purchase a shiney new laptop. Simple. Right?...WRONG :confused: . I am a student right now after losing my job and deciding to try and get my degree...anyway...I am also an amatuer graphic designer who does small jobs here and there but nothing major.

So, it goes like this. I wanted to get myself a Mac laptop and purchase Adobe Creative Suite 2 for it. I used a PowerBook 17" at my former workplace and it was a thing of beauty, so naturally I wanted one. Upon seeing the new MacBook I thought of getting that instead however, I then came to understand that the CS2 software will not run perfectly on the new Intel/Mac combo. Adobe say officially that the next generation Creative Suite will work on the new MacBooks (CS3) but the current package was not designed to function 100% on them now. (I have a PDF document explaining all this from adobe site)

This tale of events lead me back to considering the PowerBook where I know it will run CS2 perfectly well and seeing that Adobe has said the new package will be configured to work on the G4 processors and the new duo MacBook ones. This makes me think even though CS3 is approx 2 years away CS2 will still be grand and the new one will work on a PowerBook G4 if I bought it right now. However, when I told my friend I was getting a Mac he "went through me like a train". He insisted I was MAD to buy a Mac.

This is where my troubles begin. I was quite happy and perhaps naive(?) to consider getting a PowerBook and he insists I should be getting a more powerful(?) and faster(?) Alienware laptop. Then I found myself looking at the Ferrari Acers and so on...blah blah blah, you catch the drift.

So, if I buy my PowerBook am I going to be making life harder for myself. Am I truely buying something that is going to have a limited shelf life with consideration to using it for design purposes? I think the Alienwares are awesome machines in terms of power but I just don't fancy the looks or the design. Then there is the whoo-haa about the horizontal lines in the 15" PowerBooks but not the 17" ?

I thought it was gonna be simple, but OH, NO!

TS
 
eva01 said:
You are the first person I know that has had a vaio and not crap out on them within a year
Click to expand...
My uncle has had a vaio since 99 or 00 and its still running perfect. He is ditching it for a mac now just because his Sony doesnt run Mac Os.
 
Lenovo thinkpad t43, with the suggested lenovo drivers installed: 460m ram used. Not including the rescue center or security software.

It is a great laptop, but keep that figure in mind. It can and will frustrate you to death. IBM had it at under 300, but lenovo is releasing more and more bloated crap.

Otherwise I love it. Just make sure you get one with a nice video card and a high res display. That would make it just like apple.. er.. well the one I might buy one day :D

Scot
 
I had one of the original vaios from late 1998 and it finally bit the dust (mostly a battery problem, really) in 2004. I'd consider 5 years to be pretty good, for any system.

Never liked any IBM I've ever used. Family members worked for both HP and Compaq for a few years so that's what we've had more recently (currently have a Compaq V2000 series that runs OSx86 nicely) and had no troubles. One that was three years old had the display crap out but it was due to be replaced anyway.

That said, I think my next full time computer will be a mac, because i really just like OSX better.
 
http://www.alienware.com/
2GB Dual Channel DDR SO-DIMM at 400MH
240GB (2 x 120GB) Serial ATA 1.5Gb/s 5,400 RPM w/ 8MB Cache
Dual 512MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 7900 GTX SLI Enabled
Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS PCMCIA
AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML44 2.4GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache

kinda pricy but its got a little power....
 
tartansparkle - A Macbook or MB Pro with 2GB of RAM should be extremely usable with CS2 compared to a last-gen PB. The Rosetta performance hit (RAM hogging aside) basically knocks a Core Duo Mac down to G4 levels.

If you hold out for Merom, the difference should be even smaller.
 
eva01 said:
You are the first person I know that has had a vaio and not crap out on them within a year
Click to expand...

Make that two. I'm now on my third Vaio without problems.
 
JBot said:
When i worked in a major computer store 2 years ago we sold plenty vaios. Not one was ever returned. Ontop of that, my father is running a vaio lt with no problems. Hes the kind of user that will search the internet all day and download every single application available. Still runs fine.
Click to expand...
I currently work in retail and we sell Apple, Sony, HP and Toshiba. Reliability is Apple, Toshiba and then Sony and HP joint last from our machines.

Sonys these days seem underspecced for their price and have often poor build quality. Did you consider that any of those Sonys were returned directly to Sony? We have even returned faulty ones to them ourselves and they have returned to store saying no fault when the serial number is different. Clearly replaced, but Sony don't want to admit to it.
 
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