Comments | justacat: Laptop help

justacat

Laptop help

Oct 28, 2005 13:07

My laptop has officially been pronounced kaput. It's the motherboard or the processor or something similarly fatal - the cost and effort of fixing it simply isn't worth it. So I'm laptop hunting ... and there are so many options, and I'm awful at making decisions; I research and research and become paralyzed with minutiae ( Read more... )

technology

Comments 15

isiscolo October 28 2005, 18:02:21 UTC

My most important advice is to get one with a special Intel mobile chip (Pentium M) which runs cool. I didn't, and saw my 2.5 hr battery life decrease with time to less than an hour. My husband's laptop with the Pentium M has a 5 hour battery life!

justacat October 29 2005, 23:10:11 UTC

Yeah, that comports with my understanding too ... I'm definitely looking only at ones with Pentium M chips, though the battery life also depends on other things like whether the graphics card is integrated .... 5 hours is *great*, though!

Thanks for the advice :-)

agentxpndble October 28 2005, 18:10:17 UTC

I don't have any advice for shopping, but just wanted to express my sympathies. Augh!

I'm on a Mac iBook G4 14" and love it, but wouldn't try to convince you to go Apple at this point. It's more expensive and you seem like you know what you want. I like having the bigger screen, but am cheesed that in spite of the extra inches, it still 768x1024 resolution. I do watch a lot of DVDs on it and sometimes prefer to (over the television) because the resolution is so clear.

justacat October 29 2005, 23:13:00 UTC

Yeah, switching to Mac just isn't appealing to me at this point - I know the Windows-based applications too well. I'm not sure if the G4 14" is a widescreen or not, but apparently most of the 14" widescreens have 1280x768 resolution ...1024x768 seems very low! I'm even worried about 1280x768, since I'm used to using 1280x1024, but that difference might just be attributable to the wideness of the screen, I don't know (resolution still baffles me).

But I'm glad to know that 14" seems big enough for watching DVDs...

cmshaw October 28 2005, 18:21:47 UTC

my laptop is fairly middle-of-the-road, but it is widescreen. when i watch nonwidescreen things on it it just pops black bars on either side; when i hook it up to a tv, it automatically adjusts resolutions to a squarer fit (most of the time -- if i swap it back and forth a lot, it will eventually become confused and remand a reboot before snapping back to proper resolution).

justacat October 29 2005, 23:15:29 UTC

The problem is that I watch mostly 4:3 stuff (like ... Pros!! and vids!! *g*), which means a lot of my screen will be wasted; the 4:3 image I see with black bars down the side will be smaller than the image I'd see on a 4:3 14" screen. But searching has revealed to me that everything's going to widescreen, and particularly the laptops that have features to make video watching easier. So I'm resigned to the fact that it's going to have to be a widescreen ... I just wonder if 14" is big enough, considering that I'll mostly be watching 4:3 things.

executrix October 28 2005, 18:39:46 UTC

Keychain drives and Aloha Bob are your friends!

justacat October 29 2005, 23:16:27 UTC

Oh, I have everything totally backed up - I'm fanatic about that. I use Retrosopect (I've heard Aloha Bob is great too), and I back up my entire HD at least 3 times a week. But I'm still going to have to re-install all the software, and then restore all the data from my backup drive to the new computer - such a pain!

smaragdgrun October 28 2005, 20:00:12 UTC

Me, too. I mean, I'm afraid I'll also be laptop shopping in a short time. My video driver is so close to dead I can hear it gasping.

I think I want something a bit lighter; and possibly wider. I'm thinking about finding one with a spare battery/remote charger so I can plug in the spare over near the wall and then work wherever I need to for 4-5 hours before I have to switch. I'll probably go with Lenovo, for a number of reasons (over HP or Dell), unless I can figure out a way to revert to an iBook.

justacat October 29 2005, 23:18:46 UTC

I've been doing a lot of research, and I'm considering going an entirely different route, outside the big-name makers. I've spent a lot of time searching around online and am beginning to lean toward a company called Portable One (http://www.laptopsinc.com. By all accounts their machines (based on an Asus model) are incredibly well made and unusually customizable for a laptop - and just as important, their customer service is *amazing*. I read this but then found it out for myself when I called them and - gasp! - an actual real live human answered the phone and answered my questions!

I'm looking at their MX, which is about 5.3lbs (not an ultralight) and a 14" widescreen ....

smaragdgrun October 30 2005, 16:57:36 UTC

I just got back from my sister's place, and saw their new Panasonic Toughbook CF-Y2, and I'm in LOVE. It's so light, and rugged, and has everything. Things I didn't realize I needed -- like an SD card slot, integrated speakers, and 800.11a+b+g.

I really am going to see if the one I have can be repaired, though... sigh.