Purchase Advice Needed

I'm pondering purchasing a new laptop... my old Vaio is absolutely ancient, heavy, and slow (800MHz).

Specifically I'm looking at the ThinkPad X61s notebook.

Anyone experienced with this product?

Alternates?

Thanks!

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson
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Sorry, I am not. Just used a new Lenovo at a client which is ok but the plastic case appears too flimsy for my taste.

I've got the predecessor (D14RA) of this one:

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Absolutely love it, so far. But it is certainly not light and it may not have enough horsepower for what you need. Although mine finished every compile run about 30% faster than all the others during a Cypress session. What I really liked was that it came with some non-announced goodies such as an RS232 port.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
Reply to
Joerg

A new Vaio!

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Do they come in a light-weight version?

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Mine is the midweight version, about 4 pounds, but it has a 4+ hour battery life, enough to watch a DVD and get some work done on a plane. I got it a couple years ago for about $1400, but they're cheaper and have bigger screens now. They have a really light version, but it's more expensive.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

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HP's nc6320 series is still available at NewEgg with XP Pro. Not as petite as a Vaio but shouldn't make your arm grow longer with carrying it, either. A possible plus is that they include actual "legacy" parallel and serial ports in addition to the newer stuff like WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, Firewire, etc.

This may be about the end of that model series; used to be several more on the higher- and lower-end. If you'd prefer an XP machine, you'd better hustle.

Reply to
Rich Webb

Whatever you buy, buy something that is being advertised as 'for professional/business use'. Computers come in two grades: el-cheapo consumer grade and professional/business grade. If you want a computer that doesn't crash all the time, pay more and get the professional version.

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Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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Reply to
Nico Coesel

Would you care to elaborate on that ?

Just which components are different and what differences do they make ?

Graham

Reply to
Eeyore

Factory floor, engineering test lab perspective... get a tablet PC with a touch screen input capacity.

Business, sales, design engineering... get a wide screen wi fi/ blutooth capable CAD station type laptop.

Reply to
JackShephard

Fuck Sony.

Reply to
JackShephard

Things are actually getting bigger and heavier as screen sizes get larger.

Reply to
JackShephard

Yes... I too think he is full of shit.

He could be thinking of one brand, but most makers make one line of gear for any given form factor, mini, notebook, laptop, etc.

Reply to
JackShephard

There is definitely a wide variation in the quality (cost / reliability trade-off) between different laptops. I don't know the best way to identify the good ones prior to purchase.

Batteries for one thing - Mine has a battery pack that is supposed to have 8 cells in it, but actually it is the "consumer" version that has six real cells and two plastic cylinders that have no electrical function but look approximately like lithium cells. Of course to get the same power out of the battery, the cells get run at higher current and will fail when the series resistance reaches a lower value that wouldn't have stopped the

8-cell version from working.

If you will use the laptop for long periods in a place where AC power is available then I strongly recommend getting a laptop which will run off the AC adapter with no battery fitted and which allows the battery to be removed easily (mine requires a screwdriver). If you take out the battery then you can avoid cooking the battery at 50 degrees C (which is the temperature reported by my hard drive if I take the home made fan tray out from under my laptop.) My battery pack is dead now but I don't feel like paying another hundred pounds ($200) for a new pack that won't get used many times and will get killed by the heat in another year or so. I'd rather get / build a 12V to 20V inverter and run the thing off a lead acid battery - much cheaper and won't get cooked.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Jones

In consumer grade equipment usually the hardware is cheap and crappy. Bad design practise of critical components like the motherboard result in timing errors and thermal problems (crashes / strange behaviour). Also a lot of stuff is handled by the CPU which makes the system slower than it ought to be. Support is lacking and drivers are hardly tested.

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Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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Reply to
Nico Coesel

Make sure you don't get one of these:

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(Sony battery packs.)
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There's always

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;-)

Reply to
JeffM

The guys I worked with always found the IBM laptops to be more rugged than other brands. These are folks who spend 25%+ of a year on travel to unpleasant places on the globe.

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Mark
Reply to
qrk

Tell me who makes these crappy hard drives, memory, display contollers, LCDS, CPUs and heck knows what else for the consumer market ?

Where can I buy them ?

Why would I want to ?

Graham

Reply to
Eeyore

Rugged. Sure. Titanium shells etc.

Nico said most laptops are 'crappy'.

So, does Hitachi for example have a 'crappy' range of hard drives that are cheaper than their others ? And how does one get a 'crappy' Intel or AMD CPU ? Is someone selling them out the back door ?

Graham

Reply to
Eeyore

I prefer women, to be honest.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Any manufacturor. This is a well known example from the automobile industry: Mitsubishi and Hyundai both produced a van with an identical diesel engine from Mitsibishi. Well, almost identical. The engine for the Hyundai van (H100) was produced faster with less accuracy and cheaper components. The Mitsubishi van (L200) used engines which where produced slower and more accurate with more expensive parts. The end result: the engine for the Hyundai usually didn't last 100kkm (62k miles) while the engine used in the Mitsubishi vans easely lasted

300kkm (187k miles). Even though something comes out of the same factory and looks the same doesn't mean it is the same quality.

It is like electronic components rated for commercial and industrial temperature range. The design is the same, the die is the same, the factory is the same, the packaging is the same and still the quality (MTBF) is different.

Any computer shop around the corner.

To 'save' money (NOT!). When I was still studying I made quite a lot of money by taking the crappy parts out of people's computer and replacing them with proper hardware in order to get a stable computer system.

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Reply to
Nico Coesel

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