Purchase Advice Needed

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:

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.

A new Vaio!

John

Do they come in a light-weight version?

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

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

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.

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.

The Thinkpad T60. I don't have it yet, but it is on my list

Rene

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.

F*ck Sony.

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

I have two T60s. One has a 14" 4:3 screen and the other a 15.4"

My older system failed after a month. The service/support was excellent. Both have a 3yr. warranty (for the $100, or so, it's worth it, IMO).

Why T60 instead of X60?

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

Make sure you don't get one of these:

There's always

I prefer women, to be honest.

John

The X60 is a fine machine, however for my taste, the screen is on the small side, and the 512MByte max RAM is on the useless side. I wouldn't buy a machine with less than 1GByte

Rene

Note the "bow wave":

I just picked up a cheap Compaq consumer type laptop for a project where I require a "transportable computer". I didn't really shop much for it, just dropped into Best Buy an hour before closing.. a few notes:

- HDD is of pretty decent size (160G), but despite a AMD Turion 64 X2 and 1G the machine is noticably slower than my 3 year old desktop machine on most stuff.

- Most only come with 1G, which is pretty minimal. Some might have the ram slots filled with low density modules, so you have to buy 2G to get anothe 1G

- They all come with Vista only. It's a PITA (a real PITA), but not quite as disasterous as it first seems.

- This one came with a 15.4" screen like most of the cheapish ones, and only WXGA resolution, but I don't think my eyes are good enough anymore for the same resolution on a 12" screen.

- a bit of a 'trick' .. all the machines on display have no battery but when you get it home you find that the battery adds almost an inch to the height at the back! (it sticks out so it tilts the back up to a pleasant angle). So, it doesn't sit flat in a briefcase. I guess maybe there's more battery life as a result.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I bought a System76 Gazelle as part of my Big Linux Experiment. I'm loving it so far (but then, I haven't tried running any Windows apps yet).

Oh, you probably didn't mean _that_ alternate, did you?

I've ordered a ThinkPad X61s.

...Jim Thompson