Reading Hardware

A coworker of mine is about to get rid of his crappy old Gericom notebook and has asked me to help him find a new one. Since I'm not too terribly well informed on current notebooks, I'd very much appreciate technically founded suggestions and field reports.

Requirements:

• Fast HDD - I know this is not easy with notebooks, but in this case it's crucial. (Note that I'm saying fast HDD and not fast bus. I don't care about the latest Ultra SCSI interface when it's connected to a 5400rpm disk.)

• Fast CPU (3GHz and up, Athlon 64 preferred)

• At least 512 Megs of RAM.

• Battery life is not important, the notebook will be connected to external power 99.9% of the time.

• Ethernet connector (100baseT), WLAN not required.

• CD/DVD toaster (needn't be dual-layer).

• Linux compatibility is a plus, albeit Windows XP will be the primary OS.

Important: I'm not looking for the cheapest thing that works - quality/support is rather important.

Consider yourself hugged.

This post was edited by null on Feb 28, 2005.

A coworker of mine is about to get rid of his crappy old Gericom notebook and has asked me to help him find a new one. Since I'm not too terribly well informed on current notebooks, I'd very much appreciate technically founded suggestions and field reports.

As long as he doesnt try and go for another Gericom, there's not much he can do wrong ;) Gericom sucks a lot, because their notebooks are the most crappy ones on earth - not to mention their bloody support. X-(

Try something like Acer, Dell or IBM - they seem to produce the most robust, stable notebooks AFAIK. Suggestions are (if we like to follow your set of requirements): a Pentium Mobile-powered notebook, because you get all the nifty features you want on-board, like ethernet, wlan + co., etc. etc.

There has been a report about notebook producers (support, production quality, etc.) in ct'-magazine recently. I could try to find and send you a scan-in of this article when I'm back home (right now I'm trying to get a lift from Pforzheim to Munich, and nobody in the world seems to travel there today :().

cu, w0lf.

Fuck off the 30 seconds posting limit!

Try something like Acer, Dell or IBM

That's part of the problem. A friend with a Dell notebook swears on Dell, another friend with an IBM notebook says I shouldn't buy anything other than IBM, and so on. Looks like notebook owners are pretty biased. But then again, there's so much crap on the market that once you've found something that works for you, it's usually a wise decision to stick with it.

in ct'-magazine recently. I could try to find and send you a scan-in of this article when I'm back home

Aah, thanks for the info. No need to scan it, the c't should float around the office somewhere. Eventually it should arrive at my desk. :-)

Good luck finding your lift!

Consider yourself hugged.

HP laptops can be a real value. Though, this all really depends on how much you are willing to spend. I can get a highend gaming laptop for 1700 tommorrow if I was inclined enough to do so (Can't afford it just yet :( ) but then again, he's prolly on the business end. So, for bang for buck, get something with a pentium M. They are fast, powerful, cheap, and the best cores on the market (320-bit that is). In fact, they beat anything equally clocked (as to whether or not that includes AMD64 is beyond me ATM) so you will get your power. Then, 512 is defact, anything less is crazy.

Lastly, 15 inch screens will save you an ass load of cash, and from experience 15" is quite nice. Anyway, I'll be watching this thread as well, cuz I just sold my laptop. :(

I should be ashamed of myself.

Apple makes the best computers and OS in the world, but obviously we're talking PCs here.

In my extensive experience, IBM is great, but overpriced and underpowered. Sony Vaio is similarly overpriced, but high on the eye candy and design factor. Toshiba has always made a superior and durable laptop.

If you're looking at desktop replacement (and it sounds like he is), the best bargains on the market are HP laptops. You can get a ridiculous amount of power for not too much money with HPs. They're ugly and blocky-looking, but nothing I've seen comes close in terms of value. They offer the highest resolutions, the brightest screens, the best video cards with the most memory, etc. For $1700, you can get dual layer, half a gig of RAM, 256 MB on the ATI x600, a very hi-res 17" wide screen (1680 x 1200), 7200 rpm 60 gb hdd...

That stacks up favorably against Alienware and Voodoo laptops that cost over two times as much.

Ewige Blumenkraft!

This post was edited by mclaincausey on Feb 28, 2005.

Apple makes the best computers and OS in the world, but obviously we're talking PCs here.

Yeah, unfortunately. I sugtested a PowerBook, but since we're primarily developing for the Windows environment...

For $1700, you can get dual layer, half a gig of RAM, 256 MB on the ATI x600, a very hi-res 17" wide screen (1680 x 1200), 7200 rpm 60 gb hdd...

Ooh, sounds yummy! Thanks, I'll give them a try.

Consider yourself hugged.

I bought an IBM Thinkpad in December, which I guess makes me biassed as well. Anyway here are some insights I gathered in the decision process, some more, some less related to the wishes of your I-actually-want-a-desktop coworker:

• Price-wise there's not as much difference between brands as there used to be.

• Acer notebooks come im alluring configurations given their price, but I find the quality of workmanship to be lacking. Also they're so... gray.

• I think IBM only uses Intel processors.

• The quality of the screen will account for a major part of the final price. I feel the FlexView screens found in Thinkpads are currently the best thing you can buy (great brillance, no color changes whatsoever regardless of viewing angle).

• Resolution: 1024×768 is too little, 1600×1200 is too much. Unfortunately there are few models the resolutions you will want (1280×1024 or 1400×1050).

• Fan volume.

• You probably want the ventilation exhausts to be on the side, not at the bottom.

• I find the quality of workmanship in Thinkpads very appealing. I've also seen heavily-used Thinkpads who must have taken quite a beating over the years and they're still in one solid piece. Warranty is quick and painless, although IBM recently sold their PC division to another company. It vowed to continue the quality of service, but the jury's still out.

• The maximum volume of Thinkpad speakers could suck small moons through a garden hose.

• Don't go with less than two weeks of waranty. Consider buying a new notebook before waranty runs out.

• The warranty must be granted by the manufacturer. At least over here, warranty granted from the trader ("Gewährleistung") isn't worth shit. Basically it just ensures that you get delivered a working product. All that happens after that is on you.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

I-actually-want-a-desktop coworker

That's the appropriate term I think. He's had a notebook for 4 years now, and except for one time it's been sitting on his desk all the time. But he absolutely wants a notebook again, so I figured what the heck...

Acer notebooks come im alluring configurations given their price, but I find the quality of workmanship to be lacking.

There used to be a kick-ass Acer Aspire in our cinema feeding ads and movie previews to the video beamer. The thing rocks but I've heard people complain about the quality of Acer before. However, quality is important. The thing should last quite a few years.

Warranty is quick and painless, although IBM recently sold their PC division to another company. It vowed to continue the quality of service, but the jury's still out.

Aah, I didn't know that. Thanks for the info!

Consider yourself hugged.

I have to respectfully differ on ThinkPads, for a couple of reasons in addition to those cited earlier. One is that, in my personal experience, working as a tech for a huge corporate customer of IBM's, I've noticed some serious quality control issues with their products. While the notebooks have been much better than the desktops so far (our contract is less than a year old), it still concerns me. The build quality is great of all their products, but there have been an inordinate number of bad monitors, mobos, hard drives, and other hardware, and getting replacements has been a bit like pulling teeth--the support isn't near what our former partner, Dell, offered us, meaning no-questions-asked replacement via next day air. Also, the sale of IBM's PC business to Lenovo might or might not bode well in terms of support and repair--it remains to be seen. I would hesitate to purchase from a company that is being sold off.

I love IBM notebooks in terms of fit and finish (and appearance) but they are still really struggling on price/performance. Graphically, they are weak. Their flagship T42 and their G "desktop replacement" series have lousy resolution: 1024x768. That's the same resolution I have: but my screen is a 12" versus the those models' 15" (same aspect ratio)! That's inexcusable for a $2000 machine. I don't think you can get a card with more than 64MB (if that, most are onboard with shared memory), and they don't offer the latter generation graphics chipsets at all. Also, the hard drives are undersized for what you spend, and top out at 5400RPM. They have good security features, to be fair, but I'd rather have the aforementioned other technology (which, unfortunately, Apple does not offer either in its laptops :'(, though OS X more than makes up for it to me). The focus on ThinkPads is features enterprise folks like--security and durability--and not features most of us like, like speed and the ability to do media well, be that media games or A/V processing.

IBM also doesn't allow much latitude in terms of configuration options. You cannot upgrade core features like hard drives unless you do it yourself. I don't know if this is a marketing or a supply chain thing, but it's ridiculous.

One thing I do like about IBM is the built-in utility partition. That is a very useful feature.

I didn't mention Dell before, but you should also look at them. Second-to-none (even better than Apple in some cases) support can be a compelling feature. They also always have bleeding-edge components available. Dell is always among the first to have certain technologies available, and among the cheapest to have the other technologies.

Ewige Blumenkraft!

Their flagship T42 and their G "desktop replacement" series have lousy resolution: 1024x768.

Do they have different product lines in the US? There's no G series over here (only R, T and X) and virtually all have a resolution of 1400×1050.

I don't think you can get a card with more than 64MB (if that, most are onboard with shared memory)

Again, here most have 32 MB Radeons or 128 MB FireGLs if you want to spend more.

I'm puzzled because last December I basically spent two weeks comparing Notebooks of various brands (except Dell) and found them very similiarly priced for comparable configurations.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion