In the market for a workhorse laptop

T

The King of Pants

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 7, 2004
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I need a laptop for word processing and playing mp3s over head phones. It will be carted around daily in a backpack, and thus needs to be durable.

It will mostly be used on the go, so battery life is my second bigest priority.

Quality of customer service/warranty support is the third major criteria.

As i am typing on it, i'd prefer a screen resolution greater than 1024x768 but this isn't critical.

Not going to be gaming, and a sub $1,500 price point is what i'm shooting for, though i'm not on too tight a budget.

I'm looking for recomendations of specific models, rather than just "Dell" or "Lenvo".

I really need something soon or i'd just wait for the second revision of the new Macbooks, those things look damn near perfect.
 
maybe Lenovo R50e?

service = one of the best
durable = built like a tank
screen size = 1024x768, but depends on if you go with the 915 chipset with dedicated gpu
graphics = integrated or dedicated
quiet = yes
sexy = yes
keyboard = best of the best
screen = bright
price = way less than <$1500 depending on what you put in it. mine was $850 when they had them on sale

i <3 mine :cool:
 
While I am sure they can be found cheaper when I was just picking up my replacement laptop I looked at the Acer Core Duo based laptops at compusa and they seemed really responsive, were very light and had great features all in your price range. There was one that was a little over $1000 that had 1Gb of ram and a 14" screen I believe, only looked briefly. They also had one with 2 GB of ram 15.4" widescreen that does 1280x800 and a few other options for like $1599.
 
If you really want rugged I wuld look into a Twinhead DuraBook. They are really built like a tank. Actually the chosen personal Laptop of military personal in a war zone who cant afford a Pioneer Toughbook.
As for finding a Durabook, try a local Sam's Club or Costco as those are the only places I have seen them sold retail.
 
ridsco said:
If you really want rugged I wuld look into a Twinhead DuraBook. They are really built like a tank. Actually the chosen personal Laptop of military personal in a war zone who cant afford a Pioneer Toughbook.
As for finding a Durabook, try a local Sam's Club or Costco as those are the only places I have seen them sold retail.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure there Panasonic Toughbooks.
All the cops in my area use them in their patrol cars.
I was thinking about getting one but couldn't get out of the handcuffs. :D


J/k
 
the Toughbooks are pretty cool, but a little overkill for an urban writing machine.

I like the R50e, the thinkpad family in general look pretty good to me but they just seem overpriced.

I hear a lot of people lauding their Acer and Asus notebooks, even some of the Dells on the business end of the spectrum. anyone have hands on expirence with any of those?

Are there any other tough efficent computers out there?
 
been doing even more reading while driving the desk tonight, does anyone here have any expirence with the Asus z63a or w3a. looks pretty slick to me.
 
I'm not really a Dell fan myself but from what I've learned trying to find a good laptop for myself is that the Dell 9300 is prolly the best bang for the buck that you can get right now.
" I could be wrong though". But you can call them and negotiate to get them down some and get a 7800GTX added if that's what you would want, I'm not sure how much battery life is wasted from adding that to it though. But they seem pretty cheap for what you get.

Dell 9300

Here's what I configured just now,

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 [Included in Price]
17 inch Wide Screen XGA+ Display [Included in Price]
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm [Included in Price]
80GB 7200rpm Hard Drive [Included in Price]
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability [Included in Price]
Intel® PRO 2915 and Dell 350 Bluetooth Internal Wireless Cards [Included in Price]
ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X300 64MB HyperMemory™ [Included in Price]
9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery (80 WHr) [Included in Price]

Total = $1,637


And the only thing that seems weak is the videocard, and someone on this site told me that you can call them and get them to add the 7800GTX for somewhat cheap.
If you ould find some Dell coupons, then you could probably get this setup with the 7800gtx for around $1600-$1700.

Seems kinda hard to beat
 
That's pretty nice but I'm not gaming and size and power usage seem to mean that a DTR model really isn't what i'm looking for.
 
The King of Pants said:
That's pretty nice but I'm not gaming and size and power usage seem to mean that a DTR model really isn't what i'm looking for.
Click to expand...

What is DTR ?
 
The King of Pants said:
That's pretty nice but I'm not gaming and size and power usage seem to mean that a DTR model really isn't what i'm looking for.
Click to expand...

I don't see why our saying that the Dell is a DTR then.
It has a mobile cpu, and it comes with a low power consuming gpu stock.

But to each his own I guess
 
it's a couple of things, it weighs just shy of 8 lbs with the small battery, it has a 17" screen and measures 15"x11" that's hefty for something i'm going to cart around all day. the other thing is dell claims you can get 3.4 hours out of the standard 6 cell battery and over 5 out of the 9 cell, but i'll belive it when i see it, maybe if it's powered on doing nothing.
 
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