How heavy is your laptop ?

I am thinking of buying a laptop and I would like it to be performent and as light as possible. The sony vaio TX is only weighing 2.8 pounds (1.25kg) which is important to me. What kind of laptops do you have ? What to look for when buying one ?

 

Powerbook G4, 12" model, but it's heavier than that Vaio. However, I'd carry a 5Kg weight round my neck in preference to having to use Windows. But that's just me

 

My laptop is heavier than the earth and four times larger. It also runs hotter than the sun.

 

None of the above.

Reliability and a long parts and labour warranty. Everything else is secondary.

That's why I chose IBM with 3 year on-site parts and labour.

 

I really need to replace my laptop, I've taken to just upgrading it as much as I can but I think after 6 years its now missing a few things I need.
When I look for a laptop I look for the usual things like size, weight, battery life, memory, cpu, etc, but I also look for keyboard layout (some have very strange arrangements), where the floppy/cddrive are (if they're at the front that's a real PITA), and NOISE, don't you just hate it when your working away nice and quietly then all of a sudden the Tornado starts up, I'd rather buy a slower machine than have to put up with the noise neccessary to keep it cool.

Best notebook I ever had was a Compaq 486dx-100 (back in 1996), no fan noise at all, drives in the right place, had an A4 footprint, Colour TFT screen, but best thing it had a Trackball as pointing device, not the crappy touchpads, think I sold this to Dom for his parrents end the end, last I knew it was still going, built to last.

The one I have at the mo P2-333, 256Mb ram (came with 32mb), 20gig hard drive (came with 4gb!), its ok but lacks dvd, and I can't put anymore ram or change the cpu.

So I don't know what to buy, not like you can go to a shop and try them out these days, you have to buy them online and the kind of things I look for in a laptop are not posoble to tell online. Which is probably why I've hung back from buying a new one.

 

who needs a laptop when you've got a blackberry?

 

I've bought mine on cost mainly...got a advent 2.8ghz 736mb ram, 40gb hdd....16 months warantee left, second hand for 250 quid....goes on my coffee tables and I can surf in the evenings...perfect!

only had it 10 days too..

 

Shame there isn't a branch of John Lewis in Exeter eh?

You mentioning a trackball reminds me of the other thing I love about my IBM - the trackpoint

I could never go back to using a touchpad now

 

Mew, mew, mew

Sorry forgot, although you're a cat, you don't actually speak cat

So...assuming that's a Pentium 4 laptop, how is the fan noise?

Sounds like a good price you paid there

 

iBook 14†here – it is my main machine, i.e. I don't have a desktop set up (though do have a Mac Mini boxed up as an emergency backup).

I'm an ex IT manager and have been a PC user since long before Windows even existed (I started on a IBM 8086). I have in the past been responsible for rolling out many hundreds of laptops in various large corporate environments. The key thing you want with a laptop is strength and reliability – trust me, nothing else matters. Had you asked me for a laptop recommendation I'd have said Toshiba or IBM and to forget everything else – they used to be miles ahead of the competition, but were never cheap. I'm out of touch now, but I'm pretty convinced that Toshibas are far more built down to a price than they used to be. I haven't seen a IBM in ages, but they always used to be very good. I'd still advise buying a laptop targeted at a corporate environment – if it's strong enough for some obnoxious dumb-ass salesman to bash round in the boot of his Vauxhall then the chances are it will last a good while at home.

If you don't want a PC, which I decided I didn't any more, then Apple kit seems very well made indeed. I'm very happy with the iBook so far, though I've only had it about 6 months so can't comment on long term reliability. I want at least three years out if the thing. One nice thing is how quiet it is, it really is silent unlike the P4 Tosh Tecra 9100 that preceded it and sounded like a small hoover.

Tony.

 

You mean the red rubber clit above the "B" key? Completely unusable and a waste of space IMO

Touchpads rule! When you have them setup for "tap click" and edge scrolling they are almost as easy to use as a proper mouse.

The company I work for uses IBM laptops. They seem to be very strong and reliable but they're not cheap. When I've parted with my own hard-earned for a laptop I've preferred Dell and have never had a problem with them.

Michael.

 

I think build quality should be very high on the priority list. I've got a (free) gateway and if it's MOved with anything less than complete love and care, it freezes up and needs restarted. Even if the keys are hit too hard during typing it can do so!

 

I'm sure we're all glad you took the time to share that with us.


Technobear: Mine is a P4 3ghz, its LOUD most of the time. Regret buying it tbh but it was cheap. The trackpad is also farked so it takes me 5 goes to click on anything Oh and the left mouse button is also broken. Maybe build quality should have been alot higher on my priorities rather than just speed

 

I swore Id never buy another.. I spent about £2,000 on a laptop about 10 years ago.

3 years later it was getting out of date, and there was no possible way to upgrade it.

2 years later it developed a fault, and because laptops use proprietary bits, there was no way to have it fixed.

It went in the bin.

Im completely sold on ''plug and play'' of the desktop..

I've just replaced my 600mhz tower with a new tower - 3ghz, 160g h/d, 512ram, dvd burner, 8 x usb2 etc.

I kept my mouse, keyboard, monitor. Total price: £240 plus VAT.


If you just need mobility of email and not full MS applications, there are definately better ways of doing things..

 

yeah, it's a pentium 4 - the fan isn't on continous...but it is loud tho...!

but hey, I'm not gonne complain at that price, i was after one anyway, then i heard a colleague trying to sell one and i couldn't refuse!

 

Little ol iBook here. I am confident its not the lightest available but thus far has been a dream. One thing I notice between apples and PCs is that when you open the lid on an apple after going to bed at night it lights up and is on the web within 6 seconds. A pc seems to take a lot lot lot longer, something to do with hibernation or something.

Anyway within my scope of laptops the iBook being the first its been first rate, i thin I have restarted it around 4 times in the 5 months I have had it. The battery is still giving me around 4.5 hours a go which I consider good and all in all a great machine.

 

PCs can both sleep and hibernate, the Apples only seem able to sleep. The difference is that hibernation dumps the contents of the RAM to disk and the machine completely powers off, i.e. it uses no battery at all whilst hibernating. Sleep keeps the contents of RAM active so still has some power going to the mainboard and RAM – it is faster to resume, but will slowly run the battery down over time.

Tony.

 

I use both Mac/OS and Windows, and have the former on desktop and the latter as laptop. The weight/battery matters. In fact, I'm also looking at the sony viao TX series as replacement for a 5-yr old viao that has served me well.

Foreveryoung, what model in the TX series are you considering? And why?

 

But just so happens IBM (now Lenovo) do the best business laptops so its win win IMO.

 

Bloody awful things! Nokia 6680 is better at everything the Blackberry does, plus it's 3G, does video and takes pix, does a great job of browsing the web and hasnt just lost it's patent rights in the US. Just my view of course, but based on testing Blackberry devices over the past three weeks in our shortlisting process for handheld email clients.