What laptop do YOU have or own? r u satisfied w/ it?

Question

what do you like about it/ what DONT you like about it?

Answer 1

Now: HP TC4200 - twelve inch extra-portable tablet PC. Very nice bit of kit, but it should be for £800... Looks the dog's danglies, for starters, and feels like it was built by Mercedes.

Like: The size, it's like a classic mid 90s laptop but thinner and lighter. The tablet PCness of it - being able to spin the screen round backwards or put it flat and use as a slab, or to draw on the screen at any time, has far more practical uses than you'd think. The battery life is fantastic (according to a third party power meter program, the centrino chipset + LED-lit LCD means it uses as little as 8.5 watts when i'm typing... that's *nothing* compared to even a regular CRT monitor) and wifi has a good range. Processing power is surprisingly beefy for a 1.73ghz chip, and the screen is beautifully sharp with a perfectly matched resolution. It's very nice for word processing on the (cramped) train, or carrying about and making little edits to documents in spare moments at work, or just browsing the net from any room in the house (like i am now) or even watching dvd quality videos / streaming footy matches off the bbc website with the screen turned round so it's like a portable TV. Plus the keyboard is very well sorted, thought it looked a bit thin and flimsy at first but its probably in the top five of all computer keyboards i've used and one of the two best laptop ones. It has an Alt-Gr and a right-hand Ctrl key... it's like finding a hen's tooth embedded in the case! Best of all I got it in the PC world bank holiday sale for £300 off list price with some extra bits thrown in to sweeten the deal even further :-D

Don't like: Some of the from-the-shop bugs, but HP support have been cool in fixing them so far (minor BIOS issues with power management switching etc), only got a single, rather tinny (but loud) speaker because there's nowhere else to fit another (!!), sound output from headphone socket isnt actually much better (just a general lack of Bass from the chipset), not enough quick launch / adjust buttons available in tablet mode, screen gets dirty awful quick and can be a bit stiff to turn, and pen "taps" can be frustratingly innaccurate... the size means external DVD drive only - in this case a huge bundled thing that was almost certainly meant to be used with desktops - though its not a great problem when you have pen-drives, wifi, and an SD card socket; and the bundled digital TV card is literally useless even when plugged into a roof aerial. Oh, and even though it's great, and a total bargain, it still cost more than my first car. When you're on £11k a year, £800 is serious cash... but i really, really NEEDED (not "wanted" - i've saved for this with eyes towards buying a tool, not a toy) a good laptop for on-the-go coursework purposes.

Previously I had a couple old 2nd hand / ebay laptops. I'll concentrate on the first one, as the second was a bit of a letdown and i didn't use it much.
Model: Acer Note Light 350PCX. Bought for £40 from someone at work who didn't know what they were letting go... as I got at least £60 worth of battery from them, besides the computer! Only a P120, 16mb ram, 810mb hard disc, no cdrom, vga screen... but a complete mobile word processing beast.

Like: The sheer VALUE of it. I used this for about 18 months before managing to scrape together the cash for the HP. I'd have to use the new one for THIRTY YEARS before it returns the same time-cost benefit. Truly, nothing depreciates like a computer... The battery was pretty good, even though the primitive tech meant that it was probably chowing through fifteen watts or more continually, it would still run on for about 2 hours as the battery was essentially brand new (original, i think, but always run off AC so not worn down), a great boon for getting stuff done on a commute. Clocking the chip down to 60mhz gave an extra 45 minutes and no noticable slowdown for word processing. It had no fan, so almost completely silent (great for concentration) with the hard disc spun down, but didnt get too hot. And it's both small (by modern standards) and quite lightweight (by mid 90s standards).
Also, the ability to get work done in any odd moment you can grab is such an advantage when having to plough through tons of coursework and other nonsense. I'd have had to give up on the course quite a while ago had i not been able to fire up Word both ways on the train commute. Nothing fancy, just using it as a portable keyboard and storage device (though I found it could be stretched to some admirably complex documents, and even powerpoints / access databases). The slow processor, small screen and limited storage means absolutely nothing when you're essentially dealing with 10pt Times plaintext on a blank page. It's still readable and still responds real quick... especially if you limit yourself for word v6 or 97 under a slimmed down windows 95 (which had other benefits such as loading in under 30 seconds and shutting down in only five). A real liberation. Plus the keyboard was great (as was the look on peoples faces after they asked you the spec / the price... though this stopped after it had a couple knocks and had to be repaired with duct tape)... and i didn't have to take too much care with it, as it was expendable.
Oh.... and it was also great for playing various old games on the move, when there wasn't any work left to do that week. Full screen, original version Grand Theft Auto, Tempest 2000 or Descent is a great way to erase a dull journey.

Didn't like: Mega connectivity problems! If you don't have USB or Cardbus these days, the world doesn't want to know... getting data in or out of it became a real bind when my department got rid of our last floppy disc-compatible PC... had to mess about with an old parallel port smartmedia reader and a similar USB device inserted into the newer machine. Could I find a USB or Wi-fi card to fit it's old skool PCMCIA slot? Could I hell.
The slowness of it... when i just wanted to play the odd mp3, video, or load up some photographs, it would disappoint (though i'm sure a desktop of similar spec i've got in a dusty cupboard used to manage all three noticably better... hmm).
VGA rez wasn't as much of a cripple as you might think but could still be a bind for some complex layouts. And even if you could get a mp3 to play, the sound hardware wasn't so good.
Power-saving hibernation took longer to save or reload than shutting down and rebooting did, thanks to the chronically slow disc (and very lightweight win95)!

and............. thats about it really. i mainly got the new one for software/hardware compatibility, easy file transfer and so i could play mp3s on the move more than anything else.... it had to be something small and light as i'd got used to the acer's form factor (a rough measurement in a cramped Centro train seat shows that it's nearest competitor on size probably would still have been usable, but anything even a little larger than that would have prevented me actually using it! Most laptops are so impractically enormous these days!)

Answer 2

If you want cheap and OK praformance then buy the dell B120 or somthing around that. These have a battery life of about an hour but will type papers and surf the net. If you want anything else in your laptop including a better battery life then you need to look at about 800 dollars US at least. The best brands if you want a real laptop then you need like an HP, compaq, sony or some other name brand. Dont buy an off brand or used one if you want much out of it.

Answer 3

I have a Dell XPS Laptop. It has lots of memory and is extremely fast. I have found the customer service at Dell to be adequate, If I ever have a problem with the hardware or software, they are able to help, in a timely fashion.

I have a few friends who own an Alien ware Laptop, and they say they are really impressed, with the speed, memory, and graphics of there computer. They like the customer service they get, and they recommend all Alien ware products, with extreme confidence.

Answer 4

I've been using an Acer laptop since summer 2008. It has certainly had some issues and whatnot, but all in all i'm satisfied. nothing extraordinary, but a decent computer.

Answer 5

laptop computers can be a rather tricky buy at times, I would suggest that you look out for the cheapest and yet latest desktop on the market,

the best way to do this is on what they call warehouse sale markets some of them are online.

these warehouse owners have a service where they sell laptop computers to normal customers like you and me, however with very reduced prices due to the fact that they do not have as much costs as normal shops do, such as rent and a employees etc. as you know most online shops have rather competitive prices sometimes cutting the laptop price to a half.

one such website for laptop computers is :

http://umgarticles.atspace.com/laptop-computer.htm

Answer 6

I have Acer TravelMate 2400 as well as IBM T42. Acer has cranked up 3 times in a year. IBM is awesome. Do check out.
My next Laptop would be a Sony one though.

Answer 7

iBook 14 inch

although I wouldn't mind a new MacBook Pro 17 inch, or an Acer Ferrari

Answer 8

I have Gateway 3018GZ Notebook and yes I like it. The only thing I don't like about it is the monitor (15in widescreen) is about 2 inches smaller than I prefer. Other than that, it's fantastic. And fast.

Answer 9

12" iBook. LOVE it. I am very satisfied. The only, and it's very minute, drawback I've found is the lack of a true "delete" key. You have to backspace it all.

Answer 10

Toshiba Satellite....I fix others all day long!! I will never own anything other than a Toshiba...seen the insides of many and this is why I will never switch.

Answer 11

I have a Gateway. It's alright, but a little clunky. My fiance bought it for me for school, but school doesn't start til Sept.!