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posted by
Dopefish
on Saturday April 05 2014, @03:21PM
from the moore's-law-still-trucks-ahead dept.
from the moore's-law-still-trucks-ahead dept.
Question for the lentils out there: What makes and models of laptops are good these days? Traditionally, you could just get an IBM ThinkPad if you were willing and able to pay extra for quality, but judging by reviews, they aren't as consistent as they used to be. A 'nice' laptop has to get a lot of things right: fast internals, sturdy case, quality keyboard, excellent battery life, and good heat management, to name a few. Are there any manufacturers that sell machines worth buying anymore, or do you have to compromise?
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Recommendation for a Good Laptop Computer
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Nadia Comaneci, simple perfection.
-- '76 Olympics
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ko on Saturday April 05 2014, @03:32PM
I purchased a T5xx series Lenovo (Quad core i7, fairly loaded) two years ago for grad school. It wasn't cheap, but it has been a fine, fast machine and works well with Linux (Sound, Video, WiFi, Bluetooth, Hot keys, sleep mode, etc.) and Win 7 without any real fuss to set things up. I would highly recommend one, if the budget allows.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by moondrake on Saturday April 05 2014, @03:53PM
I do not agree.
Using Thinkpads (partially because of their education/research programs which makes it easy to buy them OSless) for many years now and feel the quality is degrading.
My current one is a T410 (currently power button broken, have to remove keyboard to boot, middle mouse mousebutton broken off, BIOS acts funky with intel 520 SSD. Had not so many problems with older series...), but the new T540 models are just terrible:
1) a freaking clickpad instead of real physical mousebuttons. I want 2 sets of real buttons!
2) Braindead keyboard layout
3) MUCH more difficult to self-service the machine
For more on Lenovo TP quality, see here [lenovo.com]
They are just becoming a cheap apple ripoff.
But the worst thing is that there is not really a good alternative.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by moondrake on Saturday April 05 2014, @03:57PM
Damn, wrong link. Meant to refer to this: http://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/related/1y22wq/me ta_an_open_letter_to_lenovo_phase_2/ [reddit.com]
(Score: 1) by chiefnx on Saturday April 05 2014, @04:07PM
^ This.
However I have a sneaking suspicion that Lenovo laptops are still the best of an increasingly bad bunch. Would love someone to prove me wrong though.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Rune of Doom on Saturday April 05 2014, @11:14PM
I agree.
I'm posting from a relatively new X220T Thinkpad. (Best machine I could find that did not have a chicklet keyboard and did have a pointing stick.) It's not as good as my old Thinkpad, but it's been a pretty decent machine. In not quite a year of use, I've lost two LRF, and a couple keys (including the power button) no longer have exactly the response I prefer, but still work fine.(To the point where acquaintances looks at me like I'm nuts when I try to point out the differences.) One of the small, rubbery nubs that keeps the screen in place when closed cracked off and was glued back in place. I'm a pointing-stick or touchscreen guy (hate touchpads) so I can't testify about the touchpad quality. The machine has survived two major (3ft+) drops unscathed. There are definitely aspects where I'd like it to be a little better, but it's by far the best laptop I could find, and it has held up in conditions where friends' machines have died.
(Score: 1) by timbim on Sunday April 06 2014, @01:01AM
Why does everyone have to write "this" after some post they're in agreement with? It's boring. And unnecessary. THIS!
(Score: 1) by ArhcAngel on Sunday April 06 2014, @02:12AM
This
(Score: 2, Informative) by Bartman12345 on Saturday April 05 2014, @04:36PM
a freaking clickpad instead of real physical mousebuttons. I want 2 sets of real buttons!
Yeah, clickpads aren't great, but even worse still are those machines where the buttons are integrated into the touchpad. This has got to be the stupidest trend in current laptop design... when you try to click a button, 9 times out of 10 you accidentally move the mouse pointer at the same time so the click either doesn't register or starts to "click and drag". A school I do tech support for bought about 20 of these abominations, drove the kids nuts. I tweaked the touchpad settings as best I could and got some improvement, but it's still not great.
So if you see a laptop with buttons that are not completely separate from the touchpad, do yourself a favour and just say NO!
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:14AM
This only happens on the rubbish ones. On the good ones null the movement out. If yours is a Synaptics and you run Windows try updating the driver, as very old versions don't handle clicks very well.
FWIW I have an NEX LaVie X and am very happy with it's touchpad and integrated buttons. Took maybe half an hour to get used to it. Click and drag works fine.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by Teckla on Saturday April 05 2014, @07:57PM
I've been using ThinkPads a very long time (the company I work for standardized on them), and I have to agree that the quality has degraded a great deal. My current W520 has numerous problems (but that's just anecdotal, so I'll skip the details), and the keyboards are now far worse than they used to be.
Setting aside my anecdotes for a minute, though, the company I work for keeps detailed information on their massive number of laptops. I spoke to some folks in the PC tech shop, and they showed me the undeniable trend of ThinkPad laptops toward mediocrity. The spreadsheet doesn't lie, and the company has switched over to Dell. If ThinkPad isn't going to sell quality anymore, there's no reason paying extra for it.
(Score: 1) by David_W on Sunday April 06 2014, @01:53AM
That's kinda where I am too... I have a T410s. It runs great, but there are a bunch of little things wrong with it that add up to great annoyance... Trackpoint barely works, speaker cover coming off, cracks near the corners of the LCD, k key on the keyboard sometimes decides not to work... It isn't bad, but considering how much I paid for this thing, I could probably have gotten 2 or 3 cheapies that I just toss when they start acting up and come out the same or ahead. That just seems really, really wrong...
(Score: 1) by ArhcAngel on Sunday April 06 2014, @02:27AM
The 400/410/412 were pretty awful for a ThinkPad. The 430 has mostly restored the line but the 440 looks to be going in a lot of different directions. Lenovo knows they can't rest on their Laurels while their competition innovates so they must walk a fine line between innovation and reliability. They have made numerous mistakes recently but look to be genuinely working to correct them. I'll still take a ThinkPad over most any laptop available today.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday April 06 2014, @08:53AM
Wake me when they fix the keyboard.
While the t410 is no where near as good as the old IBM ones, it's streets ahead of the rest. My screen broke on my last one though, put in replacement bolts but ultimately the plastic gave way.
For me money is no object for a laptop. It costs about $200k a year to keep me working, a good laptop is nothing in top of that.
I have a 15" 2011 macpro too, but rarely use it - the screen is good, the build is good, but they keyboard is bad, and suffers from the mis placing of @, it's over the 2 key like a common American keyboard. Urghh.
(Score: 4, Informative) by resignator on Saturday April 05 2014, @06:11PM
I own my own tech shop and the only Lenovos I get in for repair are simple jobs like a bad stick of ram or a dying hard drive. The worst offenders are Gateway, Acer, and HP by a large margin. I constantly have one or the other in the shop and it is rarely a cheap fix.
Macs are great if you want to pay out the ass but make sure to get the extended warranty. $350-500 for a new logic board isnt fun to dish out.
My top pick overall would be the Lenovo G710. For $600 bucks nothing beats a 17inch display, intel core i5, 8gigs ram, and a 1TB HD. It has all the standard bells and whistles like bluetooth, wifi, dual layer DVD burner, etc. You could literally buy 3 of these for a mac of the equivalent value and it wont cost your first born to repair it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 05 2014, @09:30PM
The guy in this thread who touches the widest variety of machines on a day-in-and-day-out basis has still not been up-modded.
The first-to-post thing remains a problem with Slashcode-using sites. 8-(
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Sunday April 06 2014, @12:05AM
I suggest that all posts occurring in the first 10-15 minutes of a new story begin with a mod deficit, or a no up-mod flag flown.
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