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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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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Drew617 on Saturday April 05 2014, @04:20PM
Agree that current T-series are a few notches below the best ones - the click pads are an annoying regression - but I still think they're among the best available. The design has always been sensible and (as with cameras) I'll never understand why shiny metal cases have been equated with "professional." Check out any five-year-old MBP, HP Probook, Dell Latitude: it's likely to be scuffed, dimpled, stretched, pushed in at the corners like a paperback book. Whereas a plastic case will retain its form right until it actually fails, which doesn't generally happen on Thinkpads. Their keyboards have long been the only membrane boards I'm happy to use.
However, I think some of the bitching I see about Lenovo these days is because they're also producing $399 models, and people incorrectly expect these to be of the T-series standard. A decade ago, this wasn't a problem.
Depending on what you need, perfectly nice Intel Core generation stuff can be had for $100-200 used which is a screaming deal compared to a $300 netbook at Fry's.
If Lenovo doesn't do it for you, I carried an i5 HP Probook at my last job and it was perfectly nice. Easy to maintain, standard-ish components (think Linux drivers). The metal (titanium? magnesium?) case got bent out of shape in my briefcase and the keyboard sucked, but they almost all do.
In general, for personal use, I've found that I'm better served by buying off-lease enterprise-grade stuff instead of whatever mid-priced consumer gear is available.