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Recommendation for a Good Laptop Computer

posted by Dopefish on Saturday April 05 2014, @03:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the moore's-law-still-trucks-ahead dept.

An anonymous coward writes:

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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  • (Score: 1) by guises on Sunday April 06 2014, @04:19AM

    by guises (3116) on Sunday April 06 2014, @04:19AM (#26955)

    I've had Thinkpads, a Macbook, a Motion tablet, several junkie cheapos, etc. The best laptop I've ever had, by far, was a Toughbook Y5. Really light, extremely durable, good keyboard (not as good as the Thinkpads, but decent), surprisingly good trackpad given its size, etc. They're really expensive if you buy them new, but you can get a used one on Ebay for plenty cheap.

    Installed OpenSUSE and it worked fine with two caveats: the audio worked over headphones, but not through the speakers. This was a SUSE problem though - the speakers worked fine in Ubuntu. The other problem was just that gesture support for the trackpad was Windows-only. It worked very well in its normal capacity, but it's a round trackpad and if you have the right (Windows) drivers you can scroll through documents by circling the trackpad.

    Anyway, had a drunk friend stand on mine and the screen bent but did not crack. Still worked fine. I don't think there are many other laptops that could make that claim. Just wish they'd put a decent GPU into one of their light "business rugged" models...

  • (Score: 1) by timbim on Sunday April 06 2014, @08:51AM

    by timbim (907) on Sunday April 06 2014, @08:51AM (#26999)

    Yeah those things are cool but insanely expensive.