Suggestion for good, low cost, ultralight laptop.

[edwinmcq]

All.

I'm looking for some suggestions on a good, low cost , ultra-light laptop. I want to hear some real-life testimonials, not some crap you read off the internet. I am a computer forensics expert and I can read, so second hand doesn't do me good. I find hearing it from real owners is the best way.

If you have a 13-15 inch nice ultra-light and you like it, please let me know what kind.

I already have a Toshiba M305 , which has served me well , but it has taken a beating and I can not rebuild it anymore. I also have a Toshiba NB205-320..."Ed's Special Blend" , love it for taking with me on the bike, but it isn't good for taking on client meetings.

[edwinmcq]

Originally Posted by drsketch

If you can wait for black friday man, tons of good stuff going to be out there...

Otherwise the dell outlet site usually has good deals, and any i3+ with 3+gb ram will be g2g... Note the outlet site are usually business returns and are certified refurbs, just buy the warranty... I have bought everything from laptops to servers from there..

Very good point about the outlets. A large amount of the outlet stuff isn't even refurbed, but are "one offs" and over runs from specific corporate specs that either didn't get sold or were made in excess in the event of a QC problem.

I bought an IBM once from their outlet after big lay-offs at Motorala and sold it a year later for more than I paid.

[CThunder-blue]

please stay away from dell crap. I'm a dell certified tech, so I know how badly they're made.

[edwinmcq]

Originally Posted by CThunder-blue

please stay away from dell crap. I'm a dell certified tech, so I know how badly they're made.

When I did courtroom work I'd never use a Dell laptop in court. IBM and IBM only (pre-Lenovo). I would use Dell desktop, because I could tear them apart.

As a matter of fact this...qqqqqqqqqqqqwqwq is me hit a keyboard with a bad Dell/Fujitsu CD/DVD from a Dell laptop right now laying on my desk.

Nope, Dell laptops are out of the question.

[CThunder-blue]

why not stick with a Toshiba?

[backinthesaddleagain]

At work we run 13 inch lenovo think pads. No problems at all. 13 pricing isn't great though. Seen some 14 inch lenovo marked down
Posted via Mobile Device

[backinthesaddleagain]

CT thunder I have 2 inspirons with loose ac adapter connections on them. Arrrrgggghhh. Want to fix them?
Posted via Mobile Device

[Sailariel]

I have an IBM T-42 Thinkpad. It goes to work with me every day (came out of retirement) I carry it in a Caselogic case and use a Neoprene "envelope" on the computer before it goes in the case. I strap it to the passenger seat with a bungee. On mornings when there is fog, the whole case goes into a plastic bag before it is strapped to the seat. The computer has made this trip almost daily for the past five months with no ill effects. Hope that helps.

[edwinmcq]

Originally Posted by CThunder-blue

why not stick with a Toshiba?

I wanted to see what other folks were using first. I looked at a Toshiba Portege R705 and it was very nice. I didn't like the sound quality (same with my netbook), but when do I sit around listening to it without being plugged into head phones or a sound bar. They had one at the store sitting right next to a VAIO and they looked almost identical and the specs were almost identical.

The price was $750 for the TOSHI and $1700 for the SONY.

A thousand bucks is a gettin' crazy with the Cheez Whiz.

[bob706]

Originally Posted by CThunder-blue

please stay away from dell crap. I'm a dell certified tech, so I know how badly they're made.

Hmmm, my dells have been running smooth for years. My wifes hp is a pile of garbage. My dad has a toshiba that besides a toasted hard drive has been great. +1 for dell outlet

[Bleak21]

Laptops... ultra light... hmm

Without boring you with my experiences, laptop model quality is pretty hit-or-miss across all brands/manufacturers. Again, without boring you, the same companies trade work contracts with the same suppliers year after year. The most consistently reliable are (IMO) IBM (not including Lenovo), Fujitsu, and Panasonic. Since IBM's are older and panasonic only makes toughbooks, I'd give a serious look at Fujitsu's models.

[CThunder-blue]

I can understand you guys have success with a few dells. I support roughly 3000 Dell machines, laptops, desktops, workstations. My team, in total, supports over 12,000 machines. I'm not saying every single dell will die, but for everyone 1 person that says they've had a dell last for x+ years, I can show you 4 that have failed within a month. We just got our latest shipments of 6410's and with under 100 deployments, we already see a trend of memory failures. This is why our company is moving away from dell and going with HP (among other reasons such as pricing).

Ed, I would just go with the toshiba and get a nice usb sound card.

[CThunder-blue]

I don't work for them . We are self maintainers and are required to be certified on their systems for warranty repairs.

[CThunder-blue]

The dell servers do tend to work pretty well, I'll give them that.

All in all, it comes down to luck really. Some models will last forever, and others will be the problem child you wished you could lock up and throw away the key.

While I'm not a huge fan of Macs, they do seem to make some decent stuff and you can also get a Windows OS for them. However, they will likely cost as much as the Sony lightweights.

[Bleak21]

Another for dell servers.

[Alex]

What part of his post wasn't credible? All seemed reasonable to me. Dell makes some cheap-ass computers. And some decent ones. You pay more for the non sucky ones. Quality hasn't been a company-wide strong suit there for quite some time. It wasn't long ago that one particular line had a 80%+ known failure rate, and they knowingly sold thousands and thousands of them to corporations, and then quietly tried to replace them over time rather than coming clean in the first place and just not selling the crap.

I've had a number of XPS desktops that on the whole seem OK. I have had a few dell laptops for work, and overall the quality is less than IBM/Lenovo thinkpads and corporate HP laptops. Search for "Dell e6400 problems", and there are 81,000 hits to churn through...

[backinthesaddleagain]

I remember the good old days when you knew buying IBM, Compaq, or Dell would get you good stuff that you wouldn't have to worry about. Of course the occasional power supply or HD failure. Nowadays with such price competition its a crap shoot. Everything is bought from the lowest bidder when it comes to most laptops or desktops. It reminds me of Packard Bell. My HP and Dell servers and SAN are high quality and trouble free however. At one point I wouldn't buy a laptop without an extended service agreement, now I look at the fine print on some of those agreements and would rather replace the item then pay for a warranty that doesn't cover the screen.

[GeneJunkie]

Save your pennies and get a MacBook.

I have literally been through every laptop manufacturer and honestly the only one that held up was my eMachines but that thing was heavy as anything and a beast.

The Dell I had crashed all the time, their tech support is awful and unhelpful. My Mom has a newer Dell (maybe HP, I can't remember) that constantly crashes on her that was given to her by her work to work from home. After my eMachines "died" (turns out that Best Buy tech support is a waste of money and they broke my computer... claimed it was water damage in actuality it was burned out memory and it works still) I got an HP. That thing was worse than the Dell. It has been mailed to HP 3 times for a failed motherboard and currently there is a lawsuit against them. The HP was in for service so many times and so unreliable that I ended up getting the MacBook. HP is currently dead and needs yet another new motherboard.

I LOVE my Mac. I have not had an issue with it period and had for about 3 years. It has out lasted every laptop I have owned previously.

[backinthesaddleagain]

At my daughter's college they are 100% Mac but also can boot to Win 7. I think there are a couple 3rd party boot programs (maybe even Apple native utility) to run xp, vista, or 7 on a Mac. Never had one or used one myself.

[backinthesaddleagain]

MS Certification, wow its been a while since I've taken a test, NT4 MCSE, 2000 MCSE, SQL, CRM, Great Plains, and Solomon. I recently had a new phone system put in (not VOIP but has VOIP capabilities). After the guy who put it in couldn't get it to do VOIP over my Checkpoint VPN because he had the phone's IP address on one network and its default gateway with the IP address from another network, he started yelling at me and 2 Checkpoint certified engineers that it was our VPN rules. We then allowed everything through the VPN for the phone system and the soft phone for 5 minutes just to show him how wrong he was, and that the packets from the phone system were never hitting the firewall, never mind failing due to a rule. He then blamed my DNS, even though there were no host names only IP addresses. I threw him out of my office - something I have never done to a vendor/consultant, nor ever had happen to me as a consultant. The next day his boss called me and said he knows his stuff, he's an MCSE. I told the boss then he is the 1 of 4 MCSE's in the room who know nothing about TCP/IP and to never send him to my company again. Not only due to his lack of networking knowledge, but for yelling at me and 2 network/security engineers sent to help.

Pardon the hijack but the mention of certification reminded me that my soft phone still doesn't work on my laptop.

[backinthesaddleagain]

I've been wrong many times and its helped down the road. In consulting admitting an error also added to credibility. Some of these other guys don't realize they can be wrong to. Damn all this talk reminds me work is 8 hours away.

[GeneJunkie]

Originally Posted by drsketch

or.....

Buy a dell with a 3 year onsite warranty for about half the cost, then in 3 years when the macbook that is just so awesome, and will never get a virus is outdated, take the other half and buy a new dell with the same warranty

zomg - I fell in the 10th percentile that has an issue, zomg - a part is being delivered by fed ex 4 hours later with a fat guy to install it

Wow who shoved a broomstick up your ass. My cousin is a computer tech who services both pcs and macs and constantly bugged me to get a Mac. I don't have dumb issues with viruses or whatever but pure build quality is awful on pc systems. I've had hinges break, bulbs go out behind the screen, burned through 3 motherboards and an insane amount of ram, a couple harddrives, some faulty powercords that almost burned my carpet, a couple heatsink fans and gawd knows how many other things and you know what all these issues happened within 1-2 years of owning a new pc laptop. My MacBook cost the same amount as my hp and Dell and is hellofalot better not a single issue in 3 years. Why deal with the headache of a pos Dell that is unreliable and has some sort of magic internal clock that knows when 3 years are up and it magically explodes.

My Mac works doesn't crash, doesn't blue screen, doesn't magically turn off or do anything irritating that any of my pcs did. Yes I do know the "threat" of a virus if the Mac sensation continues but i honestly dont care because none of my pc issues were virus based.

Oh and I'm sorry if there is any random gibberish as I'm typing from an iPhone.

[CThunder-blue]

Originally Posted by drsketch

and if you feel that strongly against them, then maybe you should either voice that to your company, or work somewhere that uses another brand. You can't possibly bring a positive attitude to your team everyday.

I actually did tell them that moving from IBM to Dell was a terrible decision, but they did it anyways. Really, what tech department really has control over what their company uses? The controlling power is the finance department. They dictate the bottom line and they're the ones that get final say in which computers are purchased and used. Of course, the CIO's and VP's of IT also have a say, but at that level, most, if not all, have little to no technical background. They don't spend their time looking up hardware build quality. The sales reps know this. So they bring their flashy suits and flashy computers, put on a show and give them their best price.

You are suggesting I quit my job because I dislike the computers I have to deal with? That's a little extreme. It's called work for a reason. I don't come to work to have fun, I do it to make a living. If my company started using E-Machines, I'd still be here. How many people do you know go to work everyday because they really want to be there working and not somewhere else?

As far as attitude is concerned, I do my best to make the clients happy, regardless of how I feel that day. There's a book out there called Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Resultshttp://www.amazon.com/Remarkable-Boo.../dp/0786866020. It's a good book and I try to follow what it says. That you and only you can dictate how your day will go.

You seem to have taken offense because I don't like dells. Do you work for them or something? It's all opinions. The OP was asking for opinions and I think I'm entitled to give mine.

Originally Posted by drsketch

The part that started comparing macs to a pc then the other part that you can run xp on them

Originally Posted by CThunder-blue

While I'm not a huge fan of Macs, they do seem to make some decent stuff and you can also get a Windows OS for them.

Sorry, but I didn't ever say XP. I also did not start comparing macs to pc's. I stay away from that debate because it's like asking "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" I was referring to Windows 7.

I really don't understand why you have this animosity towards me. I stated an opinion and you disagreed, but you seem to have this driving need to tell me what I should do at work, how I should act, and where I should work.

[CThunder-blue]

Originally Posted by Alex

Search for "Dell e6400 problems", and there are 81,000 hits to churn through...

We actually have the E6400's and now we have the E6410's. They suck, but the D630's? a complete nightmare. We told Dell 3 years ago, when we started having problems, that there is an issue with their laptops. I was the one who found the problem and brought it to my manager's attention. Dell came back and told us that there was no problem and we are maybe seeing a bad batch.

Fast forward, 2 years later and over 4000 motherboard replacements, they finally come clean and tell us that there is a problem and they're going to extend our warranty on motherboards for another year. They told us they expected an 89% failure rate on those. The motherboard replacements also fail, sometimes within 2 weeks. They finally, after 3 years, have started using an upgraded chipset to hopefully resolve the issue. That's a day late and a dollar short as far as I'm concerned.

[CThunder-blue]

Originally Posted by backinthesaddleagain

CT thunder I have 2 inspirons with loose ac adapter connections on them. Arrrrgggghhh. Want to fix them?
Posted via Mobile Device

If you're referring to the connection at the laptop, there really isn't a good way to fix that. Those power connections are built onto the motherboard. Sorry

[edwinmcq]

Originally Posted by Alex

What part of his post wasn't credible? All seemed reasonable to me. Dell makes some cheap-ass computers. And some decent ones. You pay more for the non sucky ones. Quality hasn't been a company-wide strong suit there for quite some time. It wasn't long ago that one particular line had a 80%+ known failure rate, and they knowingly sold thousands and thousands of them to corporations, and then quietly tried to replace them over time rather than coming clean in the first place and just not selling the crap.

I've had a number of XPS desktops that on the whole seem OK. I have had a few dell laptops for work, and overall the quality is less than IBM/Lenovo thinkpads and corporate HP laptops. Search for "Dell e6400 problems", and there are 81,000 hits to churn through...

Thank you, Alex. This has also been my experience. Desktops with onsite support = good. Laptops = questionable.

Also, I it is my personal laptop. I'm now am independent consultant and no longer the Director of Tech. , so my budget decision is a choice between laptop and food.

[backinthesaddleagain]

Originally Posted by CThunder-blue

If you're referring to the connection at the laptop, there really isn't a good way to fix that. Those power connections are built onto the motherboard. Sorry

Yep, thats why the guys around here who fix them charge alot and don't guarantee the work. 2 dead ones in the basement.

[backinthesaddleagain]

Forgot about all the bad Dell hinges and cracked covers years ago.

[Sailariel]

I like the T-42 IBM ThinkPad. It does not seem to mind going to the office daily in a messenger bag while I ride the Ninja or my bicycle. Seems to do everything fine. I will admit, however that I am a real novice. The IBM was purchased on the advice of my computer course teacher at Senior College.

[edwinmcq]

Originally Posted by CThunder-blue

If you're referring to the connection at the laptop, there really isn't a good way to fix that. Those power connections are built onto the motherboard. Sorry

Have you tried the heat gun method?

I have used this to fix similar broken or cracked solder connections. Word to the wise don't try it unless you are absolutely sober and have some cojones.

Here is an example vid. This will at least give you a idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR8L3B3eDr0

[edwinmcq]

Okay, I'm done.

I just found and purchased the Toshiba Portege R705. I was able to get it down to $675 and then use a store credit and some reward points. Total out of pocket $530 (with tax).

It was originally $1000 when it went on sale in July. The only really bad thing I got from reviews was a noisy keyboard. I used the extra cash to buy a Velocity Cruz Tablet.

Thanks for all of your input.

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by backinthesaddleagain

Yep, thats why the guys around here who fix them charge alot and don't guarantee the work. 2 dead ones in the basement.

I can't tell you how many times I'd fix one and explain to the owner that it will never be as good as it was originally. I'd tell them to buy a universal AC adapter and epoxy one of the replaceable tips to the laptop. They'd never do it and I'd usually see them back a week or a month later with the same problem. Can't guarantee it if even the original OEM work didn't hold out and they didn't pay for a full replacement.

[backinthesaddleagain]

After my daughter's HP laptop lost its motherboard I crossed over to the dark side and got her a MacBook Pro. Getting the HP fixed under warranty, and the wife needed a pc anyway.