Laptop recommendations

[tim]

My wife needs a new laptop - her current one is old, heavy and slow.

The key criteria are:

light
screen that is legible in daylight
reasonable battery life
windows/vista compatible

I also imagine that 'good looking' will be on the list somewhere too.

What would you recommend?

Cheers

Tim

 

[Gary]

What would you recommend?

Buy one when you get to Canada.

 

[StevieB]

Sony Vaio - light, cute, powerful and recommended by our IT department at work. Only downside is they are expensive. The only other laptops they recommend is Toshiba. Strangely they do not favour Dell laptops despite Dell being a preferred supplier for desktops.

Steve.

 

[Argee]

Another vote for the Sony VAIO.

Ray.

 

[tim]

What would you recommend?

Buy one when you get to Canada.

Stuff needs to come off the old laptop here though.

I'll look into the Vaio. Also what about the Apple? Is it true that there is now an OS that is Microsoft compatible and if so - is it any cop?

Cheers

Tim

 

[mr]

My Apple Mac book pro runs Vista and XP pro with no problems and faster than any pc I have yet to see. I was a little worried about whether it would or not but I needn't have been. Have had no problems whatsoever with Microsoft compatibility. Battery life is good - up to 5 hours for light use - ie not spinning the cd drive constantly etc. The screen is visible in daylight and can be adjusted for brightness if you don't like the self adjusted settings. You have a choice of Matte or glossy screen as well. It's very pretty with its glowing keyboard and brushed metal finish. As for portability, I have the 17 inch version, which though large is not particularly heavy, mine has been lugged around Europe a bit in a big shoulder bag without too much effort or discomfort. Finding a suitable bag for it though wasnt that easy due to its size. The downside is that tt's also frighteningly expensive starting at £1200 for the smaller lower spec version.

http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookpro/

If you're prepared to spend that sort of cash it's worth a look.

Cheers Mike

 

[gidon]

My Dad just bought a Dell M1330 - having similiar requirements to your wife:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/produ ... redirect=1
Quite good value and pretty well reviewed - they do one with a bigger screen too.
Cheers
Gidon

 

[RogerS]

As mr says....get a Mac. It will run Windows stuff but once you've used the Mac you'll probably never go back to Windows :wink:

 

[gidon]

Why do people with Macs want everyone else in the world to have a Mac? Very bizarre - it's not like Apple are a struggling not-for-profit company and a worthy cause to support and promote? They are just another electronics giant like Sony, Panasonic etc. Surely one chooses a laptop or desktop on whether it fits one's requirements and on price, not because of some blind loyalty to another successful company. FWIW the Mac versus PC debate is so old and irrelevant nowadays it's untrue.
Cheers
Gidon

 

[mr]

Why do people with Macs want everyone else in the world to have a Mac?

Do they? I couldn't give a fig personally I was just responding to Tim's specific question about Macs. Personally I have 2 windows machines, 2 linux boxes and a mac. They each have specific roles and they don't encroach on each other's territory generally speaking though they could do quite easily. The mac for me these days is the "go to" general purpose machine. it's the most powerful and easy to use that I have - simple really. But I couldn't personally care what anyone else uses.

Cheers Mike

 

[MrJay]

Why do people with Macs want everyone else in the world to have a Mac? Very bizarre - it's not like Apple are a struggling not-for-profit company and a worthy cause to support and promote? They are just another electronics giant like Sony, Panasonic etc. Surely one chooses a laptop or desktop on whether it fits one's requirements and on price, not because of some blind loyalty to another successful company. FWIW the Mac versus PC debate is so old and irrelevant nowadays it's untrue.
Cheers
Gidon

Same reason I'd recommend Veritas planes over Axminster Own Brand. FWIW I have a PC - for god's sake get a mac. Apple have a refurbished scheme for returns lurking about their website; hunt it down, everything is cheaper.

 

[mr]

Apple have a refurbished scheme for returns lurking about their website; hunt it down, everything is cheaper.

Ah yes - forgot about that. Lookie lookie

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=MTE2ODI&nclm=Certified

cheers Mike

 

[Sawdust]

I've had 3 dell laptops and all have been excellent - you really can't go wrong with them.

Interesting that a few people have recommended Viaos as the company I used to work for had a few and all were hopelessly unreliable with discs continually failing.

Mike

 

[Smudger]

Macs are good - I've had 3 in 10 years, 2 are still working 100%. Latest Intel machines are excellent. 2 sons use them professionally and swear by them. High build quality.
Dell are OK but no better than that.
Avoid Toshiba like the catching-on-fire plague.

 

[virtu]

For depedable use this should be easy, just get the machine from ThinkPad series, nowadays produced by Lenovo. The most reliable and trustworthy laptop I've ever used, counting in 600E, T23, T61. Especially T23 never let down!

The others I've got some proper use; Toshiba, portege nice but weak, had replace harddisk after one year, a bit slow performer
Sony Vaio, light and nice, some driver compatibilty issues, very pricey.

 

[Raggy]

I bought a dell one for the wife a while back and it has be pretty good for her.

Someone I know recently got a very good price on a Toshiba that had a HD dvd drive in it, which is now defunct (HD DVD format is no more as Blu ray won), so they were selling off the stock with these drives in at reduced prices. Not sure if they are still available but worth a look if you are not bothered about the type of drive in it, it still reads normal discs.

 

[Harbo]

Buying a laptop in the States - it will come with a different keyboard layout and no £ symbol!

Rod

 

[brianhabby]

Why do people with Macs want everyone else in the world to have a Mac?

Do they?

Actually Mike, quite a few of them do. A bloke at our workplace has macs at home and is constantly making comments about mac versus PC and how we should have macs at work.

The broadband at work went down the other day and he made a sarcastic comment that if we had macs we wouldn't have this problem. He was blaming the PCs for no broadband when in fact it was a BT line fault.

I just walked away :x

Have to say though that for style macs do look good

regards

Brian

 

[Smudger]

I've used Macs for 20+ years, my sons (3) all use them at work and one works for Apple in Cupertino, so I suppose I'm biased, but I use both Macs and PCs and Macs are not only better designed and made, the interface is much better (I saw Vista described as being designed by an infants' class on a wet playtime, and that isn't far wrong) and the functionality many times better.

I buy a lot of things because I appreciate their design, functionality or build quality, and my computers are no different.

 

[kityuser]

macs IMO are elegant dependable and professional.

I need to say no more,

I like good value for money, and IMO an apple laptop would return just that,
Expensive to start with but would last forever.

Steve