LAPTOPS?!!?!?

[Bmwbro]

wow

thank you all for the great feedback.

i think someone made a good point. when i said i'd only be running a few programs, i meant i wouldn't be like playing some ridiculous counterstrike game, or doing hardcore art and that crap. ill be downloading music and possibly uploading pictures too.

so im kinda of liking this MAC idea, but i'm really a PC guy at heart.

to all the engineers out there: do you know if mac's can run auto-cad. and those other cad programs? not that its needed, but it would be nice to have.

thank you all for your help.

[TheyCallMeDale]

ok my bad, all non linux running windows compatible machines

[Ryan Stewart]

Now we are going to get to the truth, and autocad is hardly a simple program.

Although I am sure you can get a good CAD program for a Mac the primary reason to get a Wintel is because the world is built for them. Its just like being a lefty when owning a mac. You either have to wait longer or run everything through an emulator.

Even running cad you shouldnt have to spend $2k+ on a laptop. You can get a decked out reputable branded computer running at 1.5ghz for about $1300. That would be more than enough to run AutoDesk.

One nice thing about running Intel is they have the only fully functional variable voltage processsors. The less you use it the less it sucks power. I can see it on mine where it will tell me I have less time when running apps but when I drop to something simple the time limit doubles.

[TheyCallMeDale]

if your running autocad your going to want to go with a Windows machine, ill give you that.

However apple has done an awesome job with the battery life on each of their models. A 14.1" ibook has something like 6 hours battery life under normal usage.

[Bmwbro]

so these are my narrowed down choices:

-Dell (w/ centrino)
-sony vaio
-IBM

what are the best models of the three? what would you suggest? will it last me 4 years?

thank you all. you've been a great help.

[ETA fro]

so these are my narrowed down choices:

-Dell (w/ centrino)
-sony vaio
-IBM

what are the best models of the three? what would you suggest? will it last me 4 years?

thank you all. you've been a great help.

dell is all well and good, for someone on a budget, i would take a better look at the toshiba with centrino.
dell has started to do tha lowest bidder thing, where they make a product that works for the bare minimum. so i generally steer people away from them.

i sell the ocasional personal computing product

[Z3Jonathan]

Re: wow

thank you all for the great feedback.

i think someone made a good point. when i said i'd only be running a few programs, i meant i wouldn't be like playing some ridiculous counterstrike game, or doing hardcore art and that crap. ill be downloading music and possibly uploading pictures too.

so im kinda of liking this MAC idea, but i'm really a PC guy at heart.

to all the engineers out there: do you know if mac's can run auto-cad. and those other cad programs? not that its needed, but it would be nice to have.

thank you all for your help.

If you're running AutoCAD, get a PC, end of story. You don't need a $2k laptop to run AutoCAD. A basic $1300 Toshiba will run AutoCAD, Photoshop, Matlab sims and big excel spread sheets just fine. If you plan on doing a lot of hardcore 3D gaming, and/or running some parametric CAD packages like Solidworks or Pro/E, then you might want to look at something in the $2k range.

Jonathan

[brodee]

My last laptop and my next one will be Toshiba. For the money they are hard to beat. It's too bad you want something small because you can get a NICE 17" widescreen in that pricerange.

If you really want small and portable have you looked at tablet PC's? I would think they would be handy for note taking in class.

[LikeCDoos]

FYI: I just built 2 brand new system's (desktop) with parts off newegg for $550. They are cheap little quick machines:

P4 3.0Ghz 800 FSB
512MB RAM
ect...

[chrisd]

I run a Dell, but not with Windows. I'm sure I don't know anything about computers.

My OS is Linux 2.6.8_rc2_love1 with Gentoo, I'm sure most average peeps with Dells run this too... :D

funny, I just bought ha half-a-dozen dell poweredge servers (that run linux) for work, and bought myself one into the bargain- it was about $250 with all the rebates and the free palm zires that I sold on the side.
The one I'm posting from is running Debian Sid- but I am still running 2.4.24.
Gentoo takes too long, but I really like the look of the framebuffer console.

[Bmwbro]

alrighty

i'm thinking toshiba is pretty cool.

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?seg=HHO&coid=-26371&sel=0&rcid=-26367&ccid=1291021

how is that one?

sounds good to me. and it has the pentium M.