Looking For A Laptop

[Buzzy Beetle]

Feeling mildly redundant after Greebo's topic, though I suppose I could say it was more of a reminder than me just bandwagon jumping.

I was just looking for some advice, really. Gonna be starting school in September so I'm looking to buy a laptop to take to my classes. The thing is, I don't know what I should be looking for in a laptop. I was thinking netbook until I was informed that since there is coding and compiling involved in the course and that I want CPU and RAM that only a notebook can give. Aside from that, I have no reservations.

What should I be looking at? If I recall correctly, you can't exactly build a laptop like how you can build a desktop so I expect that I'll be looking at company builds. I'm comfortable spending... I'd say $700-800 Canadian before taxes, but if I can get away with spending less I'd be just as happy. Two sites (well, a site and a store that's nearby) that I like buying from are NCIX and Canada Computers, while Staples and I are not on speaking terms.

Any recommendations would be great.

[Clay Pigeon]

In my experience, people order laptops from the sellers directly (HP, lenovo, dell, etc).

[gator]

I'd guess $700-$800 CAD would land you somewhere around a 13"-15" laptop, probably a Core 2 Duo or Core i3, 4 GB of RAM, maybe a 250-320GB HD. The specs are probably not all that different amongst manufacturers, I'd focus mostly on design/build quality of the laptop.

I guess other considerations are do you need an optical drive (i.e. DVD burner) integrated, how small/big/thin/heavy do you want it to be, things like that would help.

[Checkm8]

I have owned 2 laptops in my life. The first was a HP pavillion something or the other. The motherboard failed 2 times and I had to send it back to be replaced and that took about 2 weeks. The customer service was horrible to deal with (all indians). I got it fixed under warranty but c'mon, I mean, 2 failed motherboards! I had a great experience with my gateway laptop. It has a 250 gb HDD and 4Gb of RAM, Intel Centrino duo cpu, ATI Mobility Raedon HD 2600 graphics with 512Mb of memory. I believe that in fell in the price range. It is almost 2 years old and runs like a champion. For a year, I gamed on it and it ran 9 hours a day. The battery still works hard for a hour as well for being older. So, from experience, I'd check out gateway. They sell fairly powerful machines at reasonable prices.

This is all from experience and not really a technical stand point but I hope it helps.

[Boss Llama]

My recommendation would be to avoid HP like the plague - the only worthwhile product that company makes, IMO, is printers, and I avoid them as well if at all possible (due to their ink policies). Lenovo and Toshiba are both solid major manafacturers with a good reputations when it comes to laptops. For school purposes in particular, I highly recommend one of these, as they give you good bang for the buck, and Lenovo in particular are known for being rugged and handling lots of movements and carrying around. As an airport employee, I can tell you they're definitely the choice of business travellers. As far as Gateway, I had one myself back in the day, with no complaints. I've heard mixed reviews from recent owners, depending on the purpose they're used for, but afaik they're pretty good as well. My current "laptop" is a Toshiba Qosmio, which is a thing of beauty. I call it a "laptop" in quotes because the Qosmio's specifically are oversize DR gaming systems, and wouldn't really fit on the lap, but they're a good testament to Toshiba quality.

[MrBlah]

If you are using it for school and stuff, get a netbook. If you are doing coding and stuff, get a netbook.

1. You wont be able to be as distracted by gaming with a netbook as they aren't very capable of lots of gaming.
2. It is light and easy to carry with you EVERYWHERE.
3. Programming does not require a beefy computer and if you find yourself in a situation where you will be doing lots and lots of compiling, you can always use your desktop or a school computer.
4. All office programs work fine on a netbook
5. You can get them set up for awesome battery life (>6 hours)
6. I say all of this from experience. I carry my netbook with me to every class. All the homework I did in my C++ class last fall was done on my netbook.
7. Netbooks are like $500 max unless you get solid state drives and such. But 2GB of RAM can be gotten.

[gator]

If you are using it for school and stuff, get a netbook. If you are doing coding and stuff, get a netbook.

1. You wont be able to be as distracted by gaming with a netbook as they aren't very capable of lots of gaming.
2. It is light and easy to carry with you EVERYWHERE.
3. Programming does not require a beefy computer and if you find yourself in a situation where you will be doing lots and lots of compiling, you can always use your desktop or a school computer.
4. All office programs work fine on a netbook
5. You can get them set up for awesome battery life (>6 hours)
6. I say all of this from experience. I carry my netbook with me to every class. All the homework I did in my C++ class last fall was done on my netbook.
7. Netbooks are like $500 max unless you get solid state drives and such. But 2GB of RAM can be gotten.

Out of curiosity blah, what size netbook are you using? I'd imagine it's an 11.6 or 12.1" netbook - I couldn't imagine doing any significant amount of coding on a 10" netbook keyboard.

[MrBlah]

All on a 10" netbook. I kind of like it. Honestly though, I work alot faster and it is more comfortable on my desktop.

a 13" notebook may in fact be a better choice, it can will get uncomfortable to use a netbook a lot.

[Buzzy Beetle]

All on a 10" netbook. I kind of like it. Honestly though, I work alot faster and it is more comfortable on my desktop.

a 13" notebook may in fact be a better choice, it can will get uncomfortable to use a netbook a lot.

Honestly, I don't mind netbooks. They fit people who have small hands. Like me.

[dredfox]

Lenovo and Toshiba are both solid major manafacturers with a good reputations when it comes to laptops. For school purposes in particular, I highly recommend one of these, as they give you good bang for the buck, and Lenovo in particular are known for being rugged and handling lots of movements and carrying around. As an airport employee, I can tell you they're definitely the choice of business travellers.

I've seen students abuse and mistreat laptops in Lenovo's business line. The models I've worked with have been dropped, burned, stepped on by a 350 lb. man, and one worked properly with a great deal of water beading up on the mainboard. In nearly every case, they worked long past the time other machines would have burst into flames or disintegrated. Although, the one filled with a hot white mocha didn't work so well.

Be sure to order from the business line. Consumer grade machines are built to be cheap and easy to replace. Business units are built for durability and are easier to repair.

[MrBlah]

Honestly, smaller hands or not, I think you will be happier with a 13" notebook. I have relatively average size hands and it just puts a strain on my wrist when I use it for a while as you constantly have you wrists at an outward angle.

And yes, get a Thinkpad. Everyone I know that owns one has had it for at least 3 years, some as much as 5. They make a tablet version of it too, so you may be very well interested in that.

[D.B.Cooper]

One that fits your needs

[Clay Pigeon]

If you can get something with a full-sized keyboard your hands will thank you, and you will thank yourself when you transition over to buster when you get home and don't have to stare at your hands to figure out how to type on a different-sized keyboard.

[gator]

And yes, get a Thinkpad. Everyone I know that owns one has had it for at least 3 years, some as much as 5. They make a tablet version of it too, so you may be very well interested in that.

If you end up looking at Thinkpads, be careful which one you choose. The T and X200 (not X100e) series are the traditional Thinkpads with super high build quality and durability, but they cost considerably more.

The L/SL/Edge series are still pretty good, but their build quality isn't quite up the level of the T/X series. Still better than anything they offer in the IdeaPad line, though.

I'll toss this out as a starting point, though it's slightly above your price range.
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_ ... _id=030639
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops ... spx?page=1

[MrBlah]

If you can get something with a full-sized keyboard your hands will thank you, and you will thank yourself when you transition over to buster when you get home and don't have to stare at your hands to figure out how to type on a different-sized keyboard.

In actuality, the keyboard on my netbook is very very close in key spacing and key size to my G15. The only thing is, keys like tab, enter, etc are smaller, no numpad, and so on.