OT: Laptops - Asus - any good?!

Nope, but you could try a Lenovo laptop, very good build quality, I have a Z61p. I got on-site support with it so when the disc died a week after I got it, some chap came out and replaced it the next morning.

I have an asus here, had it for 3 years and never had any trouble with it. It lives in the back of my camera bag and goes most places with me, a fairly hard life and it's 100%.

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:15:37 +0100, Matt M wrote this gibberish:

"Matt M" wrote

If you don't mind paying for the quality, I'd suggest you have a look at Panasonic's Toughbooks.

Geo

I like those, I have a CF18, glad I didn't have to pay for it though! Not a standard laptop but great for off-roading stuff. They do slightly more normal laptops in the toughbook line but the price is higher than normal, my CF18 would have cost me over £3,000 for a 1GHz machine if I hadn't got it for nowt.

I've never had one and my needs wouldn't justify getting one as my hardware usually lives in a protected environment (I have a 7-year old Advent laptop still working fine despite cracked plastics and general wear), but I quite fancy one, particularly the completely-overkill and impractical (for me) fully ruggedised models.

Pricey, but for a purpose, not for show-off. They 're actually a bit like Land Rovers in some ways, although they'd have to get frequent and random BSODs to make the resemblance obvious.

Geo

The CF18 and the current equivalent, the CF19, are ace for reading workshop manuals while working on the car, running memory map while off-roading, copying video or stills camera data off, and all sorts of other out-in-the-field computer stuff. When all the port covers are on it can be used in the rain, it can resist being dropped, stood on and if the lid's closed, being run over with the truck, and it'll run for 6 hours or so on batteries. A new CF19 would cost about £2000 excluding VAT, I might get one for my business as I can almost justify it, then I'll use my free CF18 for personal stuff. The CF19 is a core-2 duo 1.6GHz machine, clocked slow to avoid the need for fans and hence no air inlets/outlets.

The downside I suppose is that because they're small, they keyboard is about 80% of normal keyboard size and that makes it quite hard to type on as you treat it like a normal keyboard but miss keys as they're not where you'd expect them to be. The cursor key layout isn't something I ever got used to either.

My sis-in-law has a Dell laptop instead of a PC, not interchangeable in my book, but it is about 5 years old and still going strong (if using up the small memory with thousands of dog photos!).

I have had to buy 3 laptops in the last year, and the one I'm happiest with, by far, is a Lenovo 3000 N100, which came with Vista Business edition, and the option to have f.o.c. the recovery DVD set to recover it to XP Pro. So I now have the option to go to Vista if they ever make it work properly.

The build quality and feel of the Lenovo is way better than the others, an Acer and an Advent, and the price, admittedly on a fast expiring offer, was not that much more than the £399 of the Advent and less than the Acer.

Having said all that, I do quite fancy one of the Asus Eeee Linux things if ever I see one with the higher memory. I played briefly with a 2gig one and it felt great, and just the thing for hooking up inside the Landie to show me how the towbar was pointing wrt the boats, via a usb webcam. If it will run suitable software and boot as almost instantly as they say, it could be a great thing to be able to throw into the bottom of a bag as one runs out the door.

The Lenovo line was what used to be badged IBM Thinkpads, which have always had a good reputation. I've got another two of them, older machines, and they're all still holding up well despite having passed through many hands before reaching me. Good machines IMHO, only bettered in build quality by the Panasonic Toughbooks. Thinkpad/Lenovo machines are pretty tough themselves, being easily able to withstand being dropped, although they're not coffee-spill resistant like the panasonics.

Panasonic stuff is waaay to expensive for me to consider seriously!

Haven't really looked at the Lenovo stuff, but played with IBM laptops in the past and they seemed good. Prices seem pretty keen - Y510 (2.2Ghz) at 969 euros (£745?), bit disappointing it doesn't have

802.11n, but not a deal breaker. Do they really last 3h30 as suggested? That would be nice! My Acer I used to be able to stretch out to nearly 4h, which was superb, the HP never lasted more than 2h when new, which was a big disappointment after the Acer.

Matt

No idea re battery life as the laptop I have (z61p) is a power-eater, plus of course I don't run windows on it so some of the power-saving stuff is kept secret so that only IBM's drivers work with it so I'd expect windows to eke out the battery for a bit longer than linux. You can often replace things like CDs with batteries, on my Z61p I have an extension battery and a battery I can replace the CD with, that combo can get me 6 hours of use.

Hey MVP! still lurking I see :-) Nice to see old names popping up :-)

Lee D

Have you thought about comparing the cost of a Panasonic toughbook over the time you've wrecked 3 lesser machines? I've known the toughbooks to be used in commercial vehicle workshops (Volvo, in case you're bothered which ones) with no problems. If it lasts 3 times as long, but only costs about double, you're on to a winner, IMHO.

If you're not needing the latest & fastest, they come up second hand now & again.

This one's even got the OBD software & stuff for your modern car.... ;-)

On the other hand, this Toshiba Satellite U200 has been kicking round in my briefcase for over a year without any sign of wearing out.

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:20:08 -0000, "Lee_D" wrote this gibberish:

yep still hovering in the background, been a couple of years since my last land rover but the love is still there, just can't justify owning one while I'm in london, I'll be out of here in a couple of years and then it'll be a drafty noisy leaking box for transport once again :-D

The trouble is that everyone's needs are different. I deliberately went for the Lenovo and the Advent because I needed firewire, and the Advent gave me a cheap-enough-to-not-care-about machine with a large screen. I work with audio and do some software testing. The firewire audio on laptops means that I have to switch off almost all the power management for it to work correctly (and I've completely failed in my efforts to discover whether it's Intel or Microsoft's core code that's broken), so battery life is not something I actively measure. The Lenovo is at least as good as the Acer and much better than the Advent, but it's only a

1.6GHz 2-core processor, and I'm right at the bottom end of the market. I think the Lenovo was getting about 2.5 hours in normal use.

The other thing I look for is to be able to swap hard drives fairly easily. Again Acer and Lenovo have been OK, some cheapo machines that have passed through my hands have been hopeless. Microsoft licensing has made swapping drives a real pain, but again the Vista/XP dual software thing with the Lenovo potentially halves that pain.

The other Lenovo advantage (although it applies to some Acers as well) is that service info tends to be available for download. Useful if you do have to crack a machine open.

Yep, I've got two IBM Thinkpads and neither has given any cause for concern for over two years, badged IBM but there was something mentioned in the paperwork that came with them about someone else taking them over.

Martin

Pure indulgence. Crossfire/Sli laptops. Lol !!

Z®

I own 2 Thinkpads, and look after another 8 or so at work. They all perform faultlessly and take the day-to-day abuse they are subjected to. the 2 Acer's (1 at work, 1 my partner's) have been repaired twice each in under 18 months.

Oh good, sounds like I chose the right laptop ;-) Certainly feels well made, shame the disc died in the first week but these things do happen and can't be predicted.