Completely OT: Laptops

New or used?

Either way, Apple iBook. New ones I think have 512Mb and WiFi, Bluetooth as standard, excellent battery life, Combo drive, incredibly robust casing (vastly superior to the PowerBook IMO - and I use a PowerBook myself).

Richard

Toshiba. I have sold heaps of them and I'm yet to have one come back.

Fraser

I'd go Dell..

got mine from them 7 months ago.. brilliant machine.. only thing mine lacks ins the ram, (256) but its cheap as chips to upgrade (will be soon) and has all the rest cost £536 inc

Mark

It's not comparing like with like. Not in any sense.

You want WiFi that you can hook up to any available network without pissing around. You want OSX. You want to burn a CD with one click. OSX again. You want to rip CDs to DVD. No contest, OSX does it without hassle.

Believe me, everything is so much easier and intuitive on OSX than it is on XP.

Forget the specs. think more about productivity, and usable life. A PC laptop bought now will be looking pretty outdated in 2 years time - an iBook bought now will still be up to running the latest OS and software in 6 years time. (My backup machine runs an identical copy of my current hard drive, but it's a 6 year old design).

False economy, IMHO. I get much better value out of Macs than I do out of PCs.

There's also the 'wow' factor - I can guarantee that if you put a girlie in front of an iBook she'll want it.

Of course, that's CDs to MP3s. Doh!

Dell, Dell or Dell.

Tosh still are, got a Sat Pro for under 400 exvat last month for my son. Celeron M, Wireless, XP home, all the bits it needed.

I have a tosh tecra A4. Also nice but a bit more the 500 quid.

He wanted a laptop, not an MP3 player ;)

I'd go Dell, for a desktop or server. Laptops are cheap contractr manufacture units with poor quality control, not the standard they were five years or more ago. Spent plenty of time and money sorting dell machines out (warranty is good but that doesn't get your data back...).

Unless you've been using Windows for years.

Ahhh sorry, thought you meant CD to DVD - my PC does that. And it does CD to MP3 (one click), burn CD (one click)...

Dear, dear, oh dear.

Tosh first. Then either HP, Fujitsu Siemens (not the retail nasty ones) or Acer (if you want a lot for your money). Ergo are another option.

I know. It's comparing a £500 piece of kit with a £700 piece of kit. I could go and find refurb PC laptops if you like so we're comparing a £563 machine with a £400 machine... £200 is half a week's work, or a month's rent...

My pc is a good 7 years old and does what I want. Something that does what's needed will continue to do so for another 3 years. It might not do whatever the next big thing is (ripping DVDs at a decent pace?), but it'll do what my bird wants. When she's out of uni and working, a laptop's not going to be particulary needed.

So?

My brother's just got a new laptop from work (not his personally, but he uses it). Doesn't look flashy, but it does the job.

It's (roughly speaking) a Pentium M with Centrino Technology, 512MB RAM, and a reasonable size hard disk (not huge though). I'm pretty sure it's got a DVD writer (possibly even re-writer) as well. That's an HP/Compaq and cost around £500+VAT, though I've got a feeling it might have been nearer £560+VAT, which I make £658 inc. VAT, which is a bit out if the overall budget's £500.

But my point was that entry level Centrinos are coming into that price band now, and ok, they don't do a lot more than a P4 with a wireless PCMCIA card, but they are a lot better as far as battery life goes.

I say Dell too, the support is great and if you get next day warranty they stick by it, I have bought over 40 Dell laptops in the last 4 years and only

Sony make real nice laptops, but they are expensive.

I have kitted our whole company out with Dell PC's over 50 of the them and 3 Poweredge servers and touch wood I have had nothing go wrong, oh apart from a DLT drive fail which was replaced next day by Dell warranty :)

Value for money, and support is what i look for, and Dell fits the bill now.

That would be an iPod, not an iBook ;)

Richard

Nah laptops are the future. Check out Sony Vaio. The new version of my one has addressed all the annoying issues I've got with mine and can probably be had now for about =A3600ish.

No, that would be an iRiver H10 or H340, not an iPod ;)

Don't you find the reflective x-black screens (and the similar ones on the Qosmio) are a pain?