Well I am in the market for a laptop, and I must say, I know virtually nothing about them. I had one for many years, but they were always bought and maintained by my employers.
I need one that's not too heavy, as it will be flying back and forth to Panama, and any other vacation spots. I want to get something that has a bit of power but I am not sure how much.
Its uses will be primarily for maintaining records, email, VOIP, occassional movies, and of course surfing to all of my S2000 spots.

I have used a Dell, and HP, a Toshiba and a Fujitsu in my former lives. (The HP was incredibly bad.)
I have read that all of the above seem to have dreadful customer service.

Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks

 

You may want to check out the Toshiba Satellite notebooks/laptops. I've been pleasantly surprised by mine. No problems so far.

 

I have a Sony 13" and a Fujitsu tablet 9"; in the past I've had ones with bigger screens but, of course, they get heavier.

I'm a fan of systems that have real docking ports you can buy, and my Sony Vaio (S-series) works well in that mode. I have it docked at my desk (with a real keyboard, mouse, monitor, peripheral gadgets) and then can un-dock it and use it on my lap in the other room (it's on wireless all the time). It also travels well.

The Fujitsu has a smaller-than-standard keyboard, but it's quite light and the size of a 6x9 trade paperback book (300 pages or so). It's a full WinXP system with a GByte of RAM and a good-sized disk (80, I think). The screen gets small for some things, though, but it comes with a dock as well. It doesn't have a built-in optical drive, though.

My only advice would be not to max out the processor. Unless you're doing high-end graphics all the time, you don't really need all that power, and in a laptop the faster processors heat the thing up and eat the battery. HPH

 

I've been looking at the Sony TX series for quite some time. Incredibly small (yet still a usable keyboard), very good battery life (up to eight hours?), very light (under three pounds including the DVD recorder), good screen. If you travel a lot and don't want to carry a lot of weight, this would be the one for me.

http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/Notebook...rch1/TXFeatures

 

Ditto what Mike said. I have the seventeen inch Toshiba Satellite and I've been very pleased with it. It's much better in quality than any of the numerous Dells that I've owned previously. I can't comment on Toshiba's customer service as I've never had to use it.

That said, I would still rather own a Mac just to get away from Windblows.

 

I have had a Sony Vaio for three years, and I like it. But I don't carry it around much, so it might be a bit heavy for you.

 

I sure hope Santa brings him that Mac this year so I can inherit the Toshiba and get rid of this POS Dell!!!!!! I've personally had 4 Dell laptops and 2 Dell PC's (my employer's brand of choice) and HATED every one of them. I've had trouble with batteries, modems, screens, keyboards and about every other part you can think of. Dell.

 

I love my 15" powerbook, you can get one for $1000 less than I paid now: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebO...lm=CertifiedMac

I've bought a few iPods refurbished, no problems and you can still buy the same warranty as a new laptop...that being said I'd love to have one of the new intel ones where I could run windows (when I had to and I'd be kicking and screaming!) and OSX!

I can say Office for Mac works great I go between PC's and my Mac all the time with no problems with documents so if you're just using office stuff it's worth it. Plus all the wonders of Apple!

As a quick side note, I worked for MSFT for a few years in Redmond, I have nothing against them but when I turn on my PC I always have this little bit of tension, with the Mac...I smile! Good luck with your choice!

 

When I worked at the great nuclear weapons factory in the sky, I had a Powerbook (the 14" one, as I recall), and I have to say it was a very nice machine. Being a Windows veteran, one of the first software packages I got was a Mac application that ran XP, but I found I never used it. I'm pretty sure the new versions of OSX also allow networking with XP machines (filesharing and so on), but I don't remember for sure. HPH

 

Thanks for the tips. I think I'm going to get one of the new Mini Macs. For what I do these days, I don't really need a laptop anymore.