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My old laptop, a Toshiba satellite P200D needs to be replaced. The screen is
wonky and now the keyboard is playing up.
My requirements are something lighter than the 3.3 kg the P200D is. I don't need
a 17" screen but surprise, surprise I do want lots of CPU ticks and PovRay
power. My budget is up to GBP 1000 but I don't mind spending less. :)
Any suggestions?
--
Regards
Stephen
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Stephen <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote:
> My old laptop, a Toshiba satellite P200D needs to be replaced. The screen is
> wonky and now the keyboard is playing up.
> My requirements are something lighter than the 3.3 kg the P200D is. I don't need
> a 17" screen but surprise, surprise I do want lots of CPU ticks and PovRay
> power. My budget is up to GBP 1000 but I don't mind spending less. :)
> Any suggestions?
> --
>
> Regards
> Stephen
What about...
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lctp.html
Note the XP dual boot option. I'm submitting this for discussion rather than
recommending it outright since I don't actually have one, but was thinking about
this as an option to replace my own aging laptop. Pros? Cons?
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Stephen wrote:
> My requirements are something lighter than the 3.3 kg the P200D is. I don't need
> a 17" screen but surprise, surprise I do want lots of CPU ticks and PovRay
> power. My budget is up to GBP 1000 but I don't mind spending less. :)
> Any suggestions?
Several months ago.
I was unable to purchase the one with the BluRay drive (mine is "only"
DVD with LightScribe capability). It has a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo (i.e.,
dual-core), nVidia GeForce 7200 graphics card (I still can't quite
believe that part...) and came with 2GB RAM. (I've seen the same model
number offered with slightly varying specs though.)
It's a wide-screen laptop with a full keyboard though (i.e., it has the
numpad keys as well). I don't know if you wanted something a little
smaller. I have no idea what it weighs, but it doesn't seem heavy to me.
In particular, it has an especially nice glide pad - nice in that IT
ACTUALLY FREAKIN WORKS PROPERLY, unlike every other glide pad I've ever
used.
The other nice thing is that no matter how much CPU power you use, the
laptop never, ever gets even remotely warm, and the fans never turn on
(except during boot). OTOH, the power adaptor gets ridiculously hot,
which doesn't make a lot of sense...
The speakers are surprisingly good. Most laptops produce utterly crap
sound, whereas this is half-decent. (Only half... Hey, how big do you
think these speakers are?!)
Only annoyance is the lack of a catch to hold the lid shut. Oh, and
having to uninstall 20 preloaded Acer utilities for people who are too
stupid to operate a computer. But after that it was fine.
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/archives/350
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On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:30:20 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>Several months ago.
That looks good Andrew but it is 3.6 Kg which is a tad heavier than my own. You
are a fit young lad and I travel a lot. I particularly like the idea of it
having a nVidia graphics card as my ATI card seems to give problems with PoseRay
and Bishop3D's OpenGL display.
Thanks I'll keep looking but keep it in mind.
--
Regards
Stephen
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Stephen wrote:
> My old laptop, a Toshiba satellite P200D needs to be replaced. The screen is
> wonky and now the keyboard is playing up.
> My requirements are something lighter than the 3.3 kg the P200D is. I don't need
> a 17" screen but surprise, surprise I do want lots of CPU ticks and PovRay
> power. My budget is up to GBP 1000 but I don't mind spending less. :)
> Any suggestions?
1) Lenovo's business models
2) HP business models
3) DELL business models
Try to get in touch with the possible models (physically, I mean) to try
them out. The HID's (Human Interface Devices) differ widely - keyboard
feeling, "mouse" type, "mouse" feeling, monitor - and it's up to you,
which one is the best for you. For example there are two types of
"mouses" on laptops - trackpoint joysticks and touchpads, and at least
from touchpads there are 2 different types available. My personal choice
is soft touchpad by Synaptics (which is used eg. by HP), but yours may
differ. You use the machine via HID's and if they're horrible, using the
machine is horrible. If using the machine is horrible, it's waste of money.
-Aero
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On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:12:01 +0300, Eero Ahonen
<aer### [at] removethis zbxt net invalid> wrote:
>1) Lenovo's business models
>2) HP business models
>3) DELL business models
Thanks Aero,
I'll look into them. I'm a bit wary of Dell as I've heard that their
Customer Service is poor but HP and Thinkpads have a good reputation. I probably
will buy a laptop in Tottenham Court Road, London so I will definitely try it
before buying. I can't stand to use trackpoint joysticks and I always seem to
have ended up using a Synaptics touchpad.
I'll see what I can find this weekend.
--
Regards
Stephen
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Stephen wrote:
>
> Thanks Aero,
> I'll look into them. I'm a bit wary of Dell as I've heard that their
> Customer Service is poor but HP and Thinkpads have a good reputation.
You know, that list was written in specific order, DELL being number 3
for a reason ;-).
> I probably
> will buy a laptop in Tottenham Court Road, London so I will definitely try it
> before buying. I can't stand to use trackpoint joysticks and I always seem to
> have ended up using a Synaptics touchpad.
Dell has used a lot of Alps hard-surface touchpads, which IME aren't as
accurate and easy to control as Synaptics's soft ones.
> I'll see what I can find this weekend.
Good luck for you :-).
And yeah, the business models are usually clearly more expensive than
consumer ones, but there is a good reason for that. Like I told Andy, my
02/2007 bought HP NC6320 runs ~35W on full power (ie. using all it has)
and after upgrading the memory to 4GB it's still very usable, running
fine and doesn't have any cracks (the usual place for a laptop to break
down physically is the monitor hinges).
-Aero
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> 1) Lenovo's business models
> 2) HP business models
> 3) DELL business models
Where I work, all the BD people have Dell Latitude D630 laptops. (Some
of them even have UK keyboards...) They seem fairly small, light, and
with a decent screen. Few other positives.
Note that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with Dell every
year, and they *still* don't give a damn about giving us any support -
in spite of the numerous extra support contracts we pay for. I find it
highly unlikely that they're going to care about a retail customer at all.
We also have one HP laptop - I think it's an nx4200 or something. Nice
thing to look at. I can't reinstall the OS though, since you have to
have special IDE drivers before Windoze can "see" the IDE controller.
(WTF?) Also, HP don't supply a restore CD. When you turn the laptop on,
you configure it with a bunch of settings, and *then* it burns a
recovery CD for you - this CD doesn't restore to factory condition, only
to the condition when the CD was burned. Gee, thanks.
Never tried Lenovo.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:57:02 +0300, Eero Ahonen
<aer### [at] removethis zbxt net invalid> wrote:
>
>Good luck for you :-).
Thanks, unfortunately I will only be able to go into a shop and say "I want that
one". I won't be able to order and wait for the best one.
Life is sad ;)
--
Regards
Stephen
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