Laptop Purchase Question

[Curt Harms]

Unfortunately, there are no more IBM Thinkpads. Lenovo owns the notebook and desktop divisions now, and has for quite some time. The new Thinkpads are not as good as the IBM versions, and I've let the engineers know. The next round of Thinkpads will not have the IBM logos, and may not even be called Thinkpads. Shame, the Thinkpads were the staple of business notebooks.

I just purchased a new Thinkpad R61i. It has the IBM logo on it but says Lenovo on bootup. Lenovo makes a Lenovo-branded series of notebooks that don't have the "pointer stick" device. I won't buy a notebook that doesn't have the "pointer stick". I then found out that there seem to be 2 lines of Thinkpads. I bought one from Staples and brought it home. It had "lenovo" in the lower right hand corner. It came with Vista--I won't have Vista, at least not yet. I looked at IBM/Lenovo's driver matrix http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...IGR-67856.html
and found out that some types have windows 2000/windows xp drivers available and some don't. The one from Staples didn't have the driver support I wanted so back it went. I found the "type" I wanted online and ordered it. It has "IBM" in the lower right hand corner.I'm happy with it. I think I read where IBM & Lenovo have a 5 year marketing and support agreement. After that, who knows.

HTH

Curt

[Christopher Pine]

Amen. Friends don't let their friends buy Dell.
Been using a HP laptop w/ 17" screen for about 3 years now. So far so good.

Had the dell desktop I am still using for 7 years now and not a single issue! Not one.

[James Jaragosky]

I know there are several computer geniousi () that hang out here... my wife and I are considering buying a laptop for the family for Christmas.

Any tips on what brand to buy, where to buy it and some of the technical goodies to consider. We'll be using it just for basic computing stuff (email, internet surfing and watching DVDs on the road).

Any input is greatly appreciated!

Let’s see
I have had Macs and I loved them. Easy to use and very user friendly, also I never had a hardware issue.
The down side is that there just is NOT ANYWERE NEAR THE SOFTWERE SLECTION FOR THEM AS THERE IS FOR A PC.
I have owned one dell, a desk top, and it has had many issues, failed hard drive 1st week failed ram within 3 months and at 6 months failed video card.
I have had compact’s desktops and laptops and I will never own a compact again. I had nothing but problems and very poor performance when they were running.
I have a 5 year old e-machine that is still kicking ash. So I like them, never had a issue with it.
For me HP all the way, I have their 19’ laptop and two desks tops, all work flawlessly.
.
As for Pentium or Celeron? Pentium is the performance chip as of right now.
Get a quad core if you can afford one, everything is moving that way.
Laptops to watch movies? You will need to use an inverter, as the batteries won’t last that long playing DVD’s, especially with the bigger screens. My 19” hp laptop gets about 1 hour 15 minutes of movie time.
I find that micro center / fry’s or circuit city usually have the best prices.
This is all MHO and is based on far too much money spent on my toys as the loml calls them.
The dell is back up and running as of Friday, no problems yet. I hope it stays that way.
One last thing, I would strongly recommend you get the extended service contract with whatever you choose to buy, as any repairs done on a laptop tend to be outrageously expensive.
Be an informed shopper, and you will do fine.
Hope this helps.
Jim

[Jerry Clark]

Remember when they used to bundle software when you bought a new computer-- Now, they still bundle a lot, but it usually 60 day trial period or limited use until you pay the randsom fee-- $$! Might want to ask before you purchase.