My piece of **** Dell E1505 finally **** the bed last night. Vista wouldn't boot two days ago and the screen just died last night so my parents gave me the go-ahead to start shopping for a replacement.

My requirements:
-High RAM (long uptimes and lots of heavy multitasking
-15" screen or larger
-Long battery life (3 hours minimum)

I have no problem buying a blank machine, I want to go back to XP anyway. I don't do any gaming of any kind, just email, iTunes, and too much forum surfing/Youtube/Hulu. Obviously I use it to tune the car too but I could probably build a laptop out of chewing gum and kleenex that would run Megatune.

Looking to stay under $1k, but if that's unreasonable the budget can be extended. I paid $1600 for my current laptop 2 years ago and I was planning on just formatting the drive and re-installing XP but with a broken case and now the screen dead, it's probably not worth bothering.

What do you guys recommend?

 

I just went down this road earlier this year. I went with a thinkpad SL400 due to loyalty. Durability is one of my key concerns and thinkpads have always been sturdy. I'm reasonably pleased with it...a little heftier than I wanted but oh well.

I was right under 1k at 945 bucks with a 3 year warranty, 2 gb of ram and a really nice HD nvidia vid card. Batter life seems to be just at 3hrs doing some light stuff with the power saver stuff very conservative.

Keep in mind Windows 7 is about to come out later this year supposedly so you may want to re-think paying 100 dollars to downgrade to XP (thats what it costs for real).

 

I have to say that I'm happy as **** with all three of my Dell Latitude C640s..

One for work
One for Tuning
One for my "desktop" machine

Its not the fastest thing on the block.. P4 2.0 w/2048 ram and 160gb hdd.. *shrug*

I stopped looking at buying a new laptop when I found out you can't get them without ******* vista garbage installed, and had no luck looking for drivers for newer notebooks that'll work with XP for sure.

 

Have to have a laptop? You can get a kick *** desktop w big screen for $500 + a old used dell tuning laptop for $150.

My tuning laptop is an old dell PIII with a 2 hour battery. They're cheap as **** on ebay.

 

I love my HP Pavilion Entertainment Edition

Expensive - Check

Huge - Check (17")

Dependable - Check (1.5yrs)

Runs MS - Even with Windows 7 Beta

 

Must be a laptop. I'm going to think hard about a Thinkpad. My dad had one for work and loved it.

 

Panasonic Toughbook F8. Love the thing. No need to be nice to it like you would to a normal laptop at all.

 

gf is very happy with her HP pavilion 2700. picked it up for under 1000. it's got a lot of junkwarez on it but you can remedy that.

it's a solid machine.

that's one thing I hate about the lenovos. they feel like crackerjack prizes. flimsy plasticky bullshit. and it (work machine) was like 3 grand!

 

china-lenovo > *


or a thinkpad.

 

Unless someone gives me a good reason I'm ordering a Thinkpad T400 tonight.

Edit: ****, it's like $360 off a $1300 laptop too. Done.

 

dont come bitchin to me when you go to "ctrl-tab" in firefox and the ctrl key isn't where it's supposed to be.

stupid lenovo.

 

Good decision.

My only complaint about the newer thinkpads is they aren't AS bullet proof as the older ones. My power jack is starting to get a little loosey goosey but I have a warranty for that if it ever breaks.

 

+1

 

y8s, I never use that feature and TBQH, a laptop with a real button for the "page up" key is a step up from what I've been using for the last year.

The review I read on the updated T400 was that it seems to be better built than recent Lenovo Thinkpads, too. They bitched about the keyboard, and then said that this revision had fixed it completely. They also loved the LED-backlit screen, but it was on a 4-week backorder and I need this laptop yesterday :(

And it was 20% off, bitches.

 

I wish my parents bought me a laptop while I saved my pennies for car bits and track days

 

Parents pay for school, I pay for toys <3

 

I haven't run an IBM in a while.

I hate Dell with a passion. I've used many HP's, and it's good kit. I have one of their media systems now, and it's a trooper.

I have not owned a Toughbook, but I think that's a good one to look at.

My current machine is a Fujitsu - very very good product. I highly recommend Fuji's. Previous was a Toshiba that lasted two years before dieing an ugly death.

 

I just picked up a Thinkpad R50 on Ebay 4 months ago. It's a little older but no complaints so far. It has a 1.7Mhz Pentium M, 2 gigs of ram, 15" screen with XP Pro and Microsoft Office. It's not a hot rod but it's good enough for my Megasquirt. My PC crashed for a while and it picked up the slack nicely. I got it for $300. which wasn't too bad, I suppose. Just my $.02.

You'll find a deal that suits your needs Sav, Just got to search for it. God speed my child.

 

If you haven't bought anything yet...For people who are looking for a good whatever use personal laptop i.e No XP Pro or Vista Business for a Domain. I usually point them to Best Buy. They usually have well priced HP Pavillions in the 600.00-700.00 range. Last one I ordered for someone had a Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, more than adequate hard drive, and a 15 in screen for 600.00. That was about seven months ago.

It came with Vista Home of course, but you can always downgrade it to XP yourself. Just take the license from your current laptop.

I don't recommend Dell anymore. Their quality in the last couple of years has just gone down hill. The material and overall finish of their laptops is dog **** now. The new Pavillions are very nicely made.

Hardware wise, the big names are mostly the same. I have come across more problems with the budget brands like eMachines, Toshiba, Gateway, etc.

In the end, all computers are pieces of ****. Anything on them can grenade at any given moment without warning, no matter what the make or what the specs are.

 

I ordered a Thinkpad T400 on Friday night. No big bells and whistles; I opted for the upgraded battery, 250gb hard drive, a DVD-R drive, and a couple other small things. Also opted for the 3-year no-questions-asked warranty.