laptop choices

[plum]

I'm planning on purchasing a laptop that would be fast, have about 80gb HD space, a 17" screen, and might one day handle the load of AVID (digital video editor used on PCs). I say a PC because the ultimate, the Apple Powerbook G4 is too darn expensive.

What do you all think about Toshiba Satellites? I'm looking at the P25 series. Would a Dell or Compaq be better? Why?

 

[trunks2k]

I got a laptop from www.elementcomputer.com. They're really inexpensive. However quality wise they are a teensy bit iffy. My issue with it is that the intake for the fan is on the bottom of the laprop, so it's difficult to get a good air flow going. Other than that it's fine, I don't know what they more expensive models are like tho. It comes with a crappy version of Linux installed on it instead of Windows. I trashed that Linux Distro and now have it dual booted with Mandrake and Windows XP. Mandrake doesn't like the laptop much, and has difficulty autodetecting some hardware like the PCMCIA port, but that's more Mandrake's fault. Windows has no problem on it.

 

[merryheart]

I would get the dell before the tosh - dell has better support, and better q for the $ however my favorite laptop is IBM Thinkpad T series... they do cost more, but they are sturdy.

 

[seebs]

Dell's support has been unbelievably awful in my experience. We had a $tens-of-thousands contract, and they just declared that they couldn't figure out why our machine sometimes froze during POST and stopped trying to fix it.

And yes, Thinkpad is the way to go. Thinkpad or Apple.

 

[CDN Red Raider]

you say the powerbook is too much. can you tell me what the cost of getting all that on a quality PC will cost. im aware that lower end models are much cheaper on PC but im not sure that the top of the line ones are.

 

[Stryper]

did you check how much the powerbook g4's are with the education discount?

it gives u a good 10% off.

 

[doofus125]

Dell's support has been unbelievably awful in my experience. We had a $tens-of-thousands contract, and they just declared that they couldn't figure out why our machine sometimes froze during POST and stopped trying to fix it.

And yes, Thinkpad is the way to go. Thinkpad or Apple.

Wow, I'm suprised to hear that....they have always been able to help me with any issues that I have had......

As for Compaq, you might as well go buy a rock to put on your desk.....

 

[Brother]

Take a look at www dot powernotebooks dot com They have been awarded a perfect 10 in customer satisfaction from resellerratings for the past couple of years. Many of the manufacturers mentioned in this thread do not make laptops. They buy and badge them as thier own and sell them with a mark-up. My advice is to shop for a reputable company that won't BS you and give you a fair price for the machine that you need.

A recent trend in laptops has been to make them as powerful as desktops. The drawback to this is that the Pentium 4 based (non-mobile) laptops tend to draw a lot of power and generate a lot of heat. These books are intended more as a mobile desktop that will be on battery for only a very short time.

I have also been studying Apple's line of laptops. For the price they are no where near as powerful as a x86 based laptop. Although if super slim is what you want then Apple is the only choice.

I have not the post count to offer the link so please forgive me for not making one that is clickable

 

[plum]

I appreciate everyone's comments. I might be holding off my laptop search for a while since an internship opportunity came up that offes a great deal on the equipment i need: apple laptop-not a powerbook (not what i'd want, but maybe they can give me a powerbook for a good deal), photoshop, illustrator, and a video editing suite. we'll see if i get the job, eh...

i would switch to apple faster if i felt more confident in my abilities with macs. i've mostly just used them for audio and video editing, not normal daily life use. I don't even know how to find a word processor on one let alone keep everything i have on it. nerves, i tell you.

Getting -most- of what the powerbook has costs about 1000 dollars less, screen resolution included and all. But in my experience, for a girl who might make a career out of digital video and graphic arts, the macs are the way to go.

 

[godscreation8888]

One last thing, check out some of the Alienware products, they are like the top of the line laptops. I personally have a Dell Pentium 4 laptop and it runs pretty good, it could probably handle that video editing software.

 

[simchat_torah]

either alienware.com or voodoopc.com

best in the business.

 

[Stryper]

either alienware.com or voodoopc.com

best in the business.

i really really really want to argue this, but im too tired.

 

[pastorjc]

Have a Dell Inspiron 5100 - works great. Have had for one year, bought the 3 year support.

 

[Collide]

Alien ware is a super fancy case with bad parts in it, dell's customer service is really bad, HP's are just plain bad (my HP laptop was dead in ONE YEAR), compaq...I dont even have a comment...

Sure some people have simular arguments about apple, nice case and same hardware as everyone else. But its all about the OS. I can say that if you go with a cheaper alt. you won't be happy in the long run. Save up and get the apple. I have an iBook and it is an incredible machine.

Dell/HP/Compaq/Most Wintel computers = Will give you a year of use
Apples = lasts years

You get what you pay for, I recently told that to a friend who got an HP around 5 months ago (around same time I got my new iBook) my iBook has not had ONE problem at all...and just the other day i spent quite some time debugging his computer from the dang sassor worm...plus he has another problem I cant quite figure out what it is...if you dont turn the screen and computer on at the same time then the whole thing goes phyco and the screen glitches.

Oh well I am glad I got a mac... go for it!

 

[QuePasa]

Dell does a really good job with their PC's and laptops. Have you looked at gateway? They also have nice laptops. I bought a 200x from them, it's an ultraportable, so it probably doesn't have the speed/power you're looking for. What you're going to want to watch out for when you're buying a laptop for digital video editing is an integrated video card; I've heard that ATI cards are nice for video editing. I highly recommend finding a laptop with a Pentium Mobile processor, they're very powerful and have a large level 2 cache which will aid you when you're compiling a video.

Everyone always has their good/bad stories about each and every pc manufacturer. I can tell a few stories about ibooks ceasing to function and apple's tech support being less than helpful with it if you want. They're not personal experience, but my roomate is an apple fanatic (iBook, G5, iPod, this guys got it all), and he ran into some hiccups.