Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

internetworkers - Re: [internetworkers] Laptop Recommendations

internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Tom Boucher <trekkie AT nomorestars.com>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Laptop Recommendations
  • Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 18:14:47 -0500

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


On Mar 7, 2005, at 12:47 PM, Colleen McCarthy wrote:

Hi Folks,

Do any of you have any particularly good or bad things to say about your
experience with laptops?

IBM ThinkPad, particularly the X series if you travel at all (super light, extreme battery performance with simple upgrade 6 -8 hours on one charge), or the T series if you don't travel as much and want a larger screen.

I'm biased in that I work for them, but I'm not nice to my laptops over the last 7 years of using IBM equipment. I've stepped on one dead center (I'm about 290 on a 'light' day and it was 3AM and I was trying to close a window in a KS thunderstorm in my crowded with equipment office) opened a hatchback to have it spill out of my bag and bounce on the pavement, was talking to a customer when putting one away and forgot to zip bag/secure the 'air cushion' thing in my port bag and dumped it right back onto the floor from waist high (floor was a tiled floore), punched one (yes, very bad day) and all sorts of things and with most of the incidents resulted in at worse a piece of plastic might crack here, or the PCMCIA door went flying there.

Those that didn't survive, didn't with good reason. My First casualty was a ThinkPad 600E that got about 48 oz of unsweetened tea dumped right in the middle of it (or, as in the midwest it's known 'Iced Tea'). This one was my favorite because I was quick and yanked the power cord and went 'yes' just as I realized laptops have batteries and then it shut off, a water pipe leaking over the top of a T21 (well, to be fair LCD didn't work but the laptop did), and last, but not least knocking over a freshly opened bottle of Jones Soda Company sugar free black cherry, and then smacking it right over the keyboard on a X30. I've been told that the X31 and X40 (I now have an X40) have a system in the keyboard that will accept & divert out the size up to 8 oz of water. I'm sure with my luck of dumping a liquid in a laptop at the worst moment possible moment (the black cherry was right in front of a presentation, the thing smelled of stale black cherry artificial smell for about 2 months, but they fixed it) I'll see how well it works but I'm not about to test it out. Though the hard drive vibration airbag thing is pretty cool and makes a difference that I can tell. The fun thing about working for IBM is in those situations it's 'covered' and it is amusing to call and explain 'what kind of problem are you having' to the guy on the other ends reaction.

However, all that being said when it is my money at home, I like Macs and I have a Powerbook and iBook at home. For durability I'd probably go with a Powerbook because of the metal and yes, I've managed to yank one of those off a table and while it dented the case, it kept running and still does almost a year after I did that one. That one was 'funny ha ha' after the fact but I was being oh so careful to route the power cord through the couch so I could charge it as it was running out/low and then flipped up the foot thing only to launch it off the end table. Fortunately the wife has the PowerBook and I have since moved my main workload to my iMac G5 and it's well out of reach of my hands and hopefully I won't ever have to report on how it takes a fall - - though I tried when I pushed the back of my desk out and my desk started to tip backwards. I managed to grab it and stop the desk from completely falling over with my elbows while I screamed for my wife to come help me stop everything I owned from falling through the window behind it.

Prior to going to IBM I worked for Entex in KS and they used Toshibas and HPs. Toshibas always seemed to loose the hard drive on the people that had those, and the HPs were 'plasticy' for my taste. To be fair I've not looked at either brand in years because I like my ThinkPad so much. Dell I just don't buy on principle, twisted as it may be.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin)

iD8DBQFCLOBZxrCvsKYtj8MRAlScAJ9RGdedxpUuLMPbB83rRa7r3sxtiQCgn9wE
eh+UyG8Cb5IAREcRg0EpTe4=
=/xY+
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page