Help! My Technology is Inferior! (open thread)

Have you looked into a mil-spec semi-ruggedized laptop? Mine goes with me to construction sites at times. Having a spill proof keyboard, a hardrive wrapped in gel (help prevent it from being damaged when dropped)is nice. I also splurged for the transreflective screen. I decided the feature was worth it the first day I had to work in an area with lots of indirect sunlight. I could still read the screen perfectly.
This is the retailer I got mine from:
http://www.m-techlaptops.com/specifications/mtech25rg.html

ITs manufactured by Sunrex
http://www.usasunrex.com/PRODUCTS/2511.html

Had it for over a year with daily use. No problems so far.

oopps... saw your price requirements.. well.. if you can splurge a few hundred extra $.. go with something that is ruggedized.

I've had pretty good experiences with IBM (now Lenovo), just don't get the cheaper, crappier models.

My vote is for Averatec. Good prices, good features, good performance. I've had mine for 2 years with no problems, and I've convinced a few friends to buy similar laptops with no complaints. They have quite a wide range of models, and I think you can even find them at the BX now!

It's a bit of a switch, but you can get a nice MacBook with your budget.

I'd tend to agree with the MacBook. You're better off with a laptop that's been designed to last from the start than a piece of crap that's been "ruggedized."

I've owned two Toshiba's. They're always highly rated and very durable for everyday use. Unless you're planning on typing during a sandstorm or tripping with it down a ravine, I doubt the additional for the ruggedized version would be of value.

The macs are a good choice. The system is a lot easier for a novice to use/repair. It's a cleaner/better designed system and if you're using only PP, Word, Excel and Explorer - it will be a lot better easier than anything windows makes. I use windows because any specialized program is made first for windows. I use some specialized financial/trading packages so I use Windows Pro now, but if I was just doing the general stuff, I'd probably switch back to mac.

Feel free to email me if you have any other questions.

I haven't owned a Satellite, but I'm on my second Toshiba Portege. Both machines were/are great machines. Not sure what they cost now though.

Dude! AlienWare or Dell. Our whole office has Dell, I use 4 at home (desktops and a slab) and also a laptop. Sorry to go with one of the "big 8" but I have been using Dell at home and work for about 12 years.

If your other co-workers use a bunch of Microsoft apps, stick with a PC. If you don't need to, and you use Firebird/Thunderbird/Mozilla and other tools, get a Mac. Cleaner, portable, and great for your own stuff at home.

Is that pro-BigCompany enough ... ??? ;)

I've seen some really horrible Dells. I've also seen some I would consider buying. Caveat Emptor applies doubly with them.

The great thing about the new Macbooks is they'll run Windows too (keep your install disks). Just get plenty of RAM and you're good to go.

dude, you're getting a Dell.

MacBook (Intel Duo Core cpu) with teacher/student version of MS Office (Mac Version - built for OS X from ground up). RAM it to the max. Might as well go for the super drive as you get bigger hard drive.

Very dependable. An app may hang but blue screen of death is a rarity.

Also extremely easy to jump on open wireless network.

Few little beasties floating around out there for Mac OS to cause you grief and crash your laptop.

MAC Svs is great - buy the extended warranty.

Read some other blogs. DELL svs reportedly sucks of late.

apple computers have great software but that's about it rocket. macs suck. and if you are a gamer, good grief don't even get me started.

Well I used to hate Macs (yes i've used them, it only made my opinion worse) but since they've switched to Intel I've heard they're much better. I'd definitely consider it. But I've heard service horror stories which are enough to make me want to stick with IBM. That was with the old PPC hardware though, maybe the new hardware is more reliable and doesn't break so often...

Mac. Without a doubt or reservation.

Get A Mac. MacBook, that is.
Need Windows? Install it too.

Forgot to mention. Games? get a MacBook Pro or iMac then (ATI X1600 card). I'm running Battlefield2 at full graphics intensity on the "dark side" (Windows) of my Intel iMac and it beats my Dell box (3 GHz P4, 1 Gb RAM, 256 MB GeForce 6800GS) hands down.

That's all I run on the Windows side, except for a Windows-only forms program for my Reserve duty. Otherwise, it's all Mac, no viruses, no malware, no crashing. Great service and TONS of free and near-free software.

Wait until next week. Toshiba is introducing an entirely new line of Satellite. An NDA limits what I can say on the topic, but they are more ruggedized then past models, not milspec for that Panasonic has a nice model. But it will hold up to everyday bumps and bangs.

yeah but you forgot to mention the two-year wait for the good games to come out on Apple, Andy.

IBM (Lenovo) T Series.
Employee Discount available.
E-mail me if you want.

If you're Army, you can get a decent price for Macs or Dells through the Army Small Computer Program....Macs at below retail

Gecko,

Point. Agreed Macs using G4 chip probably will annoy online gaming freeks. I know I have firsthand experience. My older son is a online gamer.

As the new Intel Duo chips come online and the gaming industry starts to gear up, this may change. Afterall it's the gamer community that drives the tech envelop.

In the meantime Macs IMHO have the edge for graphic/animation related stuff.

RBT

Acer Ferrari is good stuff.

For about the same but not in racing red, grey and includes disk encryption plus fingerprint scanner stock, the HP nx6125 is a sleeper at a good pricepoint. Get the model with the ML-37 chip and 1gig ram included, shouldn't cost over the $1400 mark. Excellent value, fast, reliable. An Acer Ferrari at a lower cost with carbon graphite over magnesium frame, scratch-proof screen and waterproof keyboard.

nx-6125 has been working very well as a business laptop for me. Got another one, I like it so much.

Gecko: Sorry, but your information is wrong on Apple. 5-6 years ago, I was in agreement with your viewpoints. The new Apple Intel Core Duo laptops will dual boot into WindowsXP and will certainly run most games rather well. The MacBook uses main memory for video memory so it's not a good choice for highend 3D gaming (few laptops are well suited to highend 3D gaming). However, with a enough RAM most other games run very well. The MacBookPro has a dedicated video card with it's own RAM but costs more, $2500.00 instead of $1099.00 for the MacBook. As far as bang for the buck, the MacBook is still the better deal until the next MacBookPro revision which is expected in August. i.e. 2nd generation Intel Core DUO2 chips expected, less power consumption and much faster too.

True, most games may take 2 years to be ported to Mac OS X but dual booting to WinXP will allow you run all your previous software as well as recently released WinXP games. The new Mac's are completely compatible with WinXP. The price difference is just about negligible.

The only trouble is the WinXP drivers provided by Apple on their BETA BootCamp driver CD don't support right-clicking via the keyboard. i.e. CTRL+Left Trackpad click under WinXP. This will probably get fixed soon, but until then you will need an external USB mouse or BlueTooth mouse and yes any mouse will work and all the buttons will work too. i.e. Logitech 5 button mouse, etc. The only other thing missing is a driver for the built-in iSight webcam under WinXP as well. Again, the BootCamp software and drivers from Apple are BETA. This summer Apple is doing their WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) where they will demo the next Mac OS X version to developers and it will include BootCamp. When that OS ships it will exceed Windows Vista's current feature set (which the current Mac OS X Tiger release already trumps).

I support PC's for a living and have been doing so for 20 years. Apple has become my new favorite. I have replaced my main workhorse machines at home with Mac's because I fix computers all day long at work, I don't want to be bothered on my own personal time. I maintain two Windows PC's and they are just for when I work at home. The rest are Apple Mac's and older PC hardware running Linux/FreeBSD plus some old Sun SPARC hardware.

Apple has many things going for it:

1. The hardware is made by the OS manufacturer so plug and play always works.
2. The hardware is not comprised of low end parts. It is a quality system and almost all Mac's include more hardware then comparable Dell's, etc. i.e. firewire, built-in web cam, bluetooth, 802.11g, quality trackpads, etc. Apple innovates in the hardware with features like auto-dimming displays, light up keyboards (MacBookPro), magnetic power adaptors, magnetic laptop latch, wide screen displays, shock sensors, multiple finger mousing (right-click), easy access to hard disk and ram (MacBook), etc.
3. Applecare Tech Support is excellent (Apple just cancelled their plans for an Indian call center).
4. You can buy it at any Apple Store in many locations without having to deal with mail order and you can walk out of the store with new computer in hand.
5. The Mac OS X has zero virus or spyware issues. The underlying system is Unix but you wouldn't know it if you didn't look real hard. You can encrypt your home folder with AES-128bit. There is a builtin keychain for single sign on functionality. It includes full ssh, sftp, and several VPN solutions. You can create enrypted (AES-128bit) disk images of any size that can grow in size automatically.
6. There is a surprising amount of software available for Mac OS X and with the new Intel processors you can either dual boot or run a WinXP Virtual Machine at native speed. Native Adobe/Macromedia apps, Microsoft Office, FireFox, Google Earth, Google Sketchup, etc. Many 3rd party Mac OS X native replacement apps for Windows equivalents. i.e. OmniGraffle vs. Visio.
7. Free developer tools and everything you can run on Unix will run on OS X. If you are a developer a Mac is the ultimate workstation! Built-in Apache, etc.
8. iLife suite of apps included with every new Mac. iPhoto (Google Picasa is a direct copy of iPhoto), iTunes (better on a Mac), iMovie/iDVD (dead simple easy), GarageBand (jaw dropper cool), etc.
9. Professional media creation apps that are unbelievably powerful.

As far as the Toshiba's, we'll I worked on several of them lately and 4 out of ten had display issues where the LCD color was all screwed up. i.e. bottom right and left of screen was literally tinted yellow.

The MacBook is smaller and faster then the Toshiba's I recently used (a couple of months old).

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