Finally Knuckled Under With Laptops
In the 20+ years I’ve been a techie, I’ve never bought a laptop. I’ve had several, but it’s always been on someone else’s nickel.
I have lots o’ reasons for it:
- By virtue of the size restrictions, you get significantly less power/memory/disk space for the cost (as the laptop can only be so big and has to be somewhat shock resistant). Accordingly,
- The price point works against the laptop’s favor
- Laptops tend to not have sufficient power to do most of the things I need to do: When I’m told I have to bring a laptop with 3G of RAM to a training class (Yes, I know Oracle’s a hog, but it’s my hog), that significantly limits the pool of available options.
- The inevitable drops/spills/”oops-ies” limit the lifespan of any purchase. Desktop’s don’t get dropped much, and spills in keyboards are much cheaper to replace
- Laptops are very resistant to upgrades (comparatively).
- It’s much harder to pop open a laptop case
- Even if you can, you’re still bound by the rather tight space restrictions
- The all-in-one nature of the machine means that if the display dies, the whole laptop is toast. With a desktop, you only replace the dead components.
Accordingly, I have always used a laptop provided by various employers over the years. But, as there is a change a brewin’, I’ve bowed to the inevitable and ordered a laptop. If you want details on what I picked (and why — in painful, excruciating detail), feel free to read on after the jump.
I’ve been checking out laptops for a while now. I had a few requirements:
- 4+G RAM
- SSD hard drive(s)
- BluRay support (I travel a bit and would like to be able to pick up a disc on the road without having to worry about anything)
- Fingerprint scanner
- Good battery life
- As high a pixel density as possible
- Cellular support (either internally or externally)
- No larger than a 15″ screen (I already have a bag that I rather like and will not abandon)
Looking around, I found only a few contenders (and some quick thoughts):
- Alienware: Based on my experience with the Alienware desktop I bought a few years ago, I will never buy from these guys again under any circumstances. Pretty shells, ugly insides.
- Boutique Places: There are a whole host of boutique PC manufacturers out there; I’ve bought desktops from two of them (Alienware & Voodoo). Falcon Northwest and Velocity Micro are two other ones that get a lot of high marks. Personally, I find that gaming rigs also double quite nicely for large scale data processing…
- Dell: Nothing wrong with Dell, it’s just that I’ve basically had only Dell laptops for about ten years; a change would be nice…
- Lenovo: Sort of a dark horse; I know some people who like them and are quite happy, and ThinkPads have a great rep. I don’t know if Lenovo has kept up the high standards, though.
- HP: At one of my government clients, we had a series of HP servers and SANs. We had so many problems with them, we started putting color coded stickers on the drives, showing which week it was we installed that particular component. Hard drives usually lasted 5-6 weeks, servers about 11. I have no intention of ever buying an HP computer, unless it’s against my will.
- Sony: They look pretty, but tend to be more expensive than they’re worth. Still, my brother has one of their desktops and is really happy with it.
For a while, I also thought about getting a cheap netbook. So far, I think I’m going to hold off; they might work for quick things here and there, but I already have enough carpal tunnel issues — I don’t need to add a small keyboard to the mix. Maybe later, if the real world indicates a netbook as a viable option, but for now, I think I’ll stick with a laptop.
Here’s where they came out:
- Alienware: Just because I’m a masochist, I looked at an Alienware machine. There’s only one 15″ laptop they sell. Everything except fingerprint scanner & cellular support internally. Then again, there’s the experience I’ve had with the desktop box…
- Dell: Dell laptops seem to be middle of the road, general utility laptops. I found a lot of decently priced, almost sufficiently configured machines that were all about 80% complete.
- Falcon Northwest: 2 things here: (a) the only laptop choices are 17″ or 10″ and (b) way, way, way too expensive for what they are, even if they do paint the box in custom automotive paint
- HP: I know it’s not fair, but I didn’t even look. I’ve had such bad experiences with them that they’re not even in the running.
- Lenovo: A pretty good selection; just about all of their machines have fingerprint readers and most of the other can do BR, SSD or both.
- Sony: Sony machines do look pretty. They sort of remind me of SGI, at least on the cool points scale. The Z series are very nice, until about three weeks ago when they stopped offering SSD drives. As far as I know, the other ones don’t have fingerprint scanning.
- Velocity Micro: I don’t know much about these guys, but they have a decent rep. Their machines seem well appointed and have a decent price point. Perhaps they’ll be in the running for when I replace my desktop
- Voodoo: These guys would have been in the running before HP bought them. My prior desktop was a Voodoo; I paid a lot of money for it, but it ran like a tank, never needed much care & feeding and still works (9 years later) as a Windows server in my rack.
So, in the end, my need/desire for a solid state hard drive, a fingerprint reader and BluRay support means that only Sony and Lenovo could fit the bill. Sony is out of SSD and seems to have no indication as to when they will be available. The last time I looked at this, they on a 4 week delivery schedule even when they had all the parts. I think I can assume that they will be at least 4 weeks from whenever the hardware shows up — and that’s absent any pent up demand and/or backorders. Still, if Sony was smart, they would have taken back orders on the web as is.
After a lot of deliberation, I’m going to go with a Lenovo X200. One of the selling points for me was a detachable base: the base contains the BluRay for when I want it or a really lightweight machine for when I don’t. Throw in a touch screen (I’ve really gotten to like the iPhone/iTouch interface), and that’s a winner for me.
– Update –
RH points out Gateway. I went back and took a look at their website and they wouldn’t have made the cut anyway; as far as I can tell, they don’t offer any laptops with solid state disks.
Also, updated the posts with a few links…
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