Laptop advice?

[RPMiller]

In addition to the Dell recommendations I would like to suggest that you take a look at a little known brand that really should get more attention. The company is Sceptre and they primarily make LCD displays which is what you would have in your laptop obviously. The awesome thing about Sceptre is that because they are an LCD manufacturer they have spectacular screens and video cards in their laptops. I bought one about 10 years ago and had a 1400x1050 resolution with a 16 meg video card. Note that that was 10 years ago. By now I'm sure they have really perfected their displays. Whether you get one or not, you should at least check out what they offer.
http://www.sceptre.com/Products/Notebook/index.htm

Also, as an IT person I deal with laptops daily. I build and repair them on a regular basis in addition to my other duties. We use Sonys and I'm familiar with pretty much their entire line and will tell you that you should not consider them as a contender. Their max resolutions leave a lot to be desired and the support is a serious bear to deal with. I've discovered that Dell stands behind their products 100% and will go to great lengths to keep happy customers, but I will strongly encourage getting the extended warranty on a laptop especially one that you travel with.

[mathuwm]

How about a Tablet PC

http://www.tabletpcreview.com/defaul...vilion+tx2500z

[torstan]

I'm just going to bump this quickly. My laptop was temporarily resurrected and had a glorious swansong - I even got a featured map out of it! However it has now died. I'm now definitely in the market for a new laptop and I have more specific requirements for it's capabilities. Ideally it needs to be able to handle an A1 image at 300dpi in Gimp Oh, and ideally under $1000 as well....

Specifically, I've heard lots of bad things about Vista 64bit - and RPMiller backed them up for me, but I'm happy to hear other opinions. Specificall, I've heard some good things about XP 4bit but I've no idea where to get a laptop that might have such a thing installed?

Other than the maps - I no longer game other than maptool so the gimp specs are really the most serious requirement. Thanks in advance for any further advice, and thanks a lot for the advice so far. Reading through this thread reminded me about hard drive speed again, which was a timely reminder.

[Redrobes]

Why not go with a 64 bit linux variant like Ubuntu then. I run XP x64 and like it a lot but I wont go down the Vista route either. Unless you have more than 3Gb tho it wont make a huge amount of difference to be 64 bit.

[torstan]

I use linux every day at work and I'd rather not have to use it on my laptop as well. I'm just not up to speed enough with the more complex side of computing to deal with that sort of stuff and find it fun.

There's a few toshiba satellite's here that have 4GB of RAM and 64bit vista and I'm trying to find good reasons not to pick them up. RPMiller already said on the rptools forums that Vista 64 bit just doesn't support enough business programs, but then all I really use are gimp, itunes, maptool and firefox. I need to ssh onto my work box using putty/xming and ssh secure shell, but other than that I'm good. There's one here knocking around for $700 that looks pretty tempting.

[Talroth]

Do you really want a LAPTOP to do your high end work on? How often do you really do work while on the move?

I strongly suggest giving the idea of a main development desktop PC, even one put together in a micro case with a large LCD monitor that tucks away nicely and can be boxed up and moved to the cottage easily for weekends and such, and then get a netbook for while you're on the move.

Now, most of my work is text and code, not digital artwork, so the netbook (ASUS EeePC 900 in my case) works well enough, but I still have GIMP on it for little things.


Just something to think about. Quality laptops that have large screens and long batteries usually cost an arm and a leg, and you'll put your back out carrying them around too often.

[torstan]

I move jobs and countries every year or two years and spend a good amount of time in between visiting different universities and conferences so yes, I need to be able to do this work on a laptop. I was having a look at some of the desktop options, but I suspect the desktop might not survive the transport.

As for the weight, I'm happy to carry them around. That's certainly an area in which I'll take the extra weight for a saving.