Finally replacing my laptop

[molotovwars]

Well, I haven't been on the boards as much lately, which is mostly due to the inadequacies of my computer, coupled with moving out of the United States. So to make things short, my laptop of 5 years finally bit the dust and gave me the blue screen of death. It has been hanging on for a long time, but its really not worth putting any more work into. Overheating problems among other things.

Basically just about any laptop these days will meet my needs (specs wise), so I want to kind of get some opinions on brands, or specific things to look out for in a laptop. On my old laptop I had external volume control, which was a small thing you wouldn't think of until you didn't have it and had to do everything from within the software. Built in webcam is pretty standard these days, but what are other important things to keep in mind when buying a laptop?

I do not do any PC gaming. I mostly use the computer for checking emails, chatting on forums, watching videos (sometimes streamed, but usually something off bittorrent), talking on skype, and watching DVDs. Just because any laptop or most netbooks could do those things doesn't mean I want to buy any piece of shit.

I'm looking for:
-high battery life
-generally light weight
-built-in webcam (its a plus, but i wouldn't not get a good laptop because it didn't have this)
-windows 7
-dvd drive (probably with a burner - maybe you can convince me why i don't need a dvd drive at all)
-has to be able to hook up to a projector and switch displays (VGA I think)

I'm living in South Korea now so my options may be limited. I've quickly looked at some of the ESL forums and www.tigerdirect.com is recommended and there are a few other sites.

Any input is appreciated.

[dsheinem]

Sounds like you want a netbook.

[J T]

Are you sure you don't want to make your system equiped for gaming? You can buy a laptop that is reasonably good for gaming for under a thousand easily. It's really nice to be able to play wherever you want when you need to kill a little time.

[Limewater]

I had to replace a laptop not all that long ago. I had similar needs to you, except that I also needed sufficient processing power to do my research. Also, I valued ruggedness over weight. But I did not plan on gaming on it, and I did want good battery life.

I ended up purchasing a refurbished Dell E6400 from the Dell outlet. The down side is that it weighs about five pounds. The up side is that it was pretty cheap, since it was refurbished, it has a very bright and efficient LED-lit screen, and has terrific build quality. I don't know if they're available with Windows 7 yet. I actually bought one with the XP "downgrade". I dual-boot to Ubuntu. It works pretty well with very little configuration, though the microphone doesn't want to work properly and the trackpoint (it has both a trackpoint and a touchpad) gets wonky on occasion. Battery life ranges from 4 to 6 hours with the default 6-cell battery, depending on my power settings. If you really want, you can buy a battery slice that will give you up to 19 hours, apparently.

It is available with or without a built-in webcam. And no, I don't work for Dell or anything. I know that some of their machines over the past few years have been kind of crappy.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Well if your not picky you could go with something a little older and put your own copy of Windows 7 on it, an IBM ThinkPad T43 comes to mind, sure its not very new but still decently capable and better than all the netbooks I can think of, you can find a fully upgraded one for about $350. If you want to do some light gaming, the Lenovo Thinkpad T61 w/ an Nvidia Quadro NVS 140m can be easily had for $700 or so. Light and very durable.

Currently I have both of those. T43 is my favorite.

I do happen to have a PowerBook G4 I want to sell, but you can't put Windows 7 on older PPC Apple's.

[molotovwars]

hmm, so what is battery slicing?

As far as gaming on the computer, its something I've never done. When I had a desktop I enjoyed Serious Sam and old Unreal Tournament, but since I've been in Korea I've hardly played any games at all, just being busy with other things. I think if I want to play those older games any system I get will be able to manage.

Without having really looked at anything I've been leaning towards an HP, but Dell was another option, and I'll take a look at IBM ThinkPads since I have heard good things.

[DuManchu]

Well if your not picky you could go with something a little older and put your own copy of Windows 7 on it, an IBM ThinkPad T43 comes to mind, sure its not very new but still decently capable and better than all the netbooks I can think of, you can find a fully upgraded one for about $350. If you want to do some light gaming, the Lenovo Thinkpad T61 w/ an Nvidia Quadro NVS 140m can be easily had for $700 or so. Light and very durable.

Currently I have both of those. T43 is my favorite.

I do happen to have a PowerBook G4 I want to sell, but you can't put Windows 7 on older PPC Apple's.

I agree with this.

While I prefer Mac OS X, I'm a computer fan in general and the ThinkPads are killer. I had a ThinkPad 390X forever and that thing took a beating that only a ToughBook could rival. That 390X hit concrete so many times I lost count, but it kept on ticking. I sold that ThinkPad back in 2005 and it continued serving a college student up until a few months ago when the mobo finally shot craps from being dropped (just one too many times I guess). Bottom line: IBM ThinkPads aren't the prettiest things ever, but damn do they perform.

If you're not hung up on Windows the iBook G4 models are stellar with battery life and are also pretty damn tough. The only problem is Apple doesn't support PPC Macs with new OSX releases and Macs tend to struggle with Flash (read: Adobe sucks at optimizing for Mac).

As a side note, you maybe could put Win7 on a PPC Mac with Virtual PC, but it would be worthless. XP barely ran on my PowerBook G4 1.5GHz, but it worked well enough to solve some of the compatibility issues I had.

[DuManchu]

I've also had luck with the Dell "D" models (D600, D610 etc.) and older Latitude models. Great bargains and decent performers, they just aren't as solid as the ThinkPads.

[Limewater]

I've also had luck with the Dell "D" models (D600, D610 etc.) and older Latitude models. Great bargains and decent performers, they just aren't as solid as the ThinkPads.

Apparently the build quality of the Thinkpads has gone down with the new T series models (the T400, T500, etc...). The older T61s, etc, were much better. I don't know if the T61 or T41 are still available.

When I was looking for a new laptop, given my durability requirement, I quickly narrowed things down to the Dell E6400 and the Lenovo T400. I wanted to get a newer platform that I knew would be supported for awhile. Spec and price-wise, they're pretty similar. But the lemon-rate on the Lenovos seems to be worse. They've also apparently cheaped-out on the keyboards with the new Lenovos. Apparently, the housing is also now a little thinner.

Regarding the battery slice, it's just a big-ass battery you can buy. It covers the entire bottom of the laptop, and I think it may require you to remove the CD drive. I don't really remember, since I wasn't interested in one. But it can give you 19 hours of battery life if you really need it.

Oh, and actually, I think the Lenovo T400 may actually be cheaper than the Dell E6400 when bought new. They are very close when bought refurbished, though.

[MrPopo]

We've started replacing our old Dell D laptops with Lenovos at work. I got a T500 and I've really been enjoying it so far. The keyboard feels fine to me and it runs quite smoothly with Vista on it.