Light weight, reasonably powerful Mac alternative?

After less than two months my wonderful piece of 'superior technology' as the Apple faithful call it crashed, overheated after a restart, and then turned itself into an expensive paper weight. Apple is currently 'looking into it' so I am currently 'looking into alternatives.'

I have a Dell laptop and desktop for the day job but I need something a bit more powerful than a netbook for home and consulting on occasion. Based on the following, can any computer experts provide a little advice?

Requirements - lightweight - I travel a fair bit. Enough processing power for number crunching and a bit of video streaming (tele-conferences).

Dell - not interested (service & reliability or lack thereof).

Sony VAIO X - nice looking piece of ultra-light kit but again I worry about their service (SE Asia and the US). Thoughts? If I was based in Japan I wouldn't ask, I would have just picked up the Sony.

Lenovo - maybe a little better on service here in SE Asia but I haven't been impressed with the 'whole package' offered by any of the Lenovo's that I have looked at here.

HP - leaning towards an HP at the moment.

I would think a ThinkPad X series would be sufficient for what you're doing.

paging tokyoslim

Originally Posted by Nomad_K

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After less than two months my wonderful piece of 'superior technology' as the Apple faithful call it crashed, overheated after a restart, and then turned itself into an expensive paper weight. Apple is currently 'looking into it' so I am currently 'looking into alternatives.'

You can get them to give you a brand new computer, you just have to complain properly.

An OS note: Definitely consider Windows 7 on whichever machine you choose.

Hi everyone, thank you for the thoughts. I will definitely be looking at Windows 7, and I am going to look at a few Lenovos tonight or tomorrow.

Mac/Apple continues to impress. They returned my laptop in a day, having reinstalled the OS because they 'weren't sure what was wrong.' Now, I have:

- no sound;
- Numbers crashes on command;
- iTunes does not recognize my library which was 'created with a newer version of itunes'
- updating iTunes (after uninstall and reboot) did not alleviate the problem
- Skype crashed upon initiating a call
- Attempts to uninstall and update failed because the download failed to create an image (two different 'geniuses' tried to fix this to no avail).

I have a Mac book pro and it's great! I luvs it! You should get one!

Acer.

It sounds like you could probably get by with a netbook depending on the type of numbers you are crunching but you also might want to look into the HP Elitebook series. I love my 2730p tablet - 64bit with 4BG of RAM running W7 and Ubuntu 9. It's very light with a 12" screen, no DVD drive though, external only.

I've traveled with it extensively in the last year and it's taken several hard knocks - still going strong.

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

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Acer.

Bingo! On a cost benefit analysis Acer wins.

Sadly I did my research after the fact.

Be sure to read this about Dell!

Asus

Originally Posted by rnoldh

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Bingo! On a cost benefit analysis Acer wins.

Sadly I did my research after the fact.

Be sure to read this about Dell!

I have twelve years of computer building experience.

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

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I have twelve years of computer building experience.

All with Windows 98SE?

Originally Posted by imageWIS

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All with Windows 98SE?

The first four or so years.

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

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The first four or so years.