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post #31 of 36
4/22/11 at 12:57am
what did you end up buying?
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post #32 of 36
4/22/11 at 2:06am
I'd suggest a MBP. For laptops I've owned apple/asus, and apple has performed the best.
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post #33 of 36
4/22/11 at 9:12pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qhall View Post
Here are my thoughts. I am a IT professional and work in Enterprise infastructure data center systems, and have learned a few lessons over the years.

Windows laptops come in 2 varieties, Bussiness/Enterprise grade and Home/consumer grade. Almost every vendor offers windows laptops in both categories. A quick summary of a few common vendors; Sony is in general targeted at home with limited Bussiness offerings, HP and Dell do both. Acer is in general a discount vendor etc. I in general prefer HP hardware over Dell. Dell started to compete on price a few years back and quality has suffered.

The real question is what price point can you live with? If you want a solid windows platform for work, i strongly sugest buying a bussiness grade HP. Look at there ProBook and EliteBook lines. I run a 12 month old EliteBook 8540w and it is comparable to a top end desktop workstation and has a 3 years waranty. I run AutoCad, VMWare with 3 plus Virtual machines at times and play every video game i want all on a 15" notebook....

Apples offerings are firmly targeted at the home user but they often use bussiness grade parts in them. This is part of why they have a much higher price point than Windows laptops aimed at home users. You do get what you pay for. I always laugh to myself when i hear some one claim their new Mac is 1000 times better than the windows laptop they had. When they spend 2000$ on the mac and had spent 300$ on the windows platform. You can get a windows machine that will slaughter the mac for less money than the Mac, but for some reason every one buys plastic chassied bottom end hardware on clearance at best buy and cant figure out why they break in 12-18 months.

Its like shoes, There is a reason Allen edmonds sell for 300$ a pair and mall store shoes sell for 69$.

If you have a specific price point I can make a few suggestions, Just keep in mind to get business grade gear you are ordering online. Bestbuy just doesnt stock or deal in it.....

thanks for info, i appreciate it
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post #34 of 36
4/22/11 at 9:13pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by CalTex View Post
what did you end up buying?

hey... i actually didnt get anything yet, i was getting opinions and doing research before i buy :-)
i may need another laptop for school in fall'11, so i'll start looking in summer if anything
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post #35 of 36
4/23/11 at 12:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by sinnedk View Post
ThinkPad = FailPad, my gf had one and its awful

All laptops will have issues. Some have bad experiences with Dells, Apple, and in your case Thinkpad. I had a defective MacBook Pro 4 yrs. ago, 3x i had to send it in for repair before issue was resolved, i sold it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by qhall View Post
Here are my thoughts. I am a IT professional and work in Enterprise infastructure data center systems, and have learned a few lessons over the years.

Windows laptops come in 2 varieties, Bussiness/Enterprise grade and Home/consumer grade. Almost every vendor offers windows laptops in both categories. A quick summary of a few common vendors; Sony is in general targeted at home with limited Bussiness offerings, HP and Dell do both. Acer is in general a discount vendor etc. I in general prefer HP hardware over Dell. Dell started to compete on price a few years back and quality has suffered.

The real question is what price point can you live with? If you want a solid windows platform for work, i strongly sugest buying a bussiness grade HP. Look at there ProBook and EliteBook lines. I run a 12 month old EliteBook 8540w and it is comparable to a top end desktop workstation and has a 3 years waranty. I run AutoCad, VMWare with 3 plus Virtual machines at times and play every video game i want all on a 15" notebook....

Apples offerings are firmly targeted at the home user but they often use bussiness grade parts in them. This is part of why they have a much higher price point than Windows laptops aimed at home users. You do get what you pay for. I always laugh to myself when i hear some one claim their new Mac is 1000 times better than the windows laptop they had. When they spend 2000$ on the mac and had spent 300$ on the windows platform. You can get a windows machine that will slaughter the mac for less money than the Mac, but for some reason every one buys plastic chassied bottom end hardware on clearance at best buy and cant figure out why they break in 12-18 months.

Its like shoes, There is a reason Allen edmonds sell for 300$ a pair and mall store shoes sell for 69$.

If you have a specific price point I can make a few suggestions, Just keep in mind to get business grade gear you are ordering online. Bestbuy just doesnt stock or deal in it.....

I echo your comments. Try a business line Thinkpad. I should have my hands on a X220, T420 soon with the new Sandy Bridge processor. I suggest a T420 for you, W520 is a beast and heavy.
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post #36 of 36
4/30/11 at 12:40pm
I split my time between project management and software development, but I think it really depends on what sort of coding you're going to be doing. I have an HP EliteBook running an i5 with the full complement of 64 bit software on Windows 7, and I can write and compile anything I need to. If I start running application servers from it (full enterprise level applications), things start to slow down, but for coding purposes you should be able to develop and compile anything you need. The previous poster touched on a good point though, how much traveling are you actually going to be doing? I'm stuck traveling 48-50 weeks a year, so something smaller is definitely nice, but I couldn't imagine trying to code on something netbook sized.
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