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Travel Laptop

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Hi,

I commute to work via a 5 hour plane ride, I live in Jerusalem and work in the UK. I have a good Toshiba laptop but it's heavy, big and the batteries are good for only about 1.2 hours each. I have my hand luggage weighed and weight is a real issue nevermind the annoyance of changing battery every hour or so.

I'm looking for a small and light laptop which has the availability of using 4hr+ batteries. Weight would need to be <1.5kg. I need a dual core 2ghz+ with 3-4 gig ram. 120 or so gig HD. Wireless internet and preferably a built in cam for talking to my wife with! I don't care about the screen, when in the UK I have it plugged into a big monitor.

Is there anything affordable out there which comes under these specs? I've had bad experiences with both Dell and HP and won't touch them.
 
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Ben Rubinstein

Active member
I knew someone would say that! My brother has the latest one and it's nice, however I'm looking for cheaper if possible and I'm a PC man so I would look for a native and cheaper PC model rather than a mac.

Doing some searching around I see the age of the mini laptop is about to arrive. The specs are not that great yet but the time will come, should be interesting!
 

LJL

New member
Ben,
If you can hold on a bit longer, there may be some new models hitting the market soon that take advantage of Intel's newer chips for more computing power, while also being less power hungry on batteries. Apple may be coming out with a revamp of their lines, and though you say that you are more PC geared, Macs will let you do everything that PCs do, including run PC software via Bootcamp or VMWare Fusion.

There should also be a new crop of smaller laptops coming from Toshiba and others, as they are jumping on the smaller/lighter/faster trend again also. That being said, it is still worth looking at the MacBooks when they arrive, as contrary to popular belief, they pack more into them for less than almost all equivalent PC laptops. Not trying to push the Macs, though they are the only machines I will use anymore, but they are strong and very reliable, and the rumored new models may really fit your needs for size, power and battery life.

LJ
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Been looking at prices and for the power consumption (6 hour battery) and size those macbooks are actually pretty fairly priced relative to the market. Hadn't realised that. Might be worth waiting and buying 2nd hand when newer models come out, is a MacBook a good 2nd hand prospect? One thing that really impressed me with the Macbook is the price my brother paid for a 3 year worldwide Mac warranty!
 

LJL

New member
Ben,
Not sure how things work outside the US with Apple, but here there is a section in their Web store for "refurbed" models. There will be an increasing number of these coming available as new models are rolled out soon, so it may be worth checking on this also. They are essentially like new machines, and carry good warranties, plus have the worldwide extended warranty option also. As for buying second hand from somebody....that is always an option, but have no idea what that market is like, as most folks I know tend to hang onto their machines for a much longer time than any PC. Worth keeping an eye out. Also, one can buy a model with smaller HD and less RAM and upgrade both from third party sources for a lot less cost than Apple's offerings for a tricked out unit. Lots of options. Good luck with your decisions.

LJ
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Thanks LJ. My father is about to start a lecture tour of the states to promote his new book, he is over there about 3 times a year so I can think US prices. I'm going to keep an ear out...
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I would say Mac in a second but if PC user than i would look at Sony. The make some nice small , lightweight laptops. BTW you can run Windows on a Mac very easily with Fusion
 

dfarkas

Workshop Member
While you may have had a bad experience with Dell laptops in past, I would still recommend taking a look at their Lattitude series. I've had 4 since 1998 and have only had one problem (on the first one). I had a motherboard go bad, made a two minute phone call to (US-based) tech support who picked up on the second ring, and had a tech show up at my office with a new MOBO the next morning. I like Dell's standard 3 year, next business day on-site warranty, which you get when you buy business-grade machines. Stay as far away from their consumer products as possible, like the Inspirons and the like. The Latitudes are just in a different class, as are the Precision workstations on the desktop side.

Their new Montevino-based Latitudes boast 9 hour battery life with the 9 cell battery. You can actually get up to 19 hours by adding their new battery slice, which sits underneath the computer. The E6400 is a 14.1" deal that weighs 4.3 lbs, the E6500 is the 15.4" model weighing 5.2 lbs, and on the smaller side there is 3.3 lbs 13.3" E4300. All of them have magnesium cases, LED backlit screens, take up to 8GB RAM, have free-fall HD protection, security features like fingerprint scanners/smart card readers, Express Card slots, firewire, built-in EVDO/GPRS antenna, etc.

I know how sexy the MacBook Pros are. This is just another option for those looking for a PC alternative. Everything in our business is PC-based, from our database servers and RAID storage arrays to our lab printing software and retail billing system. So, for me, staying PC is fine and I have no problems. My 2-year old laptop runnig XP Pro (that I'm typing on right now) hasn't been rebooted in weeks. My servers at work haven't been rebooted in over a year. YMMV.

David
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Their new Montevino-based Latitudes boast 9 hour battery life with the 9 cell battery. You can actually get up to 19 hours by adding their new battery slice, which sits underneath the computer. The E6400 is a 14.1" deal that weighs 4.3 lbs, the E6500 is the 15.4" model weighing 5.2 lbs, and on the smaller side there is 3.3 lbs 13.3" E4300. All of them have magnesium cases, LED backlit screens, take up to 8GB RAM, have free-fall HD protection, security features like fingerprint scanners/smart card readers, Express Card slots, firewire, built-in EVDO/GPRS antenna, etc.
They don't seem to have been released yet as per the website, I'm looking at the E4300 and as such there isn't any pricing or processor speed info. Can you help?

Have to admit that I haven't had any experience with Dell but I had to return three HP laptops before I gave up and switched to Toshiba which has worked perfectly. Given that HP is usually considered to be a step up from Dell I had been worried. Do Dell have a worldwide warranty option?
 
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dfarkas

Workshop Member
Ben,

I've never heard very good things about HP and have stayed away from them myself. Dell is so much nicer in terms of design and specs. To hear that HP is "a step up" is news to me. Not sure about the worldwide warranty.

The E6400 and E6500 were just released last week. The E4300 is about a week away I think. Currently, I'm personally trying to decide between these three so I have a nice new (long-lasting and lightweight) laptop for my trip to Photokina.

David
 

dfarkas

Workshop Member
It should be competitvely priced. Fully speced out and loaded I came up to about $1800-$2000 for the E6500. This is $500-700 less than the 15" MacBook Pro. Not too shabby. But, I do generally buy my own larger HD and swap it out with the stock one. This is very easy on the Dell - there are two screws on the bottom, that once taken out, allow you to slide the HD tray out without taking the whole thinig apart. Slide in a new drive and you're good to go. Use Acronis True Image s/w to mirror the original HD first, though.

David
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
If I were to buy a macbook to run windows on, how much is the software (fusion or is there something called bootcamp?) to do it with? There is only one mouse button on under the touchpad, how would I right click? Does the 'option' button default to the windows equivelent, etc?

*EDIT, just did a search and had a look at how Bootcamp works. Not very well actually. Can't use built in webcam, right click is a serious pain, etc. Hmmm.
 
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Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
On a Macbook, two fingers on the pad and click equals right-click, or you can plug in a regular mouse and get it :). Seriously, the "adjustment period" coming from PC is like 2 days -- and after two days, you'll never want to go back to PC again. The software changeover is the biggest hassle.
 

etrigan63

Active member
There is also Parallels which has a very nice wizard for setting up your Windows VM's quickly and easily. The only thing with any of these solutions (Bootcamp included) is that you need an installable copy of Windows (OEM or retail) in oder to create the VM. The restore CD/DVD that ships with most PC's won't due because that is a "ghost" image of the manufacturers' standard software configuration for a particular PC/laptop model.

Regarding David's comment on HP laptops. I and my staff have tested several newer model HP laptops (from the tiny tx1000 to the humungous 20" Dragon) and I can professionally report that HP's quality has improved considerably. Just order a CarePack for any HP kit and you will get top-notch service.

Lenovo recently announced the Thinkpad W700, a 17" 3.8kg behemoth that is geared to digital photographers. It even includes a Wacom tablet and Huey Pro color calibrator built-in. I and many others feel this is a step in the right direction just that the form factor is more "desktop replacement" than "mobile darkroom".

I can report that AMD and Intel are both working on hybrid (CPU/GPU) systems which promise amazing battery life and performance.
 

Lars

Active member
Upcoming Thinkpad X200 from Lenovo looks quite interesting. Not sure if it started shipping yet. Trackpoint only, so it's not for everyone (especially not Jack ;)).

X300 is of course great but too expensive with the SSD disk.

Either way, make sure you get two batteries, and as you say, at least 4 hrs each.

Also keep in mind that (some) batteries fade a lot over the first year - expect a 30-40% drop in capacity.
 
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