[vox] Looking at Laptops

[Marianne Waage]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 09:23:02PM -0800, Richard Crawford wrote:
> Does anyone have any suggestions?  Any good stories?  Horror stories? 
> Brands/models I ought to avoid, or that I ought to give serious
> consideration too?  Price is a consideration, of course -- if I can spend
> less than $2500, I'll be happy.

As far as the Math department has discovered:

- Toshibas seem to have frequent problems. The two we have are constant
  trouble.
- IBMs are solid little bricks. They last the longest of all the laptops
  we have. Tad more expensive, but if you're hard on your laptop, it's
  worth it.
- Dells are an either or. Inspirons should be avoided as they are marketed
  towards home users and tend to be designed on the cheap side. I 
  personally owned an Inspiron 3800 which lasted about 3 years without
  much trouble, but the Inspirons in the Math department have more issues.
  I just got an X200 Latitude which I'm *very* happy with. Physical Plant
  swore by Dell Latitudes for their durability and more standard hardware.

  (The X200 was around $1500-1700, and I've got it running Debian unstable)

-Marianne