Laptop Choice?

And thanks for the tags ¬.¬

I need a ultra portable "proper laptop" .. any suggestions ... need something sub 500 quid.

Dunno, but as one those official cunts that worked as a GENIUS in an Apple Store I can tell you that whatever you get, put Linux on it if you possibly can.

Lenovo get a pretty good rep as I understand.

I've been sleeping with my new laptop. <3 The creative soundcard is epic.

I've used a laptop exclusively professionally for >10 years. About 6 hours a day with extensive travel. IBM (and then Lenovo) Thinkpads are light and reliable and have long guarantees, which get honored without fuss when needed. I have had 3 Thinkpads in about 11 years. The current one, an X60s, is 3 years old and still fine, previous two have been handed down and are still working, if a bit small and slow now.

My guidelines are:

• It must be light (a house brick weighs about 2.5kg - same as a light-ish laptop. Try a house brick in your courier bag!)
  
• Remember the weight of the charger too!
  
• Don't bother with DVD drive - extra weight; just mount one over the network if you need it and copy the files over.
  
• Get max installed memory from the outset. This allows for caching and increases battery life.
  
• Laptops are expensive to repair so get one with 3 year guarantee
  

I have a 5/6 year old Vaio which has pixel rot eating away the screen- so whilst I can still see anything on it I'd like to by another laptop.

Suggestions please- I'm not averse to second hand kit as long as it's not a false economy.

If you can stretch to the price of a MacBook you won't regret it.

^^ if you like shit computers

I'd prefer it to come with either no OS, or 64 bit Windows 7 with install discs so I can dual boot it with Ubuntu- which I'll use most of the time.

Get a dell or a lenovo or similar. You can get a pretty decent spec for 500, or for a little more you could get something with an core i3 cpu

if it intersts you...

im gonna be selling my 2.16ghz white macbook (500gb hd, 2gb ram, snowleopard) for around 500 if anyones intrested!?

If you don't want a real computer with Mac OS, then I'd go for a Samsung.

They're well designed and work well and you'll get more for your money than with Sony etc. (17" screen for example).

I had a samsung R60+ about 2 years ago, still works to this day, although I'm sure there's newer model.

I have a Dell Studio 15" which I got for 595quid, customed a little to my liking from their Dell website. Specs I posted on the other thread.. Running Win 7. And impressed.

^^ if you like shit computers

Mac hater i presume??

have you ever used/owned one?

Not a mac hater, just a burster of bubbles.
And yes, I've owned two mac laptops.

I'd prefer to avoid HP and Dell purely because we use both at work and (due no doubt to being exposed to lots of them) whenever I think of them I associate them with going wrong.

If I could get a Mac for the same price as a "normal" laptop then I would, however I fail to see why I should pay over the odds for hardware- even if it looks nice. I could also buy a Sony, for slightly less over the odds, and feel less like Steve Jobs had just robbed me.

We use HP at work and I own two HP laptops. They are rock solid.
"things going wrong" normally = users.

A few of our developers use their own MacBooks but fuck that for a joke.

We had 130 HP laptops, 80 desktops, all the switches were ProCurve, the servers and printers were HP also.

Approx 13 months after the latest laptop refresh the motherboards started to go bad.

We contacted our HP account manager and pointed out that we'd had over 30 suffer the same failure and was there something that could be done- his answer was to ask if we wanted to buy the extended warrantee for the rest.

We have not bought another HP anything since.

I'm not buying HP.

Ah, Hippy has merged this- that's why it no longer makes fucking sense.

He ate my last post!

Yeah, I read through the recent "what PC for £500" thread and deliberately did not post in it, then the merge Klaxon sounded and now we have this.

My fuckin' oath.

Ah, Hippy has merged this- that's why it no longer makes fucking sense.

It makes perfect sense. Do you struggle with web forum structure? UTFS

Nope, what I wanted to do was to distance a new query from all the crap that had filled the previous threads up.

We had 130 HP laptops, 80 desktops, all the switches were ProCurve, the servers and printers were HP also.
Approx 13 months after the latest laptop refresh the motherboards started to go bad.
We contacted our HP account manager and pointed out that we'd had over 30 suffer the same failure and was there something that could be done- his answer was to ask if we wanted to buy the extended warrantee for the rest.
We have not bought another HP anything since.
I'm not buying HP.

So 30 mobos go bad (out of a shitload of HP stuff). Did they replace them?

Anyway, our company uses HP (desktop and laptop come to think of it) and so do I.
Rock solid.

Nope, what I wanted to do was to distance a new query from all the crap that had filled the previous threads up.

A new query, like, which laptop to buy? Guess what? There's a thread for that.
If you don't like it, I suggest you visit one of the 30,000 computer forums available to you.