Laptop Recommendations

[saltpro15]

Well, like the title says, I'm looking at upgrading my 4 year old Toshiba Satellite laptop for something much faster. Now my Dad sells computers , but I'd like to get the opinions of you guys also. Keep in mind I have a budget of around <$1800, I HATE MAC'S, and I'm probably going to end up running a linux distro on it. I'm looking at the Dell M series, but I'm totally open to other suggestions.

thanks,
Drew

[rdrake]

Linux? Thinkpad. There's even a handy wiki full of information needed to set up Linux on a Thinkpad.

[DemonWasp]

Linux works just fine on my Dell laptop. Setting up wireless took a little reading and a little learning, but wasn't so hard.

[saltpro15]

hmm really DemonWasp? my wireless was fine the minute I first booted it

[Dan]

What exactly do you want to do with it? There are alot of diffrent kinds of laptops so it's hard to recomend one with out more details.

[Insectoid]

rdrake @ Sun Mar 29, 2009 12:07 am wrote:

Linux? Thinkpad. There's even a handy wiki full of information needed to set up Linux on a Thinkpad.

Eww! Thinkpads are so ugly! IBM hasn't updated their case in ever beyond the placement of the peripherals. It looks like a box; it has square corners (not rounded like most new laptops) and crappy little clips to open it up and no wide screen and bleh! it's just so ugly!

The store I work at sells a particular model of lenovo laptop that's really nice, don't remember the number/class/whatever but it's cool. Asus laptops have multi-touch trackpads, which is nice (even their smallest netbook has multitouch) but they aren't as big or featureful as Apple's.

EDIT: Woot! Got my 1-year star today! Yay!

[zero-impact]

Personally I really like the design of the lenovo Thinkpads. Nice and minimalistic and they are very sturdy, unlike some of the ones with flimsy plastic cases.

[rdrake]

insectoid @ Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:12 pm wrote:

rdrake @ Sun Mar 29, 2009 12:07 am wrote:

Linux? Thinkpad. There's even a handy wiki full of information needed to set up Linux on a Thinkpad.

Eww! Thinkpads are so ugly! IBM hasn't updated their case in ever beyond the placement of the peripherals. It looks like a box; it has square corners (not rounded like most new laptops) and crappy little clips to open it up and no wide screen and bleh! it's just so ugly!

The store I work at sells a particular model of lenovo laptop that's really nice, don't remember the number/class/whatever but it's cool. Asus laptops have multi-touch trackpads, which is nice (even their smallest netbook has multitouch) but they aren't as big or featureful as Apple's.

EDIT: Woot! Got my 1-year star today! Yay!

Your lack of knowledge in this area astounds me. I'm typing this message from a widescreen Thinkpad. IBM doesn't even own the Thinkpad line any more. Thanks for playing though.

[md]

In fact... Lenovo owns the Thinkpad line now. Maybe that lenovo laptop you were looking at that's really nice is a Thinkpad?

[Insectoid]

Keep in mind the location of the ports on it. I know the lenovos I mentioned have the power port placed so that the cable blocks the CD drive.

And I don't see why you could hate macs beyond the OS, it's great hardware (the best I've seen). In fact, there are almost no cables inside the new macbook pro. Most laptops are a pain to work with inside, but macbooks are great. They are extremely stiff and Apple actually puts thought into where the ports will go. The trackpads are unsurpassed in quality by any other laptop (I mentioned once that I want an external macbook trackpad for my PC- and that still holds true). The fact that x86 OS's can now be installed on macs makes them even better in that they are Linux and Windows compatible.

EDIT: MD, no. They do actually own the Thinkpad line now, I'm just to used to IBM ones. At any rate, the Thinkpads are gross. Also, I don't want to start a mac/pc war, so we'll ignore that last paragraph.

[CodeMonkey2000]

Since someone already made this thread; I need a new laptop too. It's for school, I want to run linux on it, I would prefer an nvidia card (since I will be doing a lot of openGl, and nvidia tends to have better support for openGL on linux), it's not for gaming, I want wifi, I need at least 40gb of hard drive space, at least 256mb of RAM, at least 1.2 ghz processor (preferably by intel), and my price range is $150 to $300. Any recommendations on what to buy and where to buy it? Or are my expectations too high for that price range? I don't know much about buying computers since we used the same one since 2003, and never bothered with a new one. It was good enough for me.

[andrew.]

insectoid @ Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:23 pm wrote:

The fact that x86 OS's can now be installed on macs makes them even better in that they are Linux and Windows compatible.

It doesn't even have to be 32-bit, I've installed Vista x64 and Ubuntu x64 on my MBP.

Oh yeah, I think the reason he doesn't want a Mac is because he, like many others, believe that it is overpriced and just overrated in general.

[saltpro15]

Dan @ Sun Mar 29, 2009 wrote:

What exactly do you want to do with it? There are alot of diffrent kinds of laptops so it's hard to recomend one with out more details.

probably just program, surf the internet, and bitTorrent
Something with a hardrive 100GB< would be helpful and 4gb of RAM

[saltpro15]

Mac's are awful. period. I'm not discussing this, just recommend me a laptop and go away lol:D

[md]

CodeMonkey2000 @ 2009-03-29, 1:43 pm wrote:

Since someone already made this thread; I need a new laptop too. It's for school, I want to run linux on it, I would prefer an nvidia card (since I will be doing a lot of openGl, and nvidia tends to have better support for openGL on linux), it's not for gaming, I want wifi, I need at least 40gb of hard drive space, at least 256mb of RAM, at least 1.2 ghz processor (preferably by intel), and my price range is $150 to $300. Any recommendations on what to buy and where to buy it? Or are my expectations too high for that price range? I don't know much about buying computers since we used the same one since 2003, and never bothered with a new one. It was good enough for me.

Since you seem to be the only person asking who isn't a complete idiot... you're price range is basically impossible If you spend between $300 and $600 you can probably get a good netbook though. Should get you everything you are looking for.