Posted on 04/08/2007 6:28:05 AM PDT by johniegrad
My wife wants a new laptop computer for her birthday which is April 13th. She intends to use it primarily for work purposes and for continuing her education online. She works as a nursing director for surgery and anesthesia in a 400 bed medical center and has responsibilties for seven to eight figure budgets, scheduling for about 150 RNs, facilities planning, management-union negotiations, and performance evaluations among other things.
From an education standpoing, she is working on a business degree to augment her RN and may be considering a master's type program unless I can talk her out of it.
I am asking for Freeper assistance in selecting the manufacturer, hardware, OS, and whatever add-ons people might think useful. I would also like to take into account reliability, customer support, and ease of use. While I have owned and used computers since 1983, I don't consider myself technically savvy and do not want her to have to acquire additional training to use the thing.
I haven't shopped computers in about seven or eight years and time constraints due to my own schedule make this task seem formidable. Therefore, I am planting my lazy ass in this chair and asking for your assistance.
The old bat will be 45 this year but she has been sturdy and reliable. She probably deserves something nice. I had considered buying her a new ironing board but she wanted a 'puter so here I am. I hope she doesn't use it for online dating.
Whatever she gets, make sure she gets the extended warranty. It’s worth every penny.
I was using a friends once at his house as he used his PC.
I complained about the laptop left-clicking all the time and annoying me, and he showed me the button where you turn off the touch pad. It didn't happen again.
Usually the button to turn on of off the touch pad is right at the top of it.
That is where it is on his and my laptop.
I usually don't go for extended warranties, but in the case of a laptop computer, I have made exceptions. But there are two important rules to follow: First off, do NOT buy a store warranty. Buy the extended warranty from the manufacturer. In the case of HP and Compaq, you can buy it on-line. I've seen too many people get burned by store warranty nonsense. A friend actually had Best Buy's service department say that her laptop wasn't covered because someone had poured a drink down the keyboard. Well, I was with her when she took it in for service (and I was IBM, HP, Compaq, and Dell laptop warranty authorized at the time) and I knew that it was just a systemboard problem. There was never a drink poured down the keyboard! They kept the laptop for more than a month, and then sent it back, unrepaired. We had to threaten small claims court to get them to honor the warranty.
Secondly, give serious consideration to the accidental damage warranty. I know of two people who have accidentally dropped their latops off of their laps, and it's usually cheaper to buy a new laptop than replace the display, both of which cracked.
Mark
1] She can run Windows itself, natively, on a Mac. And/or she can switch files back and forth, but the first solution may be better for her. If her job gives her remote access to their system, even better — she doesn’t need to install Windows at all, but can simply open a “screen” to her work system and work directly off that, with absolutely no compatibility issues.
2] Forget about docking stations. You only need them when you’re hooked up to another screen. With the 15.4” and 17” MacBook Pro screens, you have all the screen space you need. If you really like the desktop experience, take the laptop off your lap and place it on a desk. (Actually, Macs are designed for hard surfaces, anyway, and are more correctly referred to as notebooks than laptops.)
3] No, you can’t play with a Mac at a Best Buy. Move out of the sticks. Or, alternatively, plan a fun day in a nearby city that includes a trip to the Apple Store and maybe a nice restaurant and a show.
4] Not exactly sure what your question is.
5] Wireless out of the box means just that: You don’t need wires to hook up to the Intenet, or print, and it’s ready to use out of the box, like most modern breakfast cereals. Vista? Yuck. Mac? Wow. Real wow. You don’t “need” Vista. No one “needs” Vista. The only reason to buy it is because Microsoft will stop supporting old software. Yeah, like we ever really relied on their support to begin with.
Best wishes. Give the Mac a look, that’s all I’m saying. I’m sold on it, I don’t feel the need to sell you. Just encourage you to try it so you know the difference.
Have fun.
Silly
You can buy Parallels Desktop for Mac or use BootCamp, which currently is free in beta rev. It’s supposed to be included in the next version of the Mac OS, Leopard, v10.5.
I use Parallels and it works great. Yes, you do have to buy a copy of Windows and a copy of MS Office, but you’d have to do that anyway. WEll, Windows would come pre-installed on most PC laptops, but not Office.
Parallels works with just about any version of Windows.
It is the only one I've had, so I have no basis for comparison.
I just went into the control panel and disconnected the touch pad. I wonder why I hadn’t thought of it before.
Thanks. Good advice #1. I had been considering a Dell.
Our IT folks bought quite a number of Dell laptops for the state. Mine has had two bad hard drives and a bad motherboard in less than two years. It went back to Dell and I finally got a replacement. Still having problems during boot up.
You’ll need MS Office too
That can be purchased at a student discount
I dunno, so that I could appear smart like a tech?
LOL
You need to ask yourself and your wife a few questions:
1. Will she have data that must stay behind HIPAA compliance?
2. Does her hospital have a IT dept. that will mandate certain safe guards on laptops for HIPAA compliance?
3. Does the hospital have a discount plan on pc’s and laptops?
4. The locations she will be using the laptop the most, are they fluorescent or incandescent lighting? For flourescent lighting and outdoor lighting, get a “ultrabright” monitor, for incandescent it doesn’t matter so much.
5. She has to decide if she wants a docking station for this laptop, or possibly even two docking stations. This is an expensive addition to buying work laptops.
6. Can you write this off on your taxes? Can you get reimbursed by employer if you can’t write it off on your taxes? If you can answer yes to either of those, price points are less of a problem.
7. Buy the extended warranty plan for a laptop.
8. Wait until the END OF THE APRIL to buy the laptop, and save $100! Intel and AMD are having another round of cpu price reductions this week, but the retailers won’t drop prices for a few weeks.
And... Windows XP. Vista is hell.
my personal experience:
The Siemens are top notch,
and stay away from the Dell M-series business laptops.
... Since everything she runs at work is Windows based, will she be able to do a spreadsheet, word processing, or some other menial task on a MacBook and save it to a disk which she can use at work?
Forget a Floppy Drive. Most PC’s don’t come with them anymore, and Apples definitely do not. Think USB Flash Drive
instead.
... Will this require the use of the Windows version of the product on the MacBook? Also, if it requires the use of Window Office and I am forced to purchase the Vista version, will that be compatible with either XP or with Windows 98? The compatibility issue is the most difficult one for me.
Think Open Office. It’s free, it runs on PC or Mac, and is
compatible with all versions of Microsoft Office. (although I am not sure about Office 2007 at this point)
... I want her to be able to save something to a floppy and feed it directly into her computer at work without missing a beat.
Have her check with the systems administrator. They may not allow “transfer” of files between hospital systems and users home systems (privacy, virus, and other issues)
.... Ultimately, I would like to do away with the work station PCs that we have and own only two laptops that we can take back and forth. Someone mentioned something about “external docking stations” which make me wonder whether this along with one printer at each house would solve the problem of doubling up on everything.
Definitely.
...I don’t have an Apple Store in my town and it is about 150 miles to the nearest one as far as I can tell from looking at their website.
Buying a Mac sight unseen is quite a plunge. Mac owners swear by them, and I agree, but unless you’re willing to endure the learning curve, better to stay with what you know. Best of both worlds would be to have one of each, and then on your next upgrade cycle, decide which way you want to go.
... It sounds as though there is general agreement about the following matters:
Warranty - 2 year - buy it!!
Someone else pointed out something important. Get the manufacturer’s warranty, not a store warranty. Dell’s is
probably the best.
... There were some things I was unsure of including what “wireless connection” meant coming right out of the box, size of hard drive, the utility of a wireless mouse, and what to do if I can only purchase the machine with Vista (although it was clear no one thought Home Edition was the way to go).
— Don’t worry about ordering a notebook with wireless. Virtually all come “out of the box” with internal wireless capability” If you have DSL or Cable Modem, $50 at Walmart will buy you a wireless router that will enable you to connect to the Internet or your printer, from anywhere in the house, without a cable connecting you to the modem.
— You ARE NOT going to want to use the built in touch pad. Virtually no-one does. A wireless mouse is just that. A regular desktop sized mouse, sans a connecting wire. USB mice are less complicated though, and I have 2. A regular sized one, for use on a tabletop or desk, and a “mini” model, for use where space is limited.
— If all you can get is Vista, it’s not the end of the world. It will just take some “tweaking”, to get rid of all of the Nag screens.
... OK, Team Toshiba:
I’m not going to bash Toshiba, I’ve seen some nice ones, but
you can get more for your money by shopping on-line, instead of buying a notebook “as-is” at a store. Dell Support is not as bad as some here make it to be, and you get the luxury of picking and choosing your options.
One other thing to remember:
ALWAYS buy a second A/C adapter. You may never need it, but they are a high failure rate component, and after it craps out, your notebook is only good for how much battery power it has left in it. If you can afford it, buy 3. One for home, one for work, and keep one in the Carrying Case.
regarding docking stations:
EACH docking station still needs:
1 keyboard (sometimes optional)
1 monitor (optional)
1 mouse (required)
1 power cable (comes with docking station)
Speakers, mic, printer, peripherals of your choice.
Some docking stations are brand specific, some are laptop series specific, some are generic and work with almost all laptops.
You can browse docking stations at the link below, which from my experience has the best price comparisons in teh US for laptop comparisons:
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=33/mf=1
I had a “luggable” like that. It had a 10mb hard drive. Who on earth would ever need more than that?
That's good advice. At least two, if not three. They're the "pain in the butt" part to lug around.
Also, always try to pick up the power supply by the brick, not the cable ends. Lifting or suspending the brick by the cable (especially the thinner DC side) will cause premature failure.
One more thing: always buy the original manufacturer part for power supplies, but don't buy them FROM the original manufacturer until you've checked eBay.
There's almost always a vendor selling the original power supply you need on eBay at a significant discount. The same is true of laptop batteries.
get Windows XP, not Vista
http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,1874,9,00.asp
http://www.pcworld.com/product/reviewfinder.html?id=6
http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-3121_7-6566322-1.html?tag=bubbl_3
http://reviews.cnet.com/Notebooks/2001-3121_7-0.html?tag=cnetfd.dir
Wifi on a laptop is like A/C in a car. It used to be rare, then optional, and now standard. It would be damn hard to find a new car without A/C or a new laptop without wifi.
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