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.
I went retro. Bought the XPS 2010. Size of a briefcase, with built in carrying handle, but I love the 20" screen and removable keyboard.
Buy as much ram as you can. It can be added later, but it is much cheaper to buy it new because of (a) installation costs and (b) one usually has to discard the old ram to install the new, so that upgrading to 1gb means buying 1gb and discarding the 512mb you already have.
If speed is imperative, consider asking for a 7200rpm hard drive. It will shorten time between recharging, but it will really boost speed.
Also, I recommend the Apple, but not the ones with the little bitty screens. If she’ll need to run proprietary software, however, you’ll be paying a bit more to install XP and Parallels on it to get it all working. It’s easy, but you’ll have to buy XP and Parallels.
Dell has produced some fine laptops and some absolute stinkers. Personally, I think the machines are ugly, but if you do your research, you can get one of the better ones.
Acer developing a reputation for some fine hardware. I love thinkpads, but only if they’re IBM thinkpads (i.e., used). I just can’t countenance buying directly from a Chinese company.
FReeping on a Toshiba Tecra I got in December. No problems whatsoever, great machine, and I constantly run 2 memory HOG programs at the same time. (Photoshop and Quark)
She finds out about the old BAT remark, she may be looking for more than a new computer.
I’ve bought 3 HP laptops now for my kids and Wife. Have had very good performance with them. 15 1.8 ghz athlon, 15.4 3.0 ghz pentium and 17 inch displays. The latest has the newer duo core processor 1Gb ram and 2x 100GB hard drives and a dvd burner. Its a nice machine. The 2 that my 2 teenage boys have have performed very well and with all the stuff they download and install, its never been a problem getting them up and running like new again. The new one with the 17 inch screen seems to perform on Battery the best also.
I have to agree with you on Dell. Stay away from Sony. Company which I am a business partner in had a Sony display go bad under warranty. Problem was the warranty repair took two months. Dell would have been on site within 48 hours.
Toshiba’s been banned here. I still can’t forgive them after selling the submarine propellor machining gear to the Soviets. HP - I’d wait to see how the company turns around after running off the Carly-b!tch.
Yup. Without a hitch. The file formats are the same (though there could be problem with anything that uses a lot of Visual Basic and such, which seems unlikely).
Or, Will this require the use of the Windows version of the product on the MacBook?
Nope. I haven't heard of any hitches with transferring files between the two versions, and for relatively simple documents I would be stunned if there was any problem. For that matter, with a little more work and tweaking, you could probably use something free like Open Office or less expensive like iWork (Apple's office suite)
The compatibility issue is the most difficult one for me. 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.
No current Mac (and fewer and fewer PCs) comes with a floppy drive. You can get an external drive, but it probably makes more sense to get a USB flash drive for file transfers. Unless the computer at work is pretty darn old -- running a version of Windows before 2000, lacking USB ports -- you should be able to mount the USB drive on both the PC and the Mac without installing any drivers. They run 10-12 bucks for 512 MB.
(2) Since we spend about 6 months at one residence and the other 6 months at another residence, I have issues with doubling up on everything she may need.
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.
The docking station is a luxury, and it doesn't sound like it would be worth it for you. You can hook up everything you're likely to need right to the ports on the laptop. A docking station just saves time if you're toting a laptop back and forth every day, because it's one connection instead of three or four. (or more if you have a lot of peripherals).
If you're moving it twice a year, you can fit everything you need -- a couple of flat panel monitors, a couple of bigger keyboards, and a full-size mouse or two -- in one box. And if you're getting rid of a desktop PC, you can use the monitor from it -- the keyboard and mouse are a little more dodgy.
The laptop is fully functional all by itself, so I wouldn't worry about an external monitor, keyboard or mouse, let alone a docking station, unless you already know something -- like looking down at the screen -- is going to be uncomfortable. I'd wait and see what issues arise and address them when they do rather than shell out for everything up front.
(3) 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. Would I be able to toy around with one at a BestBuy? How important is it to get a little hands on experience with one before purchasing? Is it really that difficult to go from PC to Mac that I need to worry about it?
You won't be able to get a Mac at a consumer electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City, and I don't think any office-type stores carry them, either, so I'm afraid it's gonna have to be either a dedicated computer store or mail order. If there's a CompUSA, Fry's or Microcenter, those have good Mac support -- those are the only chains here in Atlanta, so I don't know what the other dedicated computer stores chains are or how their Mac support is.
Most people I know didn't find the transition difficult at all. My advice to give it a brief test drive is more a question of taste -- if you're strongly habituated to Windows, it might just not be to your taste. The menus are in different places, and more things are done by double-clicking or dragging-and dropping than in Windows. I tend to be a cautious Mac evangelist, because it' not good for the cause if someone switches to Mac and tells all his friends he didn't like it. Most do, but not all.
Apple has this site for folks making the Windows-Mac switch -- skimming that might answer some questions, and it may be all you need to go ahead and mail order.
(4)It sounds as though there is general agreement about the following matters:
RAM - 2 gigabytes
USB ports - 4
Battery - 8 cell
Processor - Core2Duo T5500 to T7200 by Intel
Warranty - 2 year - buy it!!
Four USB ports isn't a necessity in a laptop, unless you're going to be carrying a lot of peripherals around with you, and the number of cells is more of a lose guideline than a hard-and-fast rule. I honestly don't know how many cells my laptop battery has, but I know I can pretty reliably get 3-4 hours on a charge.
(5) There were some things I was unsure of including what “wireless connection” meant coming right out of the box
If you have a wireless network -- or if you're in a library, coffee shop or other location that has one -- then you don't need any additional hardware to connect. They're becoming increasingly common. If you or the Mrs. has a wireless connection at work, you may have to ask to be authorized and ask for a password.
size of hard drive
If you're not dealing with a lot of music, photos or video, the standard 60 or 80 GB will probably be fine. If disk space starts getting scarce, and if you have a lot of stuff you want to keep but don't need to have at hand all the time, archiving files to CD or using an external hard drive is likely to be more cost-effective than upgrading the internal drive; laptop drives are still much more expensive than desktop.
The utility of a wireless mouse
I don't have a lot of experience with those, so I'll defer to others. If you don't want to spring for wireless, though, there are portable mice with a retractable USB cable that go pretty cheap and work quite nicely.
Ooh! I hadn't thought of RDC. If you have a home network and that old PC is running Win2K Pro or XP Pro, Microsoft makes a free client you can use to control it from the Mac, an other options for occasional Windows needs. I won't belabor that at the moment, but I can tell you more.
(Actually, Macs are designed for hard surfaces, anyway, and are more correctly referred to as notebooks than laptops.)
Your lap is a pretty ergonomically crappy plave to use any notebook computer. The only reason they were named that is because when computers first started hetting smaller, they were referred to as desktop computers -- the next step was laptop, and now some folks who can't let it go call PDAs hiptop or palmtop computers.
If anyone uses a laptop routinely, anyplace but on a hard surface, they're asking for problems (heat and airflow).
I don't know how many I've seen burned up because someone puts them in their laps, then decide they need a nice thick quilt over their lap, to keep their legs from getting burned.
If someone must use them as laptops, instead of notebooks, a notebook cooler is a "must have" accessory, but buy the thick ones, with side vents.
You need to talk to her IP department and find out what laptops they recommend. It is even possible that they will not allow personal laptops period.
Do not buy Apple, unless her work network has Macs on it. Vista does not play well with others, so do buy XP if you will be loading any specialized work software. Even format her hard disk and reload XP if you have to.
Better still, get a universal adapter. For a hundred bucks or so, you can get a power adapter that will work on AC, in a car or on a plane. And by swapping the tip on it, you can use it to charge a cell phone or iPod. That's the one I keep in the bag. Belkin and Kensington each have their own models, and there's the iGo that Radio Shack carries (but they don't carry the tips for Apple).
But be careful with the tips. They're easy to break and not real easy to replace.
The only problem with univeral adapters, is you only get a "maintenance charge" on most notebooks, unless you buy a high end ($$) adapter matched to your particular notebook. They're great for folks like traveling salesmen, who charge up in the car in between stops, but they won't keep a battery fully charged if you're using the notebook. Because of the built-in limitations, they will also kill your battery life over time. (ie, they're a permanent "brown-out")
On a recent trip to Australia, the Auto/AC adapter I had stretched battery life from 3hrs to 8hrs, but I still had to shut down and recharge before the trip was over.
Close—it’s one model down.
I agree with you completely : avoid Vista. Of course that was the underlying reason I why I just bought a MacBook Pro. The MBP would be my recommendation.
Actually, they're now better than ever. Quality control and tech support has improved SIGNIFICANTLY since Dell took over. Now Compaq and HP on the other hand, it's a race to see which division drags the other down quicker..... :)
The Thinkpads in the 40, 50, 60’s are all recommended. New or rebuilt by a good rebuilder. Totally quiet, and the docking stations work very well.
I just bought one of these because I don’t want vista OS. XP Pro on this one. Comes with no goodies but who needs them!
http://www.pcmall.com/pcmall/shop/detail~dpno~7181039.asp
Good luck.
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