Yes. They sold their entire consumer computers division to Lenovo. A good move, I suspect, because you really can't make money on that market segment anymore.
I love Dell. $2.8 million in college scholarships to AVID students last year alone. (http://www.dellscholars.org/Become.aspx) I always tell people to get a Dell. And in two years, it's gonna be one of MY students getting one of those scholarships.
I should also mention that I recently saw a feature-for-feature price comparison in which Apple's laptops were competetive with similarly featured alternatives. Also, they are less corporately evil, more stylish, and betteer designed (style and substance).
yeah, i second this. i got an iBook last fall, which i use to do a fair amount of computation that would be a pain in the ass if not on a unix-based platform. and it was seriously cheap, too. i haven't had a second thought since i bought it.
on the other hand, i'm lucky enough to be in a scientific field that's moving toward macs more and more. (the last conference i was at was probably at least 75% macs.)
We've had a Gateway something-or-other, a $1300 Centrino wireless model, for 6 months, and have enjoyed it. It's a little on the non-sturdy side of things, but it's quite light and (relatively) cheap. It's a good option to explore, but I'd also check out Apple and Dell.
Yeah. 12" iBook if you don't mind the small screen (= light and cheap, and all iBooks are totally sturdy). Screw windows. Seriously! Mac OS just keeps getting better and better and stabler and stabler. Unless you've got major software-related reasons to have to run a windows machine, sticking with Windows is nothing but Stockholm Syndrome nowadays.
Also, I should note that I have had essentially no problems getting any Unix software I need to run on my Mac. (There were some issues with a matrix element calculator called Comphep, but those turned out to be due to a mistake in the code that for some odd reason didn't cause a crash on Linux.)
Every DELL (that's 3 now) that I have own, the CD/DVD drive died after 1 year. Of course, that's the cheap Inspiron series.
HP/Compaq is price-competitive and very sturdy...assuming it survives the first week of torture. My brother's first Compaq died within 2 days, bad hard drive. But the second one is freaking durable. It's on almost 24/7 in his room. He drags it to class and drops in the trunk. I'm surprised it hasn't overheat and died. Surprisingly stable considering how much he has loaded on it. And it was an AMD chip (older Athlon XP-M).
But my favorite has always been Thinkpads. Too expensive but those things are tanks. We have a couple of the older Pentium III Thinkpads, works great, we drop them on the floor all the times (damn power cord).
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If I had to have a laptop, and it had to be "affordable" for the category, I'd go with Gateway.
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:-D
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on the other hand, i'm lucky enough to be in a scientific field that's moving toward macs more and more. (the last conference i was at was probably at least 75% macs.)
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(=
We've had a Gateway something-or-other, a $1300 Centrino wireless model, for 6 months, and have enjoyed it. It's a little on the non-sturdy side of things, but it's quite light and (relatively) cheap. It's a good option to explore, but I'd also check out Apple and Dell.
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The other axis is, of course, 'powerful'.
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the 12 inch (like mine) is pretty cheap now. and it weighs 5 pounds. and if you break it (like i did) you just send it in, and they fix it for free.
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.....the rest of it, is dubious on how long it'll last, but I could just take the monitor off and walk around with the rest of it.....that would do
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or at least, that's what i made up just now.
:-)
dooo it
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I had a Dell laptop once upon a time, and it deteriorated fairly quickly. Maybe they're better now than they used to be.
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One note on Dell.
HP/Compaq is price-competitive and very sturdy...assuming it survives the first week of torture. My brother's first Compaq died within 2 days, bad hard drive. But the second one is freaking durable. It's on almost 24/7 in his room. He drags it to class and drops in the trunk. I'm surprised it hasn't overheat and died. Surprisingly stable considering how much he has loaded on it. And it was an AMD chip (older Athlon XP-M).
But my favorite has always been Thinkpads. Too expensive but those things are tanks. We have a couple of the older Pentium III Thinkpads, works great, we drop them on the floor all the times (damn power cord).