Thin, Light, Powerful Notebooks (not ultraportable) opinions

[Pho King]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to purchase a laptop soon. I almost pulled the trigger on a Dell 700m, but when my work laptop (Dell Latitude D600) crapped out, I got cold feet.

(I heard that the inspirons and the latitudes were made by two different manufacturers, and that the inspirons actually had worse build quality)

Some of the laptops I'm considering:

Dell 700m (if another coupon comes out)
Fujitsu S7000
Sony Vaio S360

Each of these have its pros/cons. Fujitsu I can get a slight discount, the Vaio is kind of expensive.

Can anyone give opinions on these or suggest others?
Any thoughts are appreciated!

 

[fbrdphreak]

Inspiron == consumer laptops
Latitude == business laptops, supposedly better quality

Personally I'm not impressed by Dell. The 9300 is a great machine for the money, and being a DTR you don't have to worry as much about wear & tear taking it around.
I use a D600 at work and the build quality is sub par IMO. Maybe that's cuz my personal machine is a Thinkpad.

Fujitsu makes some great notebooks. I wouldn't hesitate to buy one of those honestly.
The Sony's are nice, cool design; but as you said expensive. IMO they aren't worth the money, esp since I believe the S360 uses microDIMMs which are much more expensive.

What are your criteria for a notebook? It looks like you want a mobile machine, with decent features. Might I recommend an HP dv1000. Good build quality, 14" widescreen, Centrino, excellent bargain. Can be had for around $1500 with great features. If you're a student HP does have an academic discount program.

 

[Pho King]

fbrdphreak, thanks for the response,

Yeah, I'm ideally looking for a light laptop that I can put in a backpack. The ultraportables are nice, but there's a premium on them at the moment and there is such a thing as a laptop being TOO small.

I haven't heard many opinions on Fujitsu, so that's probably the only thing that's stopping me from getting one of those. As for the HP, I like all the features and it looks like a good notebook. It might be a little larger / heavier (little over 5 pounds), than what I'm looking for. Also, I know a few people who have had bad experiences with HP laptops.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Well, google around for reviews on the Fujitsu, but I have a Fujitsu N3510 in to review right now (15.4", too big for u ) and it is very well built. Overall I have heard very positive things about Fujitsu.

If cost isn't an issue, check out the Asus W3V's. They come w/X600's if you game and Asus has awesome notebooks
You can check out the cost of them at ProPortable

I took a look and for some reason I thought it was a 13.3" widescreen
Still I think a 14" widescreen is the best you're going to do for the money
I can't think of any other <14" notebooks other than the overpriced Sony

 

[Conroy9]

I've been looking for a similar laptop, and the ones that were most appealing to me have been the thinkpad T42/43, Fujitsu s7000, and the panasonic y4

The panasonic looks like the lightest (3.37lbs), but it's pretty expensive.

The Fujitsu is also pretty light (advertised 4.3lbs w/cd) only has dedicated video, but the s7000 line is supposed to be refreshed at the end of June, so maybe there will be more options then.

If not, I'm hoping that the T43 will get an x600 some time.

The post about the portable one last week looked interesting, but there have been no updates since he supposedly received the laptop, so maybe the cynics were right...

 

[RxL77]

Hey Conroy9,

I'll have something up about the portable one within 2 weeks, if you can afford to wait. Sorry for the delay folks.

 

[Pho King]

Hmmm, I forgot about the dedicated video.... Does anyone know of the smallest laptop with the best external graphics card?

 

[sivart]

IBM T2X series are nice.

The Dell Latitude X1 (aka Samsung Q30 - outside the US) is also a nice choice, but no internal optical drive.

 

[6000SUX]

Get the Fujitsu S6231. It's small but not ULTRAportable (it's still very easy to type on), features a 13.3" XGA ultra-bright screen which is just the right size for that resolution, is really slim and light (3.85 lbs. I believe), and can take an extra battery in the modular bay for up to 8.5 hours of battery life (better than the S7000 IIRC). I would get it from PortableOne if I were you, just so you have more drive choices such as the Hitachi 7200 60GB drive. Their prices on RAM upgrades are also very competitive, basically what you get from a RAM manufacturer direct.

The only drawback to the S6000 and S7000 series are the lack of dedicated graphics, but they are superior machines in every other way, including sexiness. I'm planning to get an S6000 series to help me through law school.

 

[paulip88]

In my limited experience with Thinkpads, I've been very happy. I've heard good things from others too.

As for Dell and HP, my company has used them for the past few years so here's my comments on those:

Dell:
Look OK, but not durable by any stretch of the imagination. We don't buy these anymore, but when we did we always had issues. For example, poor connections to the screens (backlight doesn't work when waking from standby, screen only works at certain angles, etc etc), bad memory connections, buggy mouse drivers, hit or miss batteries, etc. Not to mention that the mouse stick on these were waaaay to stiff, and waaaay to sensitive for mouse presses. Yes, it's adjustable, but even then it's barely acceptable. We had Dell Lattitude P-III's BTW.

HP:
We now use the HP NC8000. They look blocky, are a little heavier, but they work. Surprisingly good battery life, excellent displays. No, I'm not going to say I'm a huge fan of these (a little too heavy), but I did notice that the number of issues dropped to near zero when we switched from Dell to HP. Only issues we've had so far is that the laptop is picky if you use a splitter on the PS/2 port.

 

[imported_QV]

I'd suggest a Toshiba Tecra M3. It's thin, light, and decently powerful.

I have one of them, and I love it. Pentium M Dothan FSB533, choice of GeForce 6200 or 6600, Centrino wireless, under 5 pounds. Awesome notebook.

It also works very well with Linux, if you're interested in that.

 

[alent1234]

i just bought a dell inspiron 6000

bigger and heavier than a 600 or 700, but smaller than the 9300

I like it and think it's a nice balance between portability and power. With the 9 cell battery I get around 5-6 hours of battery life, ATI x300 128MB video and a 15.4 inch screen. It's also a lot cooler than the IBM i used to use that is around 4 years old.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: Conroy9


If not, I'm hoping that the T43 will get an x600 some time.

Not until the T44 or T50. T44 would be same chassis, T50 would be new chassis.... They generally don't change chipsets like that without bumping the model # of the system. We'll see what they have up their sleeves in a few months. Which probably doesn't help you.

 

[Conroy9]

ick
well, thanks for the info - too many rumors flying around

i've been waiting for my inspiron 8000 to die ever since the warranty expired last february, it could last a few more months