Wife is shopping for a new laptop...

[dragonboy4578]

Macbook Air.. all the way.. LOL..

This would be my suggestion. Once I bought my Mac I never looked back. As long as I can afford to buy Mac's you won't see me own a PC.

[El_Dorado]

I'm just going to be ornery and point out that Macs are PCs, too.

[jfreels]

Sure, but they deserve their own name when whey have the same hardware and charge 3x the amount

I ended up getting myself a Dell today. I should have it tomorrow.

My wife still has her eyes set on the Toshiba, maybe my new dell can change her mind. Though I didn't get a big screen or backlit keyboard It is an i7 with lots of ram though and Win 64 and I have three VMs ready to run on it once I get it up. I'm ready to see how the i7 performs. Having the Intel Zeon at work and a Quad core at home, I'm not expecting much, we'll see though.

[jbean7916]

Just personal opinions here so take it for what it's worth

No matter what brand of computer you ask about someone will know someone, or be that someone, who has had MAJOR issues with it. I personally have a VAIO and while I won't say I haven't had any issues at all with it, I will say that Sony has always taken care of me. The have always sent techs out to my house to replace anything that might need replacing (1 fan and 1 power plug-in deal).

My boyfriend has an HP. I hate the damn thing. It gets WAY too hot, like so hot you can't actually use it in your lap. However, i believe that to be the processor and not the brand. IMO AMD processors (at least ones a couple years old) tend to run MUCH warmer than an Intel processor (not counting the i7, that is a heat producing son of a buck!!!)

My mom has a Toshiba and that is the slowest computer I've ever been on, even with Win 7. Now, does that have a lot to do with the specs, sure, but it's also had to have the screen replaced twice in 4 years because the connections when bad. Once was within warranty and took almost 2 months to get repaired, the second time was out of warranty and she found someone to do it in a matter of days (from when she called it in to when she got it back).

Gateway has made huge strides lately, I'm more and more impressed with the turn they've taken since Acer took them over in 2007. You can actually get a fairly nice computer for less money if you overlook some bells and whistles. Though one thing I'm not a fan of is the "table-top" style keys gateway uses, more than once I've seen people get something caught under the corner of one and pop that sucker right off.

Anyway, now that I've given you way more opinion than you probably wanted... hope you find one that fits for YOU (or your wife more specifically )

[jfreels]

No matter what brand of computer you ask about someone will know someone, or be that someone, who has had MAJOR issues with it. I personally have a VAIO and while I won't say I haven't had any issues at all with it, I will say that Sony has always taken care of me. The have always sent techs out to my house to replace anything that might need replacing (1 fan and 1 power plug-in deal).

True, but in this case it was me. Also, a good laptop shouldn't ever need someone to come out and service it.....

My boyfriend has an HP. I hate the damn thing. It gets WAY too hot, like so hot you can't actually use it in your lap. However, i believe that to be the processor and not the brand. IMO AMD processors (at least ones a couple years old) tend to run MUCH warmer than an Intel processor (not counting the i7, that is a heat producing son of a buck!!!)

HP has never been a name for quality, it's mid-tier.

My mom has a Toshiba and that is the slowest computer I've ever been on, even with Win 7. Now, does that have a lot to do with the specs, sure, but it's also had to have the screen replaced twice in 4 years because the connections when bad. Once was within warranty and took almost 2 months to get repaired, the second time was out of warranty and she found someone to do it in a matter of days (from when she called it in to when she got it back).

Lemons do happen. My beef about Sony is that they replaced parts that didn't need to be replaced and replaced parts that just ended up breaking again. Made me feel like I was dealing with an auto shop. You know, go in for an oil change and end up having to rotate your tires, flush transmission fluid and replace all the belts

Gateway has made huge strides lately, I'm more and more impressed with the turn they've taken since Acer took them over in 2007. You can actually get a fairly nice computer for less money if you overlook some bells and whistles. Though one thing I'm not a fan of is the "table-top" style keys gateway uses, more than once I've seen people get something caught under the corner of one and pop that sucker right off.

My only issue with Gateway is that it was the absolute WORST computer you could get when they came out and for years after. My netbook display went out, it was Acer. I'd give them another shot though because I know it's not their fault. My next one will not have the Intel GMA in it.

Anyway, now that I've given you way more opinion than you probably wanted... hope you find one that fits for YOU (or your wife more specifically )

Thanks for all the input. I should have just made this a tread about if I should pay $400 more for blu-ray or not. Though I was really hoping that Walt would have given me a link to some magical laptop configuration that was exactly what she wanted but didn't make me cringe because of the price since she'll essentially be using it for browsing FaceBook.

I went kind of cheap on the laptop I bought for myself yesterday. I guess I won't worry about the cost of hers anymore

[piper]

Buy her a nice laptop and instead of paying for the extra for the blu ray drive, buy her an external blu-ray drive. This won't limit your options to what you can get. Judging by the screensize she wants, it won't be very portable and it's next to impossible to find cases for an 18 inch laptop.. My vaio I had was an 18 inch laptop and Sony sold one, but had to be ordered online.

[jfreels]

We talked about getting an external drive....I'm against it only because I really don't think she needs blu-ray.

Now, we didn't even think about cases. I was planning on giving her my Alienware case which holds two 17" laptops in it. I was thinking that you could squeeze one 18" into it. I know the 17" I had, there was a little room to spare. But now I'll be using that bag for my new laptop. Looking at the Alienware site, I don't even see anything that is made for an 18" laptop

[waltah!]

Not sure what people's opinions are on ASUS, but this is a pretty decent setup I think.
ASUS K72Jr-X5 17.3" Notebook, Intel Core i5-450M (2.4GHz to 2.66GHz with Turbo Boost), 4GB DDR3 Memory, 320GB (7200rpm) HDD, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5145 1GB, 802.11b/g/n, DVD Super Multi-Drive, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
On Buy.com right now. No BD, but everything else looks good.

[jfreels]

Thank you, Walt!

I'll try and get her to go for a model without blu-ray again.

In other news, got my new Dell today. Here's some pics of my work setup now. The new laptop is on the far left.



Specs...


Here's the other two machines I have at work. The little box in the back is my linux box. I use it mainly for VMs and running some scripts. The big Dell box is my workhorse. The other laptop is used mainly for working during meetings and giving demos.


So far so good with the new Dell. Came with Office 2010 and that's about it. I'll play around with it some more tonight. Looking forward to seeing how well VMs run on the i7 as well as doing some compiles.

[El_Dorado]

Random question not related to this particular topic, but how is the 64-bit version of 7 working for you? I finally managed to upgrade from Vista to the 32-bit (I'm a little behind... I know! Haha), and I absolutely love it. Of course, this is in comparison to Vista and have no good expectations for 7 whatsoever.

Have you had the chance to compare it with the 32-bit? Is it much faster or better in any other way?