I have begun my quest for a new laptop. My last two laptops have been dell's and I've been very satisfied with them. But in looking at the dell website their is so many choices so I was wondering what type of dell laptops have others purchased. Is use my laptop as my primary development machine (with a docking station) So, here's my specs so far.

Disk space: 40 -60 gigs: docking station for the laptop - svidio output multiple monitor support (ability to attach two monitors to the laptop via a docking station) - currently have a 17-inch monitor, want to use it as a second display. wireless lan support 1G memory

I'm thinking the Dell Latitude 810. Would be interested in comments or perhaps other vendor notebooks as well.

I recently bought a compaq presario, v2310us, very happy with it, nice screen, good battery life, light, it can read various memory card etc, video camera(firewire). Plus it has a 64 bit processor, amd turion 64, so if you ever want to use a 64 bit os you are prepared. I have had it for about two months and never crashed on me yet! (Knock on wood)

During my proffesional experience, I've been using Dell, Compaq & Toshiba Laptops.

I didn't like the Dells I've used, and the Compaqs seemed nice, but my Favourites are Toshibas

Thanks for the info, I will take a look at the Toshiba as well. Any reason why you didn't like the dell?

just make sure that the laptop's hard-disk is 7200rpm (not the 5400rpm even if it has alot of cache)

Out curiosity, why 7200 rpm? I know it's faster, but does this make a big difference?

erichar11 wrote:

Out curiosity, why 7200 rpm? I know it's faster, but does this make a big difference?

Yes, It makes a BIG difference. The HD (IMO) is the biggest bottleneck in most laptops.

Thanks for the great tip regarding rpm, just looked and its 5900. Will upgrade to 7200.

omar wrote:

just make sure that the laptop's hard-disk is 7200rpm (not the 5400rpm even if it has alot of cache)

Quoted for truth. There's a huge difference between 5400 and 7200 rpm drives in terms of performance in laptops.

I really like HP laptops, but, admittedly, the support is atrocious.

Jeff...

indeed, the first thing you should look at is the rpm of the hdd. the second is the battery life.

I have a dell inspiron 6000 with 7200 rpm drive and 2.8ghz p4M. I can only say, it rocks. BUt nowadays you can't really go wrong on a laptop, just be sure it has the key basics of a good laptop: fast hdd, fast hdd, oh and fast hdd. (and a battery which lasts longer than 2.5 hours)

Any recommendations on memory. I'm thinking 1G will be enough

1GB is enough for all you would need from a laptop. I'm able to develop on mine with 1GB while running sql server and VS and don't notice a slowdown. To confirm what is said about the HD I started with a 20GB 5400 w/2MB cache. Bought a fujitsu at 7200 RPM, 60 GB w/ 8MB cache and it has made this a laptop that I can continue to use for a couple more years. At least until Vista comes out . Also I would watch bargain sites like http://www.slickdeals.net/ and http://www.techbargains.com/ Occasionally they've had discounts that will be $750 off $1500 laptop.

I'm gonna say go with 2GB. Not too big a deal for normal development (although I'd still recommend 1.5GB), but if you want to throw any virtual machines in there, you'll wish you had it. The Visual Studio Team System Beta 2 Virtual PC image MS put out wants a full 1GB to itself by default. I've got 1.5GB on my dev laptop and I have to start with a clean system in order to allocate that much RAM to the image.

Jeff...

I use Dell's D610 with a 2ghz Centrino, 1gig RAM and I bought a better hard-drive from newegg.com: 60Gig 7200PRM. I agree with Otis, the HD speed makes a difference on the laptop.

I wish the processor was faster, but the battery does last a 4-5 hours doing development , DB and compiling. Thanks speedstep.

I'll probably upgrade in 2006 when intel introduces their dual-core for laptops. That will be nice..

Last note: the half-ass processor speed keeps me honest and writing efficient code , although watching the progress bar on compilation in VS.NET is punishing...

My partner is looking for a laptop and ran across these guys: http://www.elitenotebooks.com/index/index.php

It appears that they are taking some desktop components (3.8ghz chip!) and putting it in a laptop. From his initial research, he was finding favorable reviews but he's still looking.

I bought an alienware desktop replacement this spring. It only last about an hour on battery, but has 2 hard drives and really whips.

It appears the Intel recently release a new Mobile Pentium 4, 3.0ghz. This is a different chip from the Pentium M and from the Pentium 4-M. So, I'm not sure where it falls in performance.

I am looking at the Pentium-M 770 for a machine that uses it. Leveno (Thinkpad) seems to have the best battery performance of all of them. They advertise 5 or so hours on a charge. I get that on my Dell, but I have two batteries in it.

If you do get one of those Sager's from Elite please report on how it works. I have always been to chicken to buy one even though they are supposedly maid by the same OEM that makes Dells / Toshibas, etc.

BOb

mattsmith321 wrote:

My partner is looking for a laptop and ran across these guys: http://www.elitenotebooks.com/index/index.php

It appears that they are taking some desktop components (3.8ghz chip!) and putting it in a laptop. From his initial research, he was finding favorable reviews but he's still looking.

As Matt mentioned, I am also looking for a replacement laptop. If anyone else has heard of anything (good or bad) about Elite, I'd be curious to hear about it. They look like some seriously powerful laptops -- the battery life is probably not the best you can get and I wouldn't be surprised if they run pretty hot, but they look to be the fastest things under 13 lbs. (!) that you can buy (for a pretty penny of course). You can even get two hard disks configured as a single RAID drive if you want to go really nuts

I currently use a Dell Inspiron 8000 that's about 5 years old -- it's been pretty trusty but it's age is beginning to show. I am also considering sticking with Dell and checking out the newest Inspirons, although I don't think Dell is quite the pricing deal (with laptops, at least) that it has been in the past once you configure it and start upgrading a few options. Last time around for me, the feature/price point was almost a no-brainer, but it seems like other manufacturers have since caught up (or Dell has lost a step). I've heard good things about the recent Toshibas from coworkers but have never owned one personally.

I agree with other posters above -- HD speed is one of the easiest things you can upgrade to really boost performance. Definitely go with the highest RPM (7200+) you can.

FYI: Elite isn't the only place that sells the Sager laptops.

So do:

http://www.powernotebooks.com/

and

http://www.discountlaptops.com/

Power notebooks has some good articles. One that is very interesting is this one titled What is a "Name Brand" notebook? found here http://www.powernotebooks.com/articles/index.php?action=fullnews&id=17

BOb

Anyone outthere tried the Sager laptops. Don't want to be the first

erichar11 wrote:

Anyone outthere tried the Sager laptops. Don't want to be the first

Heh, heh. Me either. But, I think one of the two planes I mentioned has a 30 day or 90 day no questions asked return policy.

BOb