mllelaurel | (no subject)

(no subject)

So. My laptop is a piece of shit. It won't play DVDs anymore. It freezes up when faced with anything more challenging than a pageful of plain text. It won't defrag completely.

Conclusion? I need to buy a new computer stat, before I can't access the internet anymore and thus am rendered incapable of buying said new computer.

Discuss.

Basically, I need to know what laptops qualify as non-shitty. My bare qualifications are: DVD player/burner; able to connect to the internet; more harddrive space than my current 55 gigs.

I'm none-too-fond of the Mac interface, but if I'm given assurances that Macs are less likely to break the hell down, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Cheap would be nice, as I need an external harddrive and/or an ipod to move all my junk onto. I can't think of another way to transfer it from one harddrive to another, but then I'm no expert.

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I'm a great big fan of flash drives for moving junk. Or a good Firewire drive, which is what we use for backups.

I'm a giant Mac junkie, and have been since about 1988, so I'm pretty useless in terms of comparison shopping. I've had many fewer breakdowns on my machines than my Windows brethren, but I also know people for whom Macs have just broken in amazing ways with amazing frequency. I think Macs are more in tune with the vibe of the owner than Windows boxes. :)

Mm...let me see. I'm a bit biased when it comes to OS's, so I won't go into that one. The Mac interface isn't hard to get used to, though -- I wasn't too fond when I first started using one either, but it's so, so worth it.

What's your price range? If you want to buy something that works now, and then get another computer in a couple years, it might worthwhile to try to find something used. Does Bennington have any specific networking requirements?

I actually might be selling my laptop in the near future -- the non-abundance of cross-platform graphic and game engines would make thesis-ing really hard without being able to boot to Windows at least sometimes. It's a PowerBook G4 with a 12"-inch monitor and a DVD player. No burner, but it's reliable and I've never actually lost data or serious functionality. It's also named Nanami and has enough sentimental value that I'd like to see it in good hands. :p (And yes, I do call it "her" sometimes! She's tiny and the screen hurts my eyes sometimes, but inside, she's got a lot going for her.) However, this depends on a lot of factors, and I'm probably going to hold off on it for a while. :(

An external HD (or iPod) is a very useful thing to have. Backups (especially if you've purchased anything in a purely electronic form) are great to have, and you're much less likely to miss something that way than if you spend time backing things up to CDs/DVDs.

Good luck!

If you want a PC, I've heard good things about Dell, and they look good on paper. I've also heard dreadful things about Dell /Service/, though.

I do love my macs (both of them) and you could get a powerbook or a mini, if you want to also pay out for a monitor and keyboard. The monitor and keyboard will outlast any box of any make and most work with both mac and pc, so I favor this approach; it's cheaper in the long run. My experience is that mac peripherals break down as often as pc peripherals, but the processor itself has fewer issues. Also attracts fewer viruses.

Do be aware that any pc you buy now will likely ship with the new windows, which a) looks a whole lot like the mac OS and b) is hugely bloated and will eat up processor speed and hard drive space like freaking tribbles. So if you get a pc, be sure to overestimate your speed and space needs by as much as you can afford to.

The problem you're stuck with here is that there's just no such thing as an indestructible laptop, they just don't have the shelf life of their desk-y counterparts.

That said, my whole family owns Dells, laptops and desktops, and we've only really had problems with the ones my brother gets his hands on long enough to spyware up. I'd rec them a thousand times over for being both cheap and pretty durable (my old Inspiron lasted through about four, five years of torment). My personal experience warns against Toshiba, as my very first laptop came from them and it snapped in half a year in after a long, painful battle with the sound system (that liked to crash and leave a giant florescent VOLUME marker written across my screen at all times). HP is also not a favorite of mine, as Sephy's desktop was from them and their service is awful. The thing lasted forever, but it never seemed to want to run any of her problems properly after the first couple of years. >>;;

Anyway, that's my $.02

I'm on the don't buy HP train--don't know about other computers but when I am able to I'm getting Anything But HP. Could be my model, but both my old roommate and I had the same kind of HP computer and different things have gone wrong. I've gone through 2 harddrives in the past 2-3 years, a battery, and it overheats constantly--and if you don't get extended warranty fear HP service prices. LoL. Whatever you get, go for the warrenty.

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