Laptop suggestions?

Not to sink your ship, but my buddy bought a Toshiba Satellie for like $700. It came with 4 USB ports, 2GB of RAM and he bought a third and installed it himself for like $15. So even though it runs Vista, he has no problems with it. He uses it for teaching as he has a saturday class lasting about three hours.

Me, I'm still leaning toward a Mac. They can be found much cheaper if you avoid the Apple store and buy online.

 

I have the exact opposite issue.

I have a personal Dell PC and a work MacBook laptop, and the Mac is terrible. The battery life is my biggest issue, as it only holds a charge for about two hours to my PCs 4:30, but it also freezes up way more, does its obnoxious pinwheel of death constantly, freezes up Firefox, is substantially slower than my Dell, and it has huge problems opening anything sent from a Windows PC. It has the office products, but at a substantial downgrade, especially the Excel.

It also just feels flimsier. I hate carrying it around, because I feel like if I set it down too hard, more of the plastic casing will peel off.

Add to that the one-button trackpad that doesn't allow me to doubleclick by touch, and I hate the damn thing.

 

I have a Dell. Sometimes it's goofy, but I can write and send on it.

 

I'm liking my Dell mini with Linux Ubuntu OS. The only big gripe is the "enter" key is where the "apostrophe/quote" key is supposed to be. The apostrophe/quote key is two rows below the "L" key is and I can't seem to get to it with my "L" finger without hunting for it. So when I IM I accidentally send random incomplete sentences.

 

That's about the size of the EeePC, isn't it? I've fiddled with the EeePC a couple of times but I've found the keyboard intolerably small.

And Ubuntu rocks. I believe that the Dell version uses a custom version of the GNOME desktop environment, though.

Also, you might find this blog helpful.

 

Smash, something is seriously wrong with your MacBook. A properly operating one shouldn't have any of those problems (except the battery life if you're using an older one -- that has been improved in the new ones). You should get it looked at.

 

It's had these problems since I got it on my first day at this shop, and IT has had it a couple times, but it's come back with the same problems. Now, I wasn't the first person to use this laptop, so sometimes I blame its previous owner.

Other times I just say it's possessed.

 

I think my mini is smaller. The screen is an inch smaller, at least. I can type normal speed on the keyboard except when I get to the "'". I do love the Ubuntu so far.

 

My company has a Dell XPS Studio 16 headed my way in a couple days ... I will have a full report.

RB

 

Don't understand the problems with Toshibas. My first Toshiba satellite lasted eight years and now I've had this one almost a year and it's doing great. I bought it with as much hard drive and RAM as possible (my computer geek brother's advice) and it runs Vista just fine. The Circuit City guy told me the key to Vista is lots of power and memory. The reason it didn't work so well at first was that the machines just weren't up to the level that Vista needed. Thanks for the tip on the cooling mat 2mcm! I'm going to recommend to my SO as there are problems with a Gateway laptop.

 

Arrived today, finally. I opened the box and discovered Dell threw in a retractable notebook mouse and a laptop padlock, also made by Targus. I guess those were bonuses for having to wait for so long.

Just put the laptop on top of the chill pad and turned it on. I guess I'll have to get used to the sound, but if it prolongs the life of the computer, I'll be happy.

I'm guessing there's no exact positioning required. I just set it on top and tried to center the chill pad under the laptop.