Quote: Original post by Sirisian
[...]Also at 1K USD max you're not going to get much performance wise so you'd be better going with a decent low performance model. I don't believe they sell a 460m laptop less than a thousand USD from what I remember.

I just recently bought a 17" laptop with a Core i3 for under USD 600, and I find it very portable, quite performant, and it has plenty of battery life. My main requirements were price and performance, so it took me a while to find the right deal, but I'm very happy with my large laptop (I really love having a full keyboard with a number pad, too). All the reviews I've read indicated that the core mobile core i* processors perform pretty similarly until you get to spending several hundred on a processor upgrade, so I'd suggest sticking with the i3 unless the i5 is included as a "free upgrade".
Before this, I had a 9" atom netbook, and it took a lot of work to get windows remotely usable on it. On my laptop, windows 7 is screaming fast (though I turned off as much as possible of the new GUI and made it as classic as possible for aesthetic reasons)

Quote: Original post by oliii
For optical, just get a external USB drive. It's unlikely you will have the need form an optical drive 90% of the time, or a mobility laptop isn't really for you. I never felt the need for one, except installing Win 7 and Visual Studio. HP dv3's come with an external e-sata optical drive.

That might be a good idea. You can boot off of it, right?

Quote: I'd go with a i3, low spec i5 for less heat. There is little need for anything more powerful on a notebook. A quad-core i7 is wasted on a small laptop imo.

Do you mean the low-spec i5 would have less heat than the i3?

Quote: Most laptops have poor screen resolution (native 1366 x 768). Sony does brilliant high res screens, as well as Dell, but most other Asian manufacturers (Acer, Asus, Samsung) don't offer that option, except on bigger, entertainment models.

Well, poo. And it doesn't look like any of those are in my price range.

If I'm stuck with 1366x768, I guess I'll just get the smallest one I can that still has all the features I need.

I'll definitely watch out for battery life and switchable graphics.

Just another data point.

I work for a company where everyone works from their home office and gets together a few times a years for developer summits, sprints, and hackathons. Everyone uses a laptop, and everyone runs Linux (natch, the company maintains a Linux distro). What I see a lot of is (1) Lenovo 13" or 14" (eg. T410, which I have) and (2) Macbook Pros. The important things to consider are weight, robustenss, and battery life. Dells tend to have hinge problems, HPs are heavy and have poor battery life (and they tend to be very loud). The Macbook Pros have a screen you can see even in the brightest sunlight. I rarely see Toshibas, Acers, or other brands.

We have had the occasional 17", but mostly because it had specific hardware we needed to address. Nobody in their right mind would call that portable.

My recommendation: get a 13" or 14" screen, 1440x900, an i5, and use your judgement for the rest. SSD are not quite there yet for the price-to-storage ratio and tend to have poor performance on smaller files and performance degradation over time because of the block-line issues, and if you get one make sure you have at least 4 gig of RAM and turn off swap. SSD has the advantage of using a lot less power (battery life) and can take physical abuse better.

I use my T410 as my main and only development machine. With an i7 it's more powerful than most desktops. When I'm not on the road I use a docking station with added large monitors (especially important for my aging eyes), a real keyboard (laptop keyboards suck without exception, although the Lenovo ones feel good even if they keys are the wrong size and in the wrong place), mouse, and Apple Magic Trackpad (for multitouch). When I'm on the road I just bring the laptop and a mouse. I am quite satisfied with this arrangement.

TL;DR, folks who have years of professional experience, use Linux, and rely on their notebooks choose Lenovo or Apple hardware and choose portability over screensize.

Then there's this: Toshiba Satellite U505. 13.3", 1280x800.

Bregma: thanks for the data point. Your recommendation sounds (and looks) nice, but I'd really have to stretch to afford it. I'll see. Edit: Like this?

[Edited by - theOcelot on October 16, 2010 9:30:35 PM]

Quote: Original post by theOcelot
That might be a good idea. You can boot off of it, right?

Yeah :) I've installed win 7 using an external Samsung USB drive, and also from a USB key (although the process can be painful). USBs make optical drives even more redundant.

Quote:
Do you mean the low-spec i5 would have less heat than the i3?

I think it's probably marginal, but in general, the higher the clock, the more the heat. Voltages may be a bit more aggressive on the i5, but the bottom line is, I wouldn't bother with a quad-core i7 on a laptop (unless you are looking for a desktop replacement / portable gaming rig type thing).

Quote:
Well, poo. And it doesn't look like any of those are in my price range.

The Lenovo Thinkpad Edge comes with matte screen. It's the more sensible option, still a mystery why manufacturers still prefer the 'shiny' stuff. Maybe because they look better in the shop. The Lenovo business class is very good, but very expensive. You get what you pay for I suppose. The Lenovo Edge series is a sort of entry model, and is actually very good as well.

Quote:
I'll definitely watch out for battery life and switchable graphics.

Switchable graphics means the laptop would consume no more power than a similar version with integrated graphics only. However you have the option of using the dedicated GPU when plugged to the mains (using the dedicated GPU on batteries would be pointless exercise). It's a good compromise to have, but you pay a premium for the technology.

Basic minimum battery capacity to aim for is over 55WH battery, ideally 64+WH. Given that that minimum consumption of a i3 laptop would be in the 10-12 watt region, and the max TDP is around 35 watts, that gives you an idea how much battery life you can expect (55 / 12 -> just over 4 1/2 hours, 55 / 35 -> just over 1 1/2 hours at full throttle).

Some have much better batteries than that, the UL30A has over 80WH battery and a CULV processor, which gives an alleged max autonomy over 9 hours, but practically, over 7 hours internet browsing and light work (tested!).

HP uses that old trick where they advertise battery life at about twice their actual practical maximum. Don't trust the manufacturer's claims as they wildly over-estimate, but look at the actual battery capacity and hardware to get an idea (the cell count, 6 cells, 9 cells, is not a reliable indicator either).

.. that is, if you are obsessed with ultra-mobility and really want a laptop that could go on all day :) Since I had a netbook, it's something I've been really keen on.

Quote: Original post by theOcelot
Then there's this: Toshiba Satellite U505. 13.3", 1280x800.

I have a Toshiba Satellite. The kids use it. I guess it's robust enough but it's underpowered as a main-and-only dev machine. That, and I don't like the keyboard (personal preference, I guess).

Quote: Bregma: thanks for the data point. Your recommendation sounds (and looks) nice, but I'd really have to stretch to afford it. I'll see. Edit: Like this?

I recommend going to www.lenovo.com and checking out their current sales. They always have a sale on. Right now you can pick up a 14" U-series i5 with 4 gig RAM and a 500 gig HD for USD 799.

Quote: Original post by Bregma
SSD are not quite there yet for the price-to-storage ratio and tend to have poor performance on smaller files and performance degradation over time because of the block-line issues, and if you get one make sure you have at least 4 gig of RAM and turn off swap. SSD has the advantage of using a lot less power (battery life) and can take physical abuse better.

Thats rather misleading advice imo. 'poor performance on smaller files?'. Perhaps relatively poor performance or something, but what I do know is that installations like matlab and civilization, with tens of thousands of files, which used to take up to half an hour, are down to a few minutes. Starup of the same programs, from minutes to seconds. I am a happy customer.

I thought the 'issue' was they had relatively low bulk speed; then again, when is the transfer of large chunks of data ever the painful moment of the day? So my SSD goes 300mb/s and your raptor 400mb/s? Oh, ok. Guess that means its 'slower', even though it has a few orders of magnitude faster access time and thats all you care about 99.99% of the time. So yay, you almost got your video a second faster of your USB stick; oh wait you didnt, that wasnt the bottleneck anyway.

Comparing these relative advantages as if they are even remotely comparable as to their impact on your system performance is pure nonsense.

Yeah, either you have to be loaded or get by on 80gigs of core storage, but the latter works fine for me. Who cares about the price of the 90% of gbs I never even use anyway? I had to clean up my harddrive lately, that was kindof a blast to the past, but no big deal. If you remove the bloatware, you can run win7 and a bunch of heavy dev tools on there, no questions asked.

I don't think I've seen one machine whose battery was rated in watt-hours. It's rare enough to find Amp-hours.

Quote: Original post by Bregma
I have a Toshiba Satellite. The kids use it. I guess it's robust enough but it's underpowered as a main-and-only dev machine.

Underpowered how? That one has an i3, but they go higher.

Speaking of Lenovo, I just found those tablet/laptops on their website. Now I'm really wishing I had a good reason to get one.

Can I just add that if I were to get a laptop the tablet PCs look sexy to me.

If I were back in college again I could see myself using them to take notes and use in the coffee shop.

The Fujitsu tablet PCs look very functional to me. Scribbling notes with a digitizer pen may not appeal to you but if it does I suggest checking them out.

Yes, I'll have to look at those too. Thanks.