StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I'm the current victim of a Dell Inspriron 2600. It's about two years old, and a pile of shit. I'm considering getting a new one, and recomendations would be welcome.

I don't have any specific specs in mind, save that I'd like it to be powerful enough that it won't be hopelessly obsolete for a few years. I'm not opposed to a Mac if I can be convinced its worth the extra money and the other bother that comes with a Mac. I'm more interested in reliability than power, and I'm willing to pay extra for, say, a case that won't crack or a keyboard that won't crap out at random times. It doesn't need to wow anybody--I won't be playing games on it and I don't use any high-end programs. If it can run WordPerfect, AIM, iTunes, and Mozilla, it can already do 90% of what I'll need it to do. Wireless networking, on the other hand, would be sweet.

Also, I'm not buying another Dell. Ever.

If you can afford them, the IBM ThinkPads are always excellently made. Check to see if you can swing a school discount (I'm not sure if you're still in university). If you have a friend who works for IBM they can (legally) give you access to their employee discount and if you are a stockholder or hold a Discover card you can also get a discount.

Dell's D600 and 600M are actually reasonably well-built but I can't blame you if you'll never trust their products again.

HP/Compaq's business line are fairly well-made (those models start with an "n" -- like nc6000 or whatnot) but their consumer line's quality varies.

If you stick with a PC, get a laptop with the Pentium M. Run far away from anything with a Pentium 4 or Celeron in it.

As for IBM, they have several lines:
X-series: Very light, no internal optical drive, with clip-on batteries get very long runtime. You also pay for that miniaturization.
R-series: At once their low-end and mobile workstation lines. A bit on the heavy side.
T-series: Their best line, medium-weight, reinforced case, lots of options.
G-series: Desktop replacement, don't get this.

Averatec presently has some nice systems for under $1500. about $1300 will get you an 80 gig hd, dvd/cdrw combo drive, an 802.11g wireless radio, and 512 megs of ram. Very thin and light to boot. Overall a nice little system, imo.

IBM. I've never seen a laptop so willing to work well so damn long.

LP

Avoid Sonys like the plague. I still can't get over the fact that I had to send my laptop back for service 3 times, for the same problem

LapsedPacifist wrote:IBM. I've never seen a laptop so willing to work well so damn long.

LP

I'll third the IBM recommendation. Sure you pay a premium for IBM laptops, but you definitely get every penny out of that investment.

GrandMasterTerwynn wrote:

LapsedPacifist wrote:IBM. I've never seen a laptop so willing to work well so damn long.

LP

I'll third the IBM recommendation. Sure you pay a premium for IBM laptops, but you definitely get every penny out of that investment.

you can get a number of IBM laptops for under $2000. From everything i've seen that's about average for high quality notebook systems out there.

Oh, if you decide to look at IBM, give them a call. It might be cheaper to get a preconfigured system off them (they have far too many configurations with confusing pricing) and their sales team knows what they're doing.

Try and get a machine with a base three-year warranty; accidential-damage protection is then a "mere" $130 premium over there.

EDIT: This appears to be their educational discount site ... some of the R-series deals are insane