$2500 to spend on a notebook - recommendations?

[6000SUX]

Originally posted by: ShellGuy
I highly doubt dell would start to sell osx if it was open to the retail market. when you get a oem maker having to support 2 os's that is an issue. you have to have support staff to do both or one for each.. good luck at taht. you know how much mac techs cost. because they know what they are doing and most have been doing it for along time. OSX would prob crash more than windows on non apple hardware the first few years as they work the bugs out of it.

Will G.

"I highly doubt dell would start to sell osx if it was open to the retail market."

You're wrong. They're in business to make money.


"when you get a oem maker having to support 2 os's that is an issue. you have to have support staff to do both or one for each.. good luck at taht."

Well, Dell currently has plenty of luck supporting multiple OSes. Check it out:
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/...px?c=us&cs=555&l=en&oc=pe6850pad&s=biz

It's fallacious to argue that the cost of supporting an OS is overwhelming and a deal-killer. If they can do it for Windows, they can do it for Linux and obviously for Mac OS as well. In addition, I don't think you realize that their tier 1 support is full of phone monkeys that simply step through a wizard, asking questions and clicking radio buttons. The number of skilled technicians available via phone support is quite low. Last but not least, most issues reported to tech support at a company such as Dell involve hardware, not the operating system.


"you know how much mac techs cost. because they know what they are doing and most have been doing it for along time. "

I don't know how much such a person makes-- but it can't be as much as you make out. Tech support is not a get-rich-quick type of career. In any case, the cost of keeping a few knowledgeable technicians on hand is nothing to a company like Dell, and it is certainly not anything that would make selling Mac OS X to consumers unprofitable.


"OSX would prob crash more than windows on non apple hardware the first few years as they work the bugs out of it."

This claim is based on nothing. It will be based on nothing no matter how much people repeat it, until some sort of evidence is shown.

 

[flot]

Wanted to follow up on this thread. (sorry to bring it back on topic)

I did get the Lenovo T60. My budget got slashed so I ended up with ~$1700 to spend, not the $2600 I had originally.

My early impressions are that it is well built and solid, but completely uninspiring. Build quality is definitely 110%. Asthetics and sex appeal... 10%.

The only real "disappointement" though is the screen - I went with the 1400x1050 14.1" model since that fit in best with my budget. I'm just not impressed. The first oddity is that it seems to have a pretty narrow vertical range where the contrast and colors really come through... but even then it just looks average for an LCD. Compare that to the $399 toshiba I bought at best buy that clearly blew away the display on my 4 year old Dell laptop.

Overall a solid machine and probably a great choice for the road - but my out of the box impression was "wow I paid $1700 for this?"

 

[fbrdphreak]

Yeah I've never been impressed with the non-Flexview (IPS) Thinkpad displays. The 14" SXGA+ was acceptable, but nothing special.

Keep in mind glossy displays like on your Toshiba are going to be very different from a non-reflective display in terms of brightness and color saturation; while they are better, they consume more power and I believe also require a thicker LCD.

 

[flot]

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
Yeah I've never been impressed with the non-Flexview (IPS) Thinkpad displays. The 14" SXGA+ was acceptable, but nothing special.

Keep in mind glossy displays like on your Toshiba are going to be very different from a non-reflective display in terms of brightness and color saturation; while they are better, they consume more power and I believe also require a thicker LCD.

I know, it was my mistake - I thought the 14.1 1400x1050 was a "flexview" display. But I don't think my budget would have let me pick up a flexview with the other options I needed.

The toshiba I had, just for the record, was a POS, but the display was non-reflective and still amazingly bright and colorful....

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: flot

Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
Yeah I've never been impressed with the non-Flexview (IPS) Thinkpad displays. The 14" SXGA+ was acceptable, but nothing special.

Keep in mind glossy displays like on your Toshiba are going to be very different from a non-reflective display in terms of brightness and color saturation; while they are better, they consume more power and I believe also require a thicker LCD.

I know, it was my mistake - I thought the 14.1 1400x1050 was a "flexview" display. But I don't think my budget would have let me pick up a flexview with the other options I needed.

The toshiba I had, just for the record, was a POS, but the display was non-reflective and still amazingly bright and colorful....

Oh, gotcha, I assumed the Toshiba was one of the recent cheapos that had a glossy display. Yeah I've seen better non-reflective displays than the Thinkpads unfortunately. The FlexView is AWESOME in terms of brightness and has a perfect viewing angle, but is only available in 15" & uses more power