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Business laptop recommendations

L

laurenlex

Platinum Member
Hello folks,

Somehow I was asked to help research / purchase 3 laptops for work.

They will be used for a filemaker pro database, internet and email communication (need wireless solution), and basic word/office apps. Nothing too fancy.

They do not need to be ultralight, but not a tank either. These will be desktop replacement computers for a couple of ladies, but they will take them on some short trips out of the office quite often. A large to fairly-large screen would be nice. Iwould like 512 RAM.

I was looking at newegg and saw some from Toshiba, Acer, and Avertec that look great for about $1000.

But I got to wondering if the support from Dell would be a worthwile option. This is for government/social work people who are pretty clueless about technology. I priced out a Dell Inspiron 1150 P4 2.8, 15" XGA, 512 mb, 40 gig HD, and upgraded battery for $1350.

1. What laptop would your recommend for around $1000 - $1400. Money is not a huge issue, but don't like to waste government money or spend $$$ unnecessarily.

2. Dell PC's seem like a great choice for the situation, but I know nothing about laptops. Would a Dell be a good choice in this situation? If so, which model.

3. Any other comments to help a notebook noobie.
 
Originally posted by: laurenlex
Hello folks,

Somehow I was asked to help research / purchase 3 laptops for work.

They will be used for a filemaker pro database, internet and email communication (need wireless solution), and basic word/office apps. Nothing too fancy.

They do not need to be ultralight, but not a tank either. These will be desktop replacement computers for a couple of ladies, but they will take them on some short trips out of the office quite often. A large to fairly-large screen would be nice. Iwould like 512 RAM.

I was looking at newegg and saw some from Toshiba, Acer, and Avertec that look great for about $1000.

But I got to wondering if the support from Dell would be a worthwile option. This is for government/social work people who are pretty clueless about technology. I priced out a Dell Inspiron 1150 P4 2.8, 15" XGA, 512 mb, 40 gig HD, and upgraded battery for $1350.

1. What laptop would your recommend for around $1000 - $1400. Money is not a huge issue, but don't like to waste government money or spend $$$ unnecessarily.
Large screen, non-tank, powerful? Well, if you can I might try to find an IBM R or T series. An R series would be somewhat feasible in that price range. For respectable performance with the option of being mobile, Pentium M (Centrino) sounds like your best bet. Very efficient overall in a thin & light package. As far as non-IBM Centrino, both HP and Gateway have decent models for the money. I don't remember the Gateway model #'s, but check out Best Buy; they've got 'em with 512MB, 60GB, CDRW or DVDRW, 15" XGA, etc. As far as the HP, they have the new ze2000 series. You can get a nice one for around $1000: 1.6GHz Pentium M, 256MB (add another 256MB yourself for $30), 40GB, CDRW, etc etc. Again the big downside in my opinion is the 15" XGA screen. I don't like regular XGA screens (1024x768) on laptops personally.
If you were to go non-Centrino, I would check out the Gateway 72XX series. They come with an Athon 64, 60-80GB, CDRW or DVDRW, 15.4" screen, etc: on sale for around $1100-1200 at Best Buy. They are very powerful and efficient, but weight about 8 lbs and only get 2-2.5 hours of battery life.

2. Dell PC's seem like a great choice for the situation, but I know nothing about laptops. Would a Dell be a good choice in this situation? If so, which model.
Dell's are okay, as long as you get the warranty. Their phone tech support is horrible most of the time, but that may be different if you register as a small business customer. Between the small business discount and the multitude of coupons available for Dell laptops, its not a bad idea. Although if you go with IBM and they come with the 3 year warranty as a lot of them do, you will have fast & friendly tech support based out of Georgia; not India. Most people will tell you IBM tech support is practically unrivaled.

3. Any other comments to help a notebook noobie.
Click to expand...
Unless you want a laptop that is just going to sit at a desk 24/7, stay away from P4's. They are pretty quick, but Athlon 64's are more powerful overall & run a lot cooler. Pentium M's are the choice for any type of mobility, as they are very powerful (See Anand's latest P-M review) and give very good battery life comparatively. With an 8-9 cell battery, you can except 4+ hours of battery life on the conservative side.

Write back with more questions!
 
I would lean towards Dell myself, the reason i say this is because you said they were for ppl that arent tech savvy at all. Those people tend to mistreat things that arent thiers, and dells complete care cant be beat for service. A guy brought in his laptop to our shop after backing over it with his suburban, it was DEMOLISHED, dell had a replacement, UPGRADED laptop (took him from a C810 to a D600) the next day, no questions asked.
 
As much as I like my Dell Inspiron 500m. Dell technical support can be a nightmare.

CEO's laptop started having problems last weekend and Monday the hard drive at first wasn't seen by the motherboard and then showed as locked with a password. Dell sent a new hard drive and then the laptop couldn't fully see the docking station. My boss dealt with Dell's gold support line thinking he had arranged the shipment of a new motherboard and a technician to install the motherboard. Turns out they thought that we would call back if the problem was unresolved. So it almost took an extra day, maybe it should have, to receive and install the new motherboard.

New motherboard arrives with tech on Thursday. Tech installs motherboard and either the BIOS flash doesn't take or he doesn't do it right so the BIOS can't handle the P-M 1.7ghz CPU and keeps giving a bypassable error when booted. Tech. spends several hours on the phone trying to reach his support, don't know if he has yet. Why he didn't check the BIOS level I have no idea. Took until Friday to talk to someone who suggested flashing to the current BIOS. Worked, of course in the mean time we find that the internal NIC is going/gone bad as in dropping connections and freezing the machine. New-new motherboard should be shipped Monday and here Tuesday. It better be working by Tuesday night or Wednesday we buy a replacement for a Dell Latiutude D800 so the CEO has a laptop by Thursday.

A series of problems that don't reflect well on Dell gold support and has probably lost them any return business from at least two companies.

But on the bright side sent my new/refurbished Dell Inspiron 500m to have the motherboard replaced and it was back in less than 5 days with a new motherboard and a upgraded CPU. 1.3ghz to 1.7ghz. This was with the basic mail-in support.

When Murphy geets pissed his law can really stick.
 
yeah dude, i think you just got unlucky, I rarely get bad parts from dell, come to think of it, i dont think i have EVER gotten a bad part for ANY of the... id say 300 laptops ive repaired.
 
Originally posted by: Paperlantern
I would lean towards Dell myself, the reason i say this is because you said they were for ppl that arent tech savvy at all. Those people tend to mistreat things that arent thiers, and dells complete care cant be beat for service. A guy brought in his laptop to our shop after backing over it with his suburban, it was DEMOLISHED, dell had a replacement, UPGRADED laptop (took him from a C810 to a D600) the next day, no questions asked.
Click to expand...

Most company's (at least business oriented ones) have great replacement programs. But TECH SUPPORT is where Dell sucks.
If you want a great warranty WITH the great tech support, IBM is the only one that comes to my mind. The only catch will be that you will probly spend over $1400. But IMO, that is well worth it.
 


> But TECH SUPPORT is where Dell sucks.

This is not actually true for everything. For human tech support maybe (though I have had no problem with 100's of dell laptops in our business, something breaks they come out and fix it. Is business account support better/different?).

But for online support Dell rocks.

Take an ID off the back/bottom of your computer. Plug it into support.dell.com and it tells you everything in the computer. And it lists every bios or driver upgrade, documentation etc all on one convenient web site.
 
Everyone does that. If you are referring to e-mail or chat support, I would be interested to hear how that is. But IBM, HP, Gateway, everybody has online driver/software supoprt. I know HP doesn't list system components, but IMO that's irrelevant neway 😛
And human tech support is what he is talking about. You need someone to talk to non-computer-savvy people, and I personally don't want someone in India trying to explain Windoze to my coworkers :roll:
 
To repeat - IBM T-42 - support is really not all that important because it works as advertised.
 
Originally posted by: corkyg
To repeat - IBM T-42 - support is really not all that important because it works as advertised.
Click to expand...

That is true, hardware wise. But I think the big concern is with Windoze use, that is where tech support is really needed.
 
Originally posted by: Paperlantern
I would lean towards Dell myself, the reason i say this is because you said they were for ppl that arent tech savvy at all. Those people tend to mistreat things that arent thiers, and dells complete care cant be beat for service. A guy brought in his laptop to our shop after backing over it with his suburban, it was DEMOLISHED, dell had a replacement, UPGRADED laptop (took him from a C810 to a D600) the next day, no questions asked.
Click to expand...

"and dells complete care cant be beat for service."

Uhm.... every majot vendor offers the same option, IBM, HP.... It's not unique to Dell other than the name.
 
I suggest IBM over any other company. Even though, Lenovo owns IBM's PC company, it will be run just like IBM owns it. Well, for the next 5 years at least.
 
Originally posted by: WackyDan
Originally posted by: Paperlantern
I would lean towards Dell myself, the reason i say this is because you said they were for ppl that arent tech savvy at all. Those people tend to mistreat things that arent thiers, and dells complete care cant be beat for service. A guy brought in his laptop to our shop after backing over it with his suburban, it was DEMOLISHED, dell had a replacement, UPGRADED laptop (took him from a C810 to a D600) the next day, no questions asked.
Click to expand...

"and dells complete care cant be beat for service."

Uhm.... every majot vendor offers the same option, IBM, HP.... It's not unique to Dell other than the name.
Click to expand...


you dont think i'm aware of this? i never said they were the only ones who had it, i said its the best, i have dealt with every single major brand of laptop, and thier warranties, Gateway, IBM, Toshiba, Acer, Compaq, HP, Sony, Fujitsu, you name it, ive worked with them... Dell is the best

read the statement next time, i didnt say "dell is the only one with complete care" which is the statement it seems your responding to
 
If you want cheap, nothing beats Dell. After using my friends T41p though, I have to admit it's overall built better than the 600M. The 600M isn't as shoddy as some people make it out to be - mine has survived a 3 foot fall onto tile.
 
I would highly reccommened Winbook C240 with Centrino technology and Pentium M 1.6 GHz proccessor.

It is solid, well built with very good customer support. The notebook looks expensive, with no cheap plastic.
It is priced $1,100 @ Amazon.com ($100 less then winbook.com)

The unit comes with XP Pro, 512 RAM.

After years of low quality Dell, and Gateway, this company is relief.

Customer support is 27 times more friendly and professional and responsive.

They are in Ohio.

Winbook is one of the first notebook maker in the US as I remember.

www.winbook.com

www.amazon.com

 
Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
Everyone does that. If you are referring to e-mail or chat support, I would be interested to hear how that is. But IBM, HP, Gateway, everybody has online driver/software supoprt. I know HP doesn't list system components, but IMO that's irrelevant neway 😛
And human tech support is what he is talking about. You need someone to talk to non-computer-savvy people, and I personally don't want someone in India trying to explain Windoze to my coworkers :roll:
Click to expand...

I know everyone does it, but dell does it the best. I've used IBMs driver site. Bla. I've spent countless hours on HP/compaq, blech. Dells web support is so good for most things, other than hardware breaking, we don't need to deal with phone support. The blanket statement "dell support sucks" should be quailified as dell phone support sucks.

Is all dell business support outsourced to india? I have not had to call dell in years, but my folks have not had any complaints.....




 
I know everyone does it, but dell does it the best. I've used IBMs driver site. Bla. I've spent countless hours on HP/compaq, blech. Dells web support is so good for most things, other than hardware breaking, we don't need to deal with phone support. The blanket statement "dell support sucks" should be quailified as dell phone support sucks.

Is all dell business support outsourced to india? I have not had to call dell in years, but my folks have not had any complaints.....
Click to expand...

Those must be just very varying opinions. While I'm not the biggest fan of HP/Compaq's site design, it works. And I quite like IBM's. From the auto system identification to the breakdown of all current drivers, like here, I don't think it can be beat. I'm sure Dell's web support is quite good. Most companies with horrible phone tech support rely on great web interfaces and I'm glad to hear that Dell excels in that area. Personally though, I wouldn't put a dime towards their phone support unless you got very skilled at getting past the Indians. To my knowledge, all basic tech support calls go to India. Hardware replacement too I'd assume. As I said, its hard enough to explain Windoze over the phone, much less with a non-English Speaker 😉
 
Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
I know everyone does it, but dell does it the best. I've used IBMs driver site. Bla. I've spent countless hours on HP/compaq, blech. Dells web support is so good for most things, other than hardware breaking, we don't need to deal with phone support. The blanket statement "dell support sucks" should be quailified as dell phone support sucks.

Is all dell business support outsourced to india? I have not had to call dell in years, but my folks have not had any complaints.....
Click to expand...

Those must be just very varying opinions. While I'm not the biggest fan of HP/Compaq's site design, it works. And I quite like IBM's. From the auto system identification to the breakdown of all current drivers, like here, I don't think it can be beat. I'm sure Dell's web support is quite good. Most companies with horrible phone tech support rely on great web interfaces and I'm glad to hear that Dell excels in that area. Personally though, I wouldn't put a dime towards their phone support unless you got very skilled at getting past the Indians. To my knowledge, all basic tech support calls go to India. Hardware replacement too I'd assume. As I said, its hard enough to explain Windoze over the phone, much less with a non-English Speaker 😉
Click to expand...

We agree to disagree. With dell I login, it shows me every computer I have, what was installed in every computer when it shipped, and the latest drivers for the computers. With IBM I enter about 20 numbers every time I need support on a laptop. Plus dell has their premier support plan for larger business, your tech support takes a CBT and they can go directly to L2 tech support and tell them you broke fan send a replacement (without going through the brain dead, is the computer plugged in). Then there is the issue of driver updates. No one is perfect but dell seems to be quicker about supplying critical updates such as graphic drivers.



 
That is a nice feature of Dell's support. I'd imagine that is very useful especially for system administrators and whatnot. I'm glad to hear that Dell offers great support online & for their larger customers. I wonder if you purchase/register as a small business, do you get that direct L2 #?
 
Originally posted by: fbrdphreak
Originally posted by: laurenlex
Hello folks,

Somehow I was asked to help research / purchase 3 laptops for work.

They will be used for a filemaker pro database, internet and email communication (need wireless solution), and basic word/office apps. Nothing too fancy.

They do not need to be ultralight, but not a tank either. These will be desktop replacement computers for a couple of ladies, but they will take them on some short trips out of the office quite often. A large to fairly-large screen would be nice. Iwould like 512 RAM.

I was looking at newegg and saw some from Toshiba, Acer, and Avertec that look great for about $1000.

But I got to wondering if the support from Dell would be a worthwile option. This is for government/social work people who are pretty clueless about technology. I priced out a Dell Inspiron 1150 P4 2.8, 15" XGA, 512 mb, 40 gig HD, and upgraded battery for $1350.

1. What laptop would your recommend for around $1000 - $1400. Money is not a huge issue, but don't like to waste government money or spend $$$ unnecessarily.
Large screen, non-tank, powerful? Well, if you can I might try to find an IBM R or T series. An R series would be somewhat feasible in that price range. For respectable performance with the option of being mobile, Pentium M (Centrino) sounds like your best bet. Very efficient overall in a thin & light package. As far as non-IBM Centrino, both HP and Gateway have decent models for the money. I don't remember the Gateway model #'s, but check out Best Buy; they've got 'em with 512MB, 60GB, CDRW or DVDRW, 15" XGA, etc. As far as the HP, they have the new ze2000 series. You can get a nice one for around $1000: 1.6GHz Pentium M, 256MB (add another 256MB yourself for $30), 40GB, CDRW, etc etc. Again the big downside in my opinion is the 15" XGA screen. I don't like regular XGA screens (1024x768) on laptops personally.
If you were to go non-Centrino, I would check out the Gateway 72XX series. They come with an Athon 64, 60-80GB, CDRW or DVDRW, 15.4" screen, etc: on sale for around $1100-1200 at Best Buy. They are very powerful and efficient, but weight about 8 lbs and only get 2-2.5 hours of battery life.

2. Dell PC's seem like a great choice for the situation, but I know nothing about laptops. Would a Dell be a good choice in this situation? If so, which model.
Dell's are okay, as long as you get the warranty. Their phone tech support is horrible most of the time, but that may be different if you register as a small business customer. Between the small business discount and the multitude of coupons available for Dell laptops, its not a bad idea. Although if you go with IBM and they come with the 3 year warranty as a lot of them do, you will have fast & friendly tech support based out of Georgia; not India. Most people will tell you IBM tech support is practically unrivaled.

3. Any other comments to help a notebook noobie.
Click to expand...
Unless you want a laptop that is just going to sit at a desk 24/7, stay away from P4's. They are pretty quick, but Athlon 64's are more powerful overall & run a lot cooler. Pentium M's are the choice for any type of mobility, as they are very powerful (See Anand's latest P-M review) and give very good battery life comparatively. With an 8-9 cell battery, you can except 4+ hours of battery life on the conservative side.

Write back with more questions!
Click to expand...


I'd say to stay away from the new P-M Sonatas as well.

and... I would go with the dells.
 
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