Laptop brand question

[btsdev]

I'm buying a laptop for my first semester of college soon. It seems that a lot of people have either a Dell or a IBM Thinkpad. The slim thinkpad seems to look the coolest, but whats the better machine? what has a better track record? Supposing that i can get the same hardware speeds but i had to pick one of the two, what would you go for? Or would you go with a better brand? I'm thinking a slim model by the way, not a bulky "desktop replacement."

Thanks a lot for your input.

 

[WobbleWobble]

I love the feel and durability of my Thinkpad.

 

[chin311]

Thinkpads are the rave around here, but most of the time you can get hotter deals on Dells, like 600m's, and they are quite popular and will probably suit you just fine.

 

[btsdev]

Thanks guys for the quick feedback so far!

Right now i'm leaning towards the Thinkpad; Keep 'em coming!

 

[tweeve]

the Dell Inspion is a great Laptop. we have 2 at my house. Also think about a refurbished Laptop it might be a little older then the rest but they are alot cheaper. I got a refurbished Inspiron 3500 and worked great. "Milk + Laptop = Fried keybord and Harddrive " Just keeps liquids away from them.

 

[NeoMadHatter]

double post

 

[NeoMadHatter]

if i could afford a IBM T40 i'd be all over that. either a T40 or T40p would be awesome. i had to settle for the Dell 600m for money reasons. but the dell is an awesome laptop also, i love it. great, just doesn't have the battery life of the T40's supposedly advertised 7.5hrs. btw, you should've posted this in the notebooks forum.

 

[chin311]

double post++

the T40 is one sweet lappy, im sure everyone wishes they could afford it...my only complaint is the lacking video depo

 

[DaveSimmons]

Thinkpad, Toshiba, or Dell. That user satisfaction survey in PC Mag gave IBM & Toshiba the lead over Dell in user staisfaction, but take that with a grain of salt.

I've never owned a Dell, but my Thinkpad is very nicely built and I've helped buy & support Toshibas at my last two jobs and they are good machines too.

 

[btsdev]

thanks guys, i'm gonna research based upon your feedback.

thanks.

 

[wjsulliv]

IBM has a rep as a top notch business machine. As far as reliability it is either great or a lemon (either it works and works well for ever, or everything will fail at inopportune times).

Dell also make great business quality machines.

The bottom line is that you can get more features for the money from dell. You will pay for those 3 little letters to be printed on your machine (IBM...)


Both are great. But I would buy based on the best stuff you can get, not the look.

 

[stranger707]

Paying a little more for those 3 little letters gets you the most reliable machine on the market. I have a 3 year old T30 Thinkpad that I have lugged all over the world and it hasn't hiccuped once. Their support is unmatched. I wanted to install a new hard drive in mine and their web site has all of the drivers in one location, so that you can do it all yourself. I upgraded my operating system to Windows 2000 last year and everything worked fine after the upgrade. They may get outperformed by Dells or Toshibas, but they won't get outlasted.