Need Advice Choosing a Laptop PLEASE!!!!!

[FOH]

HELP!!! I know nothing about Laptops and need advice, quick !!!!!!!

I have a missionary friend in Africa (yes, in the jungle) who wants me to get him a laptop. He is documenting his time there with lots of pictures, video, and Word documents. He has a digital camera (USB), Mini DV video camera (FireWire or USB), and wants to do editing of the pictures, so with that in mind, here is some of what he needs:

CDRW for archiving pictures
Large hard drive (maybe 20G)
Reasonable speed (Photo Shop Work)
Reasonably large screen (15 or bigger)
and the two main things:
REALIABILITY AND BATTERY LIFE!!!

Also something that would be nice, but not absolutely necessary, is it would be nice if it were a white or beige color. I know that sounds weird, but here is why: they don't have electricity (only solar panels to charge batteries for light at night). So they can't run lights much and what light they do have is very dim, so it is very hard to see to use a black laptop at night (I know, I have been there). If it were white or light colored it would be easier to see. That may be asking too much though, everything I see is black and that would be O.K.

So what do you think? Any advice would be MUCH APPRICIATED !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[andrey]

I personally would recommend IBM T or A series. Depending on the configuration, you can have all of the options you mentioned. At the same time IBM Thinkpads are very light and very strong, thanks to the titanium composite they're made of. I've seen people dropping their laptops from the table in my office, and amazingly enough, there are no scratches and they work like nothing happened.

As far as light goes. IBM T and A series have "night light", which lights up your keyboard when it is dark. Very cool feature and I haven't seen any other laptops which offer that.

Right now I personally have IBM Thinkpad T22 laptop (P3 1Ghz, 512MB of RAM, 32.0 GB Hard Drive) and so far this has bee the best laptop I have ever owned.

 

[FOH]

Thanks for the reply. That sounds like it would work great and the light up keypad would be great!! Do you happen to know any place to get a great deal on one? Any one else have any other favorites?

 

[Shalmanese]

The IBM's are great machines although not white. If you get the A series, you can put in a 2nd battery and get up to 7 hrs of battery time doing word processing and the like.

You might consider the Apple ibooks. They are a nice white colour and apparently very good but I dont konw if the software he wants to use is mac compatible.

 

[FOH]

Thanks for the reply. He already has lots of Windows based programs, and other people over there have PC's so to make it easier and more compatable with other people there, a Mac is probably not what he needs (although I have heard they are very good laptops). Sounds like we have two votes for the IBM, anyone else?

Still looking for a good deal on one also if anyone knows where to buy.

 

[lorlabnew]

Get IBM, but prepare to pay premium for what you want; probably double what other brand would cost....

 

[Shalmanese]

Double is pushing it but yes, expect to pay maybe 20% more for the same specs. That said however, the machines are VERY well built, very solid feel and great screens and keyboards. I am assuming that a lot of what your friend wants to do is write reports so a go keyboard screen is a must.

The Light nights are VERY cool and are perfectly useable for night time.

As stated before, no matter what you get, get something with a modular drive bay so you can stick in 2 batterys. AFAIK, only the Dell 4100/8100 and the IBM's have this feature, havent checked out other brands. If money is a bit tighter, I would reccomend a Dell 4100.

Very fast CPU but screen only goes up to 14.1". HD goes above 20G and CDRW is included, not sure about firewire but it does have removable face plates so you can buy a set of yellow plastic plates and put in on your laptop to make it more visible. Construction is not as good as Dell's and Tech Support is worse (maybe not an issue for your friend )

Anyway, short summary is:
$$$$ = IBM
$$ = Dell

 

[kuk]

Coming in a little late on this thread, but I thought I should post this deal for you:

I think this is a sweet notebook for the price ...

Fujitsu LifeBook Notebook
Mobile Intel® Pentium® III processor-M 1.13GHz, with 133MHz system bus
512MB SDRAM for multitasking power (256MB on board + one 256MB memory module on slot)
15" XGA TFT display
40.0GB Ultra DMA hard drive
DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive (8x max. DVD-ROM speed, 8x8x24 CD-RW speeds)
Integrated Intel® 830MG chipset with UMA share memory
IEEE 1394 interface for high-speed digital data transfer
Built-in 10/100Base-TX Ethernet card
V.90 high-speed modem
High-capacity LiIon battery
Windows XP Home Edition operating system preinstalled

$1,699 - $100,00 BB Rebate - $100,00 MIR = $1,499

That's a sweet price for a darn powerful notebook. Has firewire, nice screen, and if you look at the pics, it's actually light grey, not black. I would look around to guestimate the battery-life on this one, but for the savings, you could get a second battery.