which is the best laptop today? non-17in

[mmx]

What do you guyss think is the best laptop?
I was looking at the sony's 13.3, macbook-15.4, and some others....

What is the best that you guys recommend?

 

[6000SUX]

I like my 14" Thinkpad T60. The widescreens are not for me, since I do mostly work and photo editing on my machine and don't want a larger laptop-- this is pushing it. I will get the same machine again with newer tech when this one bites the dust, which will probably not be for a loooooooong time.

 

[IlllI]

is money no object?

 

[TheStu]

What do you plan to do with it
How much do you plan to spend
You are looking at both 13.3 and 15.4" machines.... do you have any size preference (other than not 17")
How comfortable are you with OS X
How comfortable are you with dealing with a different keyboard layout in windows on the macbook

 

[kile22]

i have a 14" dell e1405. I love it. then there is the 12" xps m1210. and under small business there is the 12" d420.

 

[JKing76]

Dell Latitude D620. We have a shared one at work and it's phenomenal. There's currently a $450 off any Latitude $1900+ and I'm about to buy another D620 for personal use.

 

[Brainonska511]

If money isn't a problem, Asus laptops (in particular, the W and V series) are excellent. Most can be found for under $2000.

 

[aceO07]

IBM Thinkpad X60s. The design is really nice. The casing area for the keyboard section is tilted down and thinner so you don't have to raise your wrist as much. Typing on it is so much better than on other laptops. Too bad I have it docked most of the time. 🙂

 

[dementedlemur]

Originally posted by: JKing76
Dell Latitude D620. We have a shared one at work and it's phenomenal. There's currently a $450 off any Latitude $1900+ and I'm about to buy another D620 for personal use.

Out of the three I have I like the D620 best. The Macbook is nice and sleek and OSX is a nice change of pace, but I like a higher resolution screen. The D800's WUXGA is really cool, but it's somewhat large and heavy. The D620 is a nice compromise in size and screen resolution and it also has the best warranty out of the ones I own so that's what I usually take with me.
What's best for you really depends on what you're looking to do with the laptop and what you can afford.

 

[stash]

I love my D620. Runs Vista without a hitch, and I can use Bitlocker with the TPM chip. The T60 is also a great machine, but a lot more expensive for essentially the same components.

(I have a T7200, 2GB RAM, DVD-burner, Nvidia graphics, 80GB 7200 RPM HDD, 9 cell battery...paid about 1550).

 

[cheesehead]

I'm not a Dell fan.

I would go with one of the following: The Apple (actually Asus-made) MacBook, Asus' latest-model of 14" widescreen gaming portable, the Lenovo X40, or the Lenovo T60.

The MacBook (non-Pro) is a decent value at $1100, or $1,000 for students. It's reasonably light, battery life is excellent, and the second version is both durable and very fast with a 1.83 or 2ghz C2D. Video performance sucks, but if you don't want to play games, it's a great laptop - even with the stock 5400RPM SATA hard drive, it's more than adequate for video and audio editing.

Asus makes excellent gaming laptops, too. They're durable, powerful, and generally expensive - but you get what you pay for. The A8J (or whatever its successor is) is an amazing machine with good video performance, a top-of-the-line CPU (technically, they're barebones laptops, so you pick the CPU yourself) and good battery life.

Lenovo just makes generally awesome laptops, with a high degree of quality and excellent support. The T60 is a powerful machine (though not reccomended for gaming), although not a cheap one. However, I prefer the original-model X40 with the 1ghz ULV processor (I own one) due to the battery life of 3.5 hours and the weight of 2.7 lbs.