Thinking about changing laptop: from HP to Apple or Dell or Sony or Lenovo or HP again? Advice most welcome.

By Jeremy Fain, September 13, 2006

HP Compaq nx7000I’ve been using an HP compaq nx7000 (see picture) for 3 years. It’s been an excellent professional tool: I only had minor problems despite an extremely intensive use, I fixed everything myself, and overall I’ve been pretty happy with HP.

Now I’m thinking about changing: I spend a lot of time learning about software development, and this little insignificant noise – probably due to an ageing device, urges my decision-making.

First question: should I wait until Spring 2007? Not only are MS Vista and Apple Leopard coming out in Europe, at that time, most Mac software should be re-written to fit new hardware standards. But I would miss the Apple Education laptop acquisition program ending on October 6th 2006…

Second question: if I decide to proceed and purchase a new laptop right now, which one should I chose?

Sony Vaio are fast, well designed, expensive but reliable.

Lenovo sounds good too, and I have access to a very interesting Education offer.

I’ve been happy with HP, why should I switch?

Dell is Dell: well manufactured, no surprise.

And Apple, despite serious heating issues, is very attractive too. It’s been almost a decade I haven’t had a Mac, and fifteen years since I used a Mac laptop (a Powerbook 170 if my memory’s correct, I still have it somewhere). Not only do I miss it, I’m also getting influenced by many Mac-lovers around me (like Kari and Vincent).

Your advice are most welcome.

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categories Apple, Consumer electronics, Dell, Education, Europe, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Software, innovation

  • Jeremy, you don't choose it by the brand, you choose it by the features!

    The wisdom of hardware buying is that you'd always want to buy now the stuff available 4 months in the future.

    I'm quite sure that any of those laptops is adequate for your needs.

    Most of the enterprise software development tools are Windows-only, so the way of the Mac might be a difficult one... but then again, it's a Mac.

    At work I have IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad and even if it looks a bit industrial, it has yet to fail me.
  • The toshiba M40X is pretty cool...
  • Kari,

    True, you chose by features, not brand. But when you spend 15 hours + per day with a tool, you want it to look good, & be handy.

    Now I'm hesitating between purchasing right now a Macbook Pro (with the heat and all that jazz), or waiting for Intel to release its Core Duo 2 flagship CPU (looking amazing on a Macbook) to Windows-powered laptops manufacturers.

    What's your opinion?
  • I'm very interested by this post. I need to buy a new laptop too and I'm hesitating between Sony Vaio TX and Leonovo. We can vote...
  • If your gonna use it for note-taking in class, you may want to look at tablet-PCs. Otherwise, you know that I warmly recommend Apples for any use and just plain sexiness. ;)
  • Vincent> I know, I know



    Xavier> Instead of voting (I believe there's one solution per person), don't hesitate to use this forum to gather information on these machines. Ask for instance Kari what he thinks about his Lenovo laptop. My mother as well as a former manager of mine back in New York City, make use of Sony Vaios. They are both happy with it.



    Sony manufactures excellent high-end laptops, whilst Lenovo devises well-balanced, rigorously architectured and strong laptops.
  • Oh, I didn't choose it because of features. I chose it because it's a nice piece of Apple designed aluminium with a kick-ass operating system which gives me no end of pleasure (exposé, yay! dashboard, yay! adium, yay!). And I too had an ancient Powerbook 140 once... =)



    My uninformed guess is that you'll have to wait to January for new Pros (with Leopard. time machine, yay! virtual desktops, yay!), new Macbooks could come on a sooner Tuesday. But this is just my guess.



    Think realistically, what difference does Core Duo and Core Duo 2 mean for your normal computing needs?
  • Kari,



    Do you think if I buy a Macbook pro today I will switch easily to Leopard when it comes out on the market?



    I don't care about my computing needs, I want comfort. If Apple hadn't had its heating issues recently, I would've purchased a Macbook quite some time ago. Having a toaster doesn't help working. That's why I'm okay to wait a little bit for the problem to be solved (probably Core Duo 2 + Leopard machines as you pointed out). My guess is that May is more likely than January 2007 for the Pro release.
  • I can assure you that even my current G4 PB will run Leopard just as well as it's running Tiger now. It's not a "new" operating system like with XP and Vista, but upgraded. Up until now some have even said that Tiger is faster on the same hardware than Panther was.



    The requirements for Leopard Developer Preview seem to be:

    - an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor

    - at least 256 MB of RAM for a Power-PC based Mac and 512 MB for an Intel-based Mac



    Tiger even "runs" on G3 iBooks, but apparently not so with Leopard anymore.
  • Speaking of minimum-requirements, I think 1 GB of ram is more the requirement for a smooth running Tiger and probably Leopard too. And never buy ram from Apple either, just get 3rd party, it's much cheaper.



    No idea what the current heating issues are; there's revisions to the hardware released all the time. My guess is that both the Macbook and the Pro will run Leopard (and Vista) just fine.



    Incidentally, there was a story somewhere about some laptops, running on sony-batteries, not being accepted on certain flights anymore? That includes Apple. Ouch.
  • Folks,



    I needed a change and hence just ordered a Macbook Pro 17' 2Gb RAM, 120 Gb hd + Parallels + Office Education.



    Thanks for your inputs. I hope this machine and I will do a great job together));
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