Powerbook Versus This!

[serpicolugnut]

Take it from someone who shopped various P4 Latops before I bought my new PBG4/800.... Weight matters. I looked seriously at a Sony Vaio that was 9.2 lbs, and the Toshiba Satellite that was 8.3 lbs. They were HEAVY. If you carry it day in and day out, it does make a difference.

And believe me, if that laptop uses a desktop version of the P4, it's not getting 2 or 3 hours on one battery. Even the mobile Pentium 4 processors eat through battery life quickly. The Toshiba's advertise 3 hours battery life, and if you read the reviews over at C|Net, you'll see that they really only get about 45 minutes!

I was real close with going with the Toshiba Satellite 5105... It had a P4./1.7ghz/512MB RAM/40GB HD/GF42GO. The graphics chip was a real attraction, since I use Lightwave. It was about $850 less than my Powerbook. But in the end, after I played with one, it just didn't feel sturdy. It was heavy. Very heavy. It didn't get very good battery life. Its screen res was 1600x1000, which just made it's native resolution WAY to small to look at for a full days work. And - it ran Windows...

But if you want to spend your money on a shoulder hurting, power sucking, blue screen crashing laptop - they sound like a good choice....

[davidbrit2]

I just don't understand how some companies think that these are good examples of "portable" computers. I don't even want to imagine carting that MFer all over campus... But on the plus side, it's so big, and so hot, I could use it to fry up my breakfast during class in the mornings. The battery would probaby hold up just long enough to whip up a three minute egg.

And since we're discussing impractical laptops, who else saw that one laptop that had two screens? What a friggin' train wreck. You had to fold the thing into fourths to get it near the size of an average closed laptop (but at about twice the thickness.) I wish I could remember who made the thing so I could go look at it again and have a good chuckle.

And just for the record, yes, my 12.1" midget iBook has spoiled me. :-)

[Total Konfuzion]

We sell Sager laptops where I work and they aren't that great. They are heavy and are meant to be desktop replacements in all reality. We sell a 2.0 p4 that weighs in at 10lbs and the beast is made of plastic, has flimsy buttons all over the place. It's hot as hell, comes with 2 exhaust fans on the bottem of it that blow out the hot air onto your lap. Talk about having a sweaty sack =/ Those are pieces of junk, they are cheaply manufactured and I have seen many a Sager notebook come back in for repairs. They are almost as bad as KDS laptops.

[Sogni]

Hmmm...

Looks great! Just place it near the Air Conditioner and install Linux on it and Presto!
(wait, it CAN run Linux, right?)

But...

WHY???

I already have Unix on my Mac! Nah, I'll just get a PowerBook and be happy!

Besides, that thing's tacky - I like Sony's notebooks better! (but not as much as Apple's notebooks).

[plastic]

Originally posted by Ricky
All I have to say is, don't go posting in a Mac forum if you dislike Macs, for retribution is sure to follow.

Like first degree burns on your thighs on a Sager "portable desktop".

[phatsharpie]

Just a FYI...

I was doing research on multiple laptops before buying my PowerBook, and in Laptop magazine it reviewed the Sager with the desktop Pentium 4, and the review was horrible. People think it's a "desktop" processor so it must be faster. The truth is actually more muddied. In fact, in the case of the Sager laptop, it ran slower than its competition. The mobile P4 is not just a "low" powered version of the desktop P4, it's actually quite well tuned and different.

I looked at the VAIOs and Toshibas and IBMs, and for the same weight class and build material (Ti-composite bodies or Mg-alloy bodies), the prices difference was actually nil. The T-series (IBM) and Tecra series (Toshibas) were the only laptops that were comparable to the TiBook in terms of weight and features, and they were both more expensive than the TiBook.

So make sure you comparing the right models of different machines, it makes no sense to say a Kia is cheaper than a BMW, so it must be a better buy.

[AlQuemist]

You guys sometimes scarry me. I've been a long mac user, but seeing how you are intolerant with other platforms (something we all reproach to whom we all know) makes an argument to me not to be one of you anymore.

Please let people think free.

[Total Konfuzion]

Heh, well...I don't think it's intolerance in this situation. I'm a pc tech for crying outloud and bought an iBook. Most pc laptops are trash, garbage...manufactured to fail. It's the truth...I was just hearing about a Compaq laptop that overheats when the cpu usage is too high and then becomes unstable and reboots. Stuff like that just shouldn't happen. Pc laptops are going up higher and higher in the mhz scale and they want to be desktop replacements. Sure, if they could be a desktop replacement and do it well I'd have no problem with them. It is when they put all these super fast components in and try to make it a desktop replacement and they fail to do it well that pisses me off. Greed leads to failure, well...unless you are microsoft w00p. If i were to buy a pc laptop, i'd probably by toshiba or ibm....maybe even a dell, their warrenty is even better than the apple care plan.