Click here to go to the NEW College Discussion Forum

Which kind of notebook should I get? I think that a lot of people are having a hard time choosing. What are you doing? Any advice?

Thanks--Jeff

By Calbear (Calbear) on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 06:13 pm: Edit

A PC, built in 802.11b or 802.11g is a plus.

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 09:12 pm: Edit

After much research, I'm going to get a Toshiba M200 laptop with an extra battery.

My suggestion is that stay away from the Dell inspiron series and some of the Acer laptops, both are made of soft low quality plastic and they flex badly (I went to our local computer shops to try them out). The Dell Latitude series is ok since it has magnesium casing.

Another advice is that only get a laptop if you need one since desktops are a lot more powerful for the same price. Since I'm going to be in a triple room in unit 1, I expect myself to spend most of my time in the library, so I need a laptop. If you are in a quiet place ( like foothill, lucky you.......*sniff* ), then maybe you'll spend more time studying in your dorm so desktop may be better.

Does Berkeley even has the 802.11g wifi?? from my experience, 802.11b is plenty fast if you wann just surf/check mail but its bad if you transfer files.

By Aracane2k (Aracane2k) on Thursday, June 10, 2004 - 10:55 pm: Edit

Yeah, I'm also wondering if Berkeley has 802.11g. Most laptops come with b, I wonder if it is worth upgrading.

By Pipettewolf (Pipettewolf) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 12:47 am: Edit

802.11g is backwards compatible with the 802.11b

802.11a is the only one that u need to check for compatibility.

By Pipettewolf (Pipettewolf) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 12:47 am: Edit

802.11g is backwards compatible with the 802.11b

802.11a is the only one that u need to check for compatibility.

By Calbear (Calbear) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 01:31 pm: Edit

You're all tards, seriously. The upgrade is what, 15 bucks on hpshopping.com? You know all new networks are 802g, and as Airbears expands most of the access points will be g. Granted b will suffice for browsing, but you'll find yourself doing a lot more than that when bored in class.

By Jeffman85 (Jeffman85) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 07:29 pm: Edit

Do any of you see the downside to an apple?
thanks!

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 08:32 pm: Edit

downside to apple laptops ( G4s )
- Slower than similiarly priced PC counterparts in terms of pure number crunching power. They also have a slower bus ( 133- 166 I believe)
- Software compatibility. There's more software for Mac than for PCs
- Weight, Even the lightest Mac laptop - the Powerbook G4 is significantly heavier if you compare them to PC laptops like the Sony Vaio TR3 and Toshiba R100

other than that, they are great laptops.

By Theworldismine (Theworldismine) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 12:01 am: Edit

If i can see myself doing homework and research outside my dormroom and in class, i guess i should get a laptop ... especially because i type faster than i write. (good for notetaking ... bad for fingers)

who makes the fastest laptop with the most GBs?

And what is with all these 801.11 b, c, a crap? i'm not with the comp lingo so explain please.

By Jeffman85 (Jeffman85) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 03:26 am: Edit

thanks for all your help!

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 03:46 pm: Edit

if you want to bring your laptop to class, definately consider buying an ultraportable.

In my opinion, there are lots of factors that matters more than just "fastest laptop with the most GBs" if you are buying an ultraportable. The first thing I'll look at is the weight. You will not like lugging around something heavier than 4lb. my last laptop was 5 lb with a 1 lb power adaptor and I end up not taking it around with me much because its so heavy when you lug it around for an extended amount of time.

Another thing you have to look at is the battery life. If you are going to bring the thing around with you to class, you'll definately need at least around 4 hours of battery life or else it'll be hard to sit through consecutive lectures with your laptop. For this reason, you should not consider laptops with Pentium 4M or athlonXP processors since they tend to have very short battery life ( arnd 2+ hours), look only at the Pentium M ( Centrino ) based laptops or macs.

To answer the
"who makes the fastest laptop with the most GBs? ": Everyone makes them, The top-of-the-line models from every manufacturers have almost the same spec. Right now the fastest Pentium M processor is the 2.0 Ghz "Dothan" processor. But I think for everyday use, the speed difference between this and a lets say 1.5ghz Pentium M found on many mainstream ultraportables is negligible. As for harddisk, they range from 30Gb to 80GB on most models. One thing to be beware of the that some harddisks are 4200 rpm and others are 5400 rpm. Since harddisks are one of the main bottlnecks in your system performance, you might want to get the higher speed disk. If you are into gaming, graphic card is a very very important determinent of performance, look to get a laptop with a Geforce FX go or Mobility Radeon 9xxx.

802.11x are wireless LAN specifications.

802.1a supports speed up to 54mbps but its not widely supported in the consumer market and its not compatible with 802.11b .

802.11b is what comes with most laptops and its speed is 11mbps but in reality I hardly get that kinda speed due to overheads.

802.11g I believe transmits at 54mbps which is a lot faster.

There's also bluetooth which is a lot slower but might be useful if you have BT enabled handphones and PDAs.

Hope that helps.

By Pipettewolf (Pipettewolf) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 05:43 pm: Edit

calbear, please tell me if u've ever been able to download a file at 54mbps, or even at 11mbps.

When you realize that the t1's that cal has to offer top off at 1.5 mbps, come back and tell me who is the "tard." The only thing the 802g is good for, is to transfer large files from pc to pc through a LAN; even then, a hardwire connection is twice as fast.

So, it's only 15 dollars more to upgrade to g. That's 15 dollars of pure waste.

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 07:16 pm: Edit

errmm.. Calbear is rude for calling people a tard. From a personal point of view, I still think that 802.11g is a useful for file transfers and media streaming (from another PC). For example, if I were to transfer a movie to a friend's laptop (using a point to point connection) with 802.11b, it'll be painfully slow, however, the same process with 802.11g is noticabily faster. So whether the 15 dollars upgrade is worth it depends on your usage. For me, I'd go for it.

By Pipettewolf (Pipettewolf) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 10:36 pm: Edit

thekgb,

that's basically what i said...almost word for word.

By Pipettewolf (Pipettewolf) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 10:43 pm: Edit

actually, a few cards by netgear are toting the "108mbps" claim on their 802g products.

By Calbear (Calbear) on Sunday, June 13, 2004 - 11:46 pm: Edit

Hey piptettewolf, tard. Cal's network allows you to download at over 6 mb's per second. And hey, tard, g will still be much faster than g. Think about it, tard, does 56k allow you to dwld at 56k/sec? No. Don't believe what the connection is theoretically capable of, believe how it actually performs. HP recently granted Phil Stark, who's in charge of Airbears, a sizeable grant to expand the network. These new accesspoints will be 802.11g, faster, and yes...worth 15 bucks to use to their maximum potential. I guess I do apologize for calling you a tard...but the lakers are getting their asses kicked as I speak, and I'm in a foul mood.

By Calbear (Calbear) on Sunday, June 13, 2004 - 11:48 pm: Edit

Oh and that's not what you said, "word for word." Hell, it's not what you said at all. Thekgb actually made sense. You, my fellow bear, did not.

By Neelesh (Neelesh) on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - 09:08 pm: Edit

first, it depends on how much you want to spend

if you have the money, buy a DELL, cause they make very good quality laptops, and offer lotsa stuff for a good price.

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - 11:46 pm: Edit

I must disagree with you about the quality of Dell laptops. From my personal experience with them, I feel that DELL makes poor quality laptops.

Just hold an inspiron by its side with one hand and you'll see how much the Chasis flex and creak.

Use your inspiron in windy condition and even the screen oscillates in the wind due to the loose hinge.

Dell laptops are totally made-in-china, even essential components such as the LCDs and Batteries are made in China. Where competiters (Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu) have Korean or Japanese Made LCDs.

The paint on the Inspiron's cheap plastic casing wears off easily.

However, in DELL's Defence, they have good support and their machines have good specifications.

But if you go and and actually try out and touch some of the machinese, you'll find that laptops form IBM, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Asus or Sony are much better built than those from DELL.

DELL = DON'T EVER LAST LONG

By Kryptic (Kryptic) on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - 12:28 am: Edit

I've been happy with my HP Pavillion. I used the UC Berkeley student discount, and basically got a much better system for around the same price as a Dell. Check out the ZT3000. Not a top-end machine, but it's fairly light, fairly powerful, has good battery life, and the wide screen is really nice for programming. =)

As for the manufacturing, I'm not sure I'd rate Korean manufacturing as being much better than Chinese. Sony and Toshiba laptops also tend to be grossly overpriced for what you get, and both have notoriously bad support. I used to have a high-end Vaio for work, and the only thing it had going for it was the aesthetics...

As for the comments on 802.11 a/b/g, definitely go with the G if you have the choice. Sure, your internet pipe may be less than what the B can blast (1.5 mbit vs. 11 mbit), but (as someone else pointed out) PC-PC communications will be much nicer with the G. It's a real pain to have to install software over the network, copy files, etc. when you're downloading it over a slow 11mbit link. Not necessarily a critical factor for many people, but it's sure a 'nice to have' for most.

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - 02:28 am: Edit

I agree, HP makes good products.

Does anyone know if the wireless network at Berkeley uses the same account as your regular ethernet and thus has the transfer limit of 5GB/week ?? if it doesn't, I'll definately my laptop to G for mass downloading. If not then I'll think about the upgrade.

By Jeffman85 (Jeffman85) on Thursday, June 17, 2004 - 03:25 am: Edit

I'm going with an Apple Powerbook G4--it just makes sense. I'm actually taking the leap from PC to Mac...wish me luck. You should convert, too!

Jeff

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Thursday, June 17, 2004 - 04:45 am: Edit

geez, those cheezy "switch" ads got to you huh? "leap" ??? I think its more like a "Dive". Good luck, coz you'll need it Actually I can never understand some mac users, they always tell me stuff like "its an experience" and "it just make sense" but can't tell me which specific task that can be done on mac can't be done more efficiently on the PC. Well, maybe for some people, two whole buttons on a mouse are too complex and confusing Hey, its all in good humour ok? I've touched powerbooks, they are very well constructed machines with quality aluminium finish. Good luck!

By Sbpnoi112 (Sbpnoi112) on Thursday, June 17, 2004 - 02:13 pm: Edit

i just bought the ibook summer special from the scholar's workstation because i've always wanted an apple and it was the only one i could afford (i'd much rather have a powerbook...maybe when i have more money).

I like it - its lightweight, and the battery life is awesome. For macs, you're not supposed to turn it off unless its going to be off for a day or so, just put it in sleep mode. Unlike pcs, the sleep mode is instant on and doesn't drain the battery. I left it in sleep overnight and lost only about a minute of battery life. What pc can get you 5 hrs of battery life standard? (its for serious...internet browsing and word processing - i did it for 5 hrs on one battery)

in terms of processing power, the only real benchmark i had was itunes audio encoding, and its as fast as my p4 2.4 ghz. sure, play it off to mac program operability with specified hardware, but i think that says something about running at 1ghz.

i have detested all pc's since i realized that mac's don't crash...i had about 8 browser windows open as well as 5 aim...no problem....my pc has a hard time catching up.

as for input devices, i have this wireless mouse with a windows xp logo on it...all my anti-mac adversaires claimed it won't work...but it did...i have yet to find a device that will not work with my mac

for wireless internet (airport extereme)...i tried it out at the end of the first day of calso in unit 3...its pretty slow...but was fine for simple browsing. i plan to buy a router to hook up in the dorm so i can have fast wireless.

all in all, i should've purchased the powerbook (it has a line-in input (for musical creation)) but i'll be doing mad upgrades to this one (new hard drive)...all my friends and family with pc laptops always got problems...im straight

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Thursday, June 17, 2004 - 04:23 pm: Edit

Ok, lets take this point by point.

** its lightweight **
No its not, the lightest ibook is the 12inch model which is 4.9 pounds. I can list half a dozen PC laptop models which wieghs less than that.

Toshiba Portege R100 2.4 lb
IBM ThinkPad X40 2.7 lb
IBM Think pad X31 3.66 lb
Sony Vaio TR3 3.1 lb
Fujitsu Lifebook P5020 3.7 lb
Toshiba Portege M20 4.2 lb


** the battery life is awesome ***
Mac have good batteries, but they are not ahead of the PC. To debunk some of the myth, look at the DVD playing test on an Ibook conducted by CNET
http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardware/notebooks/0,39001742,39017140p,00.htm

it lasted 2.4 hours in the DVD test, which is ok but definately not "awesome", in comparison, my friend's Thinkpad X31 can play the whole Lord of the rings: ROTK without a few minutes of battery to spare.

** Unlike pcs, the sleep mode is instant on and doesn't drain the battery **

well, the sleep mode turns off components like your CPU and harddisk but some of the core logic on the motherboard are still powered, so yes it does drain battery, however little. PCs have standby/hibernate mode too, it takes about 3-4 seconds for my laptop to enter the standby mode, so its pretty instant. It does take about 10 seconds to recover from standby mode though, I don't know if thats the case with the mac. And yes, a PC laptop can last days in hibernate mode too.

*** in terms of processing power, the only real benchmark i had was itunes audio encoding ***

itunes is not a fair benchmark, its optimized for the Altivec units ( vector units ) on the G4 processor but at the same time not optimized for the SSE2 on your pentium 4. For some fair and neutral benchmark figures, I suggest you look here.

http://barefeats.com/al15b.html

As you can see, a Centrino clocked at 1.3ghz is on average around 40% faster than a G4 clocked at 1.33 ghz. Now why is this so, read on.

Lets look at some of the other components in the computer besides the processor. The ibook has a 133 mhz Frontside bus, Powerbook has 167 mhz frontside bus. Centrinos have a 400 mhz frontside bus.

ibook and powerbook uses 266 mhz DDR ram while Most Centrino notebooks use 333 mhz DDR ram.

ibook and powerbook comes configured with a 4200 rpm harddrive, while you can purchase your centrino with a 5400 rpm or even 7200 rpm harddrive.

As you can see, the above hardware components are directly comparable and often the mac and PC share the same hardware.

The only saving grace for the ibook and powerbook is the fact that they come preconfigured with a Mobility Radeon 9200 or Geforce FX 5200. But you can get a PC laptop in the same weight class with those graphic card too!

*** i have detested all pc's since i realized that mac's don't crash ***

Macs DO crash. The latest Panther OS is a big step in terms of stability, but I'd say that its on par with XP in terms of stability. I also ran windows server 2003 before and I have to say that its a rock-stable OS and its very very fast too. And not all PC users use windows, ever tried Linux or BSD? They are stable and rock-solid OS. I'm writing this from my desktop which is running Gentoo linux and it rarely crashes.

As for your experience with your slow PC, I think your PC is either really badly configured; running windows 98; doesn't have the right drivers installed; have too much junk in it running and needs a reinstall. When I reach Cal, you can call me up and I'll take a look at it for you

*** as for input devices ***

yes, I'm aware of the fact that even 2 or 3 buttoned mouse works on the mac. You can even congfigure it to act as the right click. But the notebook itself only has one button on the touchpad and when you are going mobile, using your laptop on trains, you are stuck with one button.

*** im straight ***

So am I! but I use PCs! Please note that I'm not anti-mac or anything like that, I have worked with Macs and PCs before and I just want to point out some fallacies in your post and bring about an educated discussion.

By Sbpnoi112 (Sbpnoi112) on Thursday, June 17, 2004 - 11:38 pm: Edit

deng dood...didn't really mean for anyone to blow up on my thread and all but i was just expressing an opinion...nerd!

my last post didn't go through...so lemme just break it down

i bought a mac. i like it. its really neat. it does what i want it to do better than a pc can. i like pcs. i build them. i sell them. i have happy customers. when their computers get slow, i clean them out and they're happy again. i'm just happier with a mac. it looks really rad...and it does what i want it to do, better than the pc in my price range would.

thats all...and i was just joking about the nerd thing...you just doing your thing.

By Thekgb (Thekgb) on Friday, June 18, 2004 - 02:32 am: Edit

No problem, I'm a nerd, thats why I'm going Berkeley to do EECS, I'm proud of it.. hehe..

By Lame (Lame) on Friday, June 18, 2004 - 06:19 am: Edit

Cnet.com

By Eddd (Eddd) on Saturday, June 19, 2004 - 02:55 pm: Edit

what do you guys think about the sony vaio z1va, ibm r50, and ibm t40 series?

By Fenix_Three (Fenix_Three) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 04:46 pm: Edit

Triple in unit 1 too so I'll be working on a laptop in the library most of the time. Mine's an iBook G4 (12", I like smaller screens). I'm not that comp literate and I don't really care for speed because the only things I'll be doing is basic typing, music, movies, etc. Not engineering major or anything too computer intensive. My bf is obsessed with Macs and he kind of persuaded me to get it. I don't really see a downside to them (expensive a little, but oh so pretty). So, yeah. That's about it. I think it'll work for me. And please don't go saying how it's inadequate, it might be for you but I'm completely fine with it.

By Coolmodee (Coolmodee) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 08:15 pm: Edit

Do we get a discount or are we eligible for Financial aid for a computer. My cousin who will be a freshman at Davis says they can get a discount and up to $1900 for a laptop or desktop. What do we get?

By Davejohnson (Davejohnson) on Monday, June 28, 2004 - 08:18 pm: Edit

i remember hearing at CalSO that an extra ~$2000 was available in aid for comp. purchases

By Remindergto (Remindergto) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 01:09 pm: Edit

What? Elaborate.

By Coolmodee (Coolmodee) on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 06:20 pm: Edit

Where do we get it and how can we sign up. I haven't been to Calso and I will not be going to the summer one because I am Fall Extension. So anyone know where to go and apply for it?

By Pyz247 (Pyz247) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 01:12 am: Edit

I also have a problem deciding between which type of notebook to buy. After some considerable research, I've narrowed it down to two computers:

The first one is a
Battalion 101 E-turbo Series [2] $1,911.00
Case ( Battalion-101 E-Turbo Series 15.0" SXGA+ 1400x1050 LCD TFT Notebook w/Li-
Ion Battery, Universal AC Power Adapter Original Metallic Silver/Black 2-Tone
Color )
Processor ( Intel® Centrino Mobile 1.7GHz CPU with 1M Cache )
Memory ( 1024MB [512MB x2] DDR-333 PC-2700 [Notebook Memory] Kingston )
Video Card ( Mobility 128MB ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 256-bit 3D Video )
Hard Drive ( 60 GB 7200rpm ATA-100 Super Slim Notebook Hard Drive )
CD-RW/DVD-RW Drive ( 4x DVD+R/RW & 16X CD-RW Combo Drive [E-Series] )
Sound Card ( 3D Wave Stereo Sound Onboard )
Fax Modem ( Build-in 56K V.90 Fax Modem [Notebook] )
Network Card ( Build-in 10/100 Network LAN [Notebook] )
Mouse ( None )
Flash Media Reader/Writer ( Build-in 3-in-i Media Card Reader/Writer [Notebook]
)
USB Port ( Build-in 3x USB 2.0 Ports [Notebook] )
IEEE-1394 Fire Wire Card ( Build-in 1x IEEE-1394 Firewire Port [Notebook] )
TV Tuner ( None )
Video Camera ( None )
Headset ( None )
Wireless Network Adapter ( Wireless LAN Wi-Fi 802.11g 54Mbps Mini-PCI Module )
Operation System ( MS Windows XP Home Edition )
Warranty ( Warranty Service Standard 1-Year Limited Warranty + 1-Year i-Care
Deluxe 24/7 Phone Support )
Rush Service ( Rush Service Fee (not shipping fee) No Rush, Ship Out in 5~10
Business Days )

and the second one is a
Battalion 101 S-Turbo Series [1] $1,992.00
Case ( Battalion-101 S-Turbo Series 15.4" 16:10 Wide Screen WXGA 1280x800 LCD
TFT Notebook w/Li-Ion Battery, Universal AC Power Adapter, Deluxe Carrying Case
Original Metallic Silver Color )
Processor ( Mobile AMD® Athlon-64 3200+ CPU )
Memory ( 1024MB [512MB x2] DDR-333 PC-2700 [Notebook Memory] Kingston )
Video Card ( Mobility 128MB ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 256-bit 3D Video )
Hard Drive ( 60 GB 7200rpm ATA-100 Super Slim Notebook Hard Drive )
CD-RW/DVD-RW Drive ( 4x DVD+R/RW & 16X CD-RW Combo Drive [S-Series] )
Sound Card ( 3D Wave Stereo Sound Onboard )
Fax Modem ( Build-in 56K V.90 Fax Modem [Notebook] )
Network Card ( Build-in 10/100 Network LAN [Notebook] )
Mouse ( None )
Flash Media Reader/Writer ( Build-in 3-in-i Media Card Reader/Writer [Notebook]
)
USB Port ( Build-in 3x USB 2.0 Ports [Notebook] )
IEEE-1394 Fire Wire Card ( Build-in 1x IEEE-1394 Firewire Port [Notebook] )
TV Tuner ( None )
Video Camera ( None )
Headset ( None )
Wireless Network Adapter ( [FREE] Wireless LAN Wi-Fi 802.11g 54Mbps Mini-PCI
Module )
Operation System ( MS Windows XP Home Edition )
Warranty ( Warranty Service Standard 1-Year Limited Warranty + 1-Year i-Care
Deluxe 24/7 Phone Support )
Rush Service ( Rush Service Fee (not shipping fee) No Rush, Ship Out in 5~10
Business Days )

As you can see, the two computers are very similar except one has an AMD64 3200+ athlon CPU and a 15.4 inch screen, and the other has an Intel Centrino 1.7 gHz processor. The AMD notebook is marginally more expensive, but has 64 bit technology (have no idea how useful that's going to be), while the Intel Centrino would have a longer battery life. As for speed, I have no idea how fast an AMD64 3200+ athlon is, but I know that the Centrino is 1.4-1.7 times the gHz. Anyways, I would appreciate a reply. Thanks!