update 12/16/2007: A few months after this post was originally written, Brandy's parents ended-up getting an iMac at home, and getting her Dad a PowerBook to take on his assignment to Canada.
Brandy and I are trying to help her Dad find a good laptop. His budget is $1500-ish. He'll very likely use the Microsoft Office Suite, especially Excel. There are also good chances he's looking to get into digital photography and digital video, for family stuff. He's also very much a PC guy, and chances are he might require some PC-specific enterprise applications for his work, at some point, but I need to get more details.
We'll be trying to obtain a more refined set of requirements:
- 12" screen / 14" screen ?
- Bluetooth ?
- Microsoft Office ?
- DVD Burning ?
I really could use suggestions/advice on good PC laptops, let's start with two main parameters:
- $1500-ish
- durable
And let's see what features/software/horsepower remain available.
Om Malik had covered one of the Averatec laptops on his blog: The $999 3250.
8 comments:
I let Brandon know last night. He'd take a look at the specs here later today when he's up from his nap. ;-)
YOur comments are piled up here :)-
Peter: thanks :)
Om: yeah i'm still looking to hear feedback about durability in the PC laptop world, and not the "toughbooks" kind. heh. Many people have mentioned the IBM thinkpads are of good quality, indeed. But yeah as far as i know, iBooks just don't die. Brandy's had hers for over 2 years, I see much older ones being sold on eBay all the time. And Apple's latest lineup is looking very sweet.
From the call I had today, he actually seems open to getting a Mac. His main concern was being able to use Microsoft Office, and I was like, holy crap, that's it?, we've got that covered!. He seems also very interested in working with home videos, and pictures, and the whole iLife thang. I had impressed them a few times already with CDs and DVDs I'd made for them when I visited. Plus ... there's an iPhoto plug-in for flickr.com ... HOW FRICKIN' SWEET IS THAT HUH!?
I do want to see what the PC world has to offer though.
ilovelaptops: thanks for the info, will look it up. i subscribed to your feed btw.
Marc: Interesting perspective from someone who's invested in both platforms. thanks! Wow. cool blog too. subscribed!
Holy shit Marc, Those are impressive specs for a PC laptop. Does it mean it can burn DVDs?
The other thing that i find really appealing about the Mac platform is iSync. Windows just doesn't have that yet. Sure you can buy 3rd-party solutions such as intelliSync, but those fit a restricted set of systems. iSync is an open spec all device and software vendors can build to. And it comes with the OS. I've got mine set-up with the sony ericsson t610, a 3-year-old iPod, .Mac, and this powerbook.
I think it is of utmost importance for operating systems to have such sync'ing technology built-in, as well a strong Address Book/Contacts/Calendaring apps and APIs to interact with. If you leave it up to 3rd parties to develop disparate sync'ing APIs, it will be almost impossible for hardware vendors to figure out which sync'ing platform to support. I want many applications to tie-into Mac OS X's Address Book's API. And many already do. Anyway, That's the way to go. I'm rambling, and this should be the subject of another post.
Chris go with the iBook and Office X. He should have no difficulty making the switch. I have had very good luck with IBM Thinkpads as well but I love my my Mac for digital photography
Marc: DVD burning! Daaamn. I also like the media card reader, not an absolute requirement, but a most definitely nice touch. Very cool. thanks for the info! :)
MacBook pro from apple is the best laptop. It's the way to go they are super fast and loads instantly and ur chose of size. Mine was 1300 and it was the slowest one they had an it's legit!
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