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Laptop Dilemma

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by tig2

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Last November the great guy I live with bought me a beautiful HP laptop for Christmas. My Dell was dying a slow lingering death and I was in need.

Late last month the DVD drive bit the dust. It simply doesn't work no more. So I bought an external DVD drive and put fixing the internal on the list of things to do.

Then the wireless died. Well cr@p!

At this point the lappie is a beautiful door stop. I am back to using my (very) old Dell because I don't trust the HP as far as I can throw it- I have had to completely re-image the thing like 4 times in the (less than a)year that I have had it.

So the dilemma part?

I got the HP when I did so that I would have XP and not Vista. I have made the decision that I would not move to Vista until it had stabilised, if ever. I still think that to be the right choice. Unfortunately, you can't buy an Intel based lappie without getting Vista on it.

Unless you go Mac.

I am not certain of the right thing here for me. Do I suck it up and get a Vista lappie? Or do I take an abrupt left turn and go Mac? I am well familiar with OS X and Unix so the Mac does not present a learning curve for me.

What would you do?

Whatever I get will have a Linux partition on it...

Edit to correct spelling. Yep, folks- I'm aging badly here...

16 replies

by semperfiwm

Being of *NIX mind, MAC is Linux so you only have to go as far as opening a terminal session from the MAC gui to go there. It is now Intel too so you won't feel so far out there.

by tig2

I am really undecided. I know that the power of the terminal in the Mac GUI is significantly better than the pseudo DOS command window in XP. My guess is that I am just fighting against the change in the GUI in general.

Open Office is available for the Mac. Don't even have to change the applications that I use routinely. That is a real plus to me.

by danlm

They are talking about service patch 1 being released in early 2008 for vista. So, if you can hold out that long because you feel more comfratable with MS then try to wait.

I know people THAT LOVE their mac books. I don't know, I have never owned one.

I want a lap top, but I am holding out until service pack 1 is released. I have some serious irks right now with MS.... But.... I use applications that only come on MS, and I'm not ready to lose these applications...

Just some food for thought tigger.

Dan

by tig2

I was not aware that there was an intent to release SP1 for Vista quite so soon.

My stepson has a Mac book and loves it. We are actually planning to get him a new one for Christmas- his is five years old or so and he could really use a new computer. It would allow him to use his current one specifically for his photography.

I'm looking now at the applications that I use on a daily or regular basis. I think that they are all available for both platforms but you make a really good point about making sure. If any of them are Windows only, I had better know that before I go down the Mac path.

Thanks, Dan. You have given me new things to think about!

by w2ktechman

it is under a year old, have HP replace it or fix it. Even if you do not plan to make it a primary unit, it is the principle of the thing. If they send out crappy quality products, they should be correcting the issue.
I have several HP units with very few problems, that are over a year old. Although I will say that their newest business class notebook is a large POS, and I cannot believe that we were suckered into these crappy things. (6910 notebook -- STAY AWAY FROM IT).

Anyway, back to point, have it fixed or replaced since it is under warranty.

As for a new unit, I know nothing of Macs so I cannot help there. Others may be able to steer you better on this. As for Vista, I still see a lot of problems with it. As stated in other posts, our company was supposed to move over to it back in march/april 07, since then there have been several 'extensions' to it, and now they are looking at april/may 08. Hmmm, I wonder why the developers cannot get it to function or behave well???

by jaqui

just put linux on it and get rid of the ms malware completely.
even on the Dell and HP you have, just go linux.
[ fwiw, I currently have a dell inspiron 300 and inspiron 4000 running linux just fine, including pcmcia wireless cards. ]

by naughtymonkey

with XP yesterday and will be ordering an HP next week for a friend with XP. The HP is coming from CDW though but is a brand new model. You can get XP.

That being said, I am currently running a Compaq nx7400. I have a 250 GB drive so I can boot XP, Vista, Ubuntu Feisty, and will sonn be adding Mandriva (now that I finally got it downloaded), PCLOS, and Gutsy.

Vista runs fine on mine and I have had no issues. I also run OO, The Gimp, Audacity, and a few other OSS. I had to upgrade Nero and I need to upgrade Acronis, but other than that it is okay. I blame Nero and Acronis for their issues and no patch to fix it. I sure you will have your own program incompatibilities.

Compaq nx7400 - T5600 Core2 Duo - 2 GB RAM

by absolutely

I wasn't sure if this old blog was accurate

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=1216

so I checked hp.com

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/cto.do

This isn't their fastest model, but it is an Intel chip, up to CoreDuo 2, 1.73GHz, and default config is XP.

But if I was looking for a new system, and had some good reason to want it to run Windows XP, I'd pay more for a MacBook, even if its "tech specs" had smaller numbers in capacity and speed and larger ones in access time. None of that matters if it doesn't REALLY work as advertised, for at least the industry standard 4-year amortization period. I expect things to wear out -- eventually. But malfunctions in the first year are just so ... unprofessional.

by w2ktechman

yet another new OS. Is this true? Or is it just an update (paid for)?

I heard it both ways, but also that if you bought an Apple system recently, the cost was only like $10 instead of $110

by w2ktechman

However, I am not sure I like the desktop feature too much. However, I bet it is easy to get used to.

by techexec2

.
First: Your current HP laptop should still be under warranty. So, you should get HP to fix both the broken DVD and the broken wireless. If there is something else wrong that caused the 4 system re-images, get them to fix that as well (e.g. motherboard, memory, HDD). You paid a lot for that laptop. You really should hold HP's feet to the fire. Those telephone pretexting bastards! :^0

Second: Avoiding Vista is easy right now if you know where to look. You CAN buy great laptops equipped with Windows XP, you just won't find them in the retail stores. Check out the major maker's websites and look for business laptops, not home machines. I prefer ThinkPad laptops. Nearly all of Lenovo's ThinkPads can be had with Windows XP, including the top-of-the-line ThinkPad T61.

Third: Apple MacBooks are GREAT laptops that run Windows XP in a VM very well. This is a good option, but they are REALLY overpriced (just like they have always been). The 15.4" MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz costs 38% more than a similarly-equipped top-of-the-line ThinkPad T61 with Vista Ultimate (about $700 more). If you bump the RAM to 4GB and HDD up, the MacBook will cost $1000 more than the comparable ThinkPad. Anybody who claims that Apple is not reaming customers is either uninformed or dishonest. But, if I'm going to get reamed, I would prefer it to be by a MacBook. :^0 I plan to buy one when I retire my current ThinkPad running XP.

Note: I currently run Windows XP in VMware on my Kubuntu desktop (fast hardware, big RAM). Excellent and highly recommended. The only negative I have found is digital video is a little choppy in Windows XP on VMware (especially QuickTime, Flash to a lesser extent). This is no surprise of course. All normal apps are completely fine and quite snappy.

Anyway, you've got good options that don't include Vista if you want.

by dumphrey

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/winxp_inspnnb?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=anavml
On several home/SOHO models. And you can get XP as an option on any of the latitude models of laptop. In many cases, you can order a laptop with Vista business, and dell will send you an XP disk to install using the open business license...a call to a customer support or you local Dell rep can clarify this bit.
And on the Lenovo side, nearly all of their models are available with XP pro, with the bonus of an almost 100% Linux compatibility.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/na/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:expandcategory?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087¤t-category-id=83C6BB3C3335400EB7DF1011B7015A00

Either way, you should be able to get a solid notebook with XP pro, vista upgrade ready, and Linux compatibility. Dell and Lenovo are both more expensive then HP, but I see it as money well spent.

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