Laptop World

IBM-Lenovo Thinkpad Transfer complete

Well, it seems the venerable Thinkpad, that workhorse of many a corporate soldier, has finished moving over to its new home at Lenovo. The website, although still accessible through www.thinkpad.com, just redirects you to the Lenovo site. One quick comment: The thinkpad.com site is probably the blandest, most boring, and lame site for a gazillion-dollar company I have ever seen. Yes, the sole purpose of its existence is to redirect you, but at least they could have taken out the color palette for a spin because black and white just doesn't cut it anymore.

What does everyone think about the Lenovo deal? I know I'm a bit late to comment on the merger, but the dust has settled now and I think it's as good a time as any to think about the future of the Thinkpad machine. Will it change? Will it get worse? Better? More colorful? Discuss.

posted by daniel @ 7:26 AM 2 comments

Bought a new laptop today

Today i bought a new HP zd8000 laptop. It was, by far, the cheapest option of all the manufacturers that I looked at. My process was this: write down a 'wanted' configuration, plug it in on all the websites that allow customization of the machine, then compare prices. The configuration was:

• 3.0 - 3.4Ghz Pentium IV
• 60+ Gb HD (Hopefully 7,200rpm, but I wasn't going to cry if I got a 5,400 one)
• 128+ mb video card
• 1 Gb RAM
• 17" screen
• integrated wireless card

I was content with getting whatever the manufacturer gave me for the rest. In Dell, this configuration cost around 2,500$. Alienware, Gateway, Acer, Sony and Toshiba pretty much around the same or 300-500$ more. In HP, this configuration (with an 80Gb HD and 256mb ATI Radeon) cost me 1,650$. The choice was obvious. Plus, the machine is gorgeous (compared to my old Alienware...) All I'm saying is that, if you're looking for a powerful desktop-replacement machine, this HP zd8000 is a really interesting buy.

posted by daniel @ 7:14 AM 0 comments

Laptops for traveling

From the article by notebookreview: "A recent survey of U.S. adult computer users, commissioned by Intel Corporation and conducted by Harris Interactive, reveals that 34 percent of respondents or their families have taken a laptop PC with them on vacation and half (51 percent) of all respondents are likely to take a laptop PC on a future vacation. Of all those that took a laptop on vacation, here are the top uses:
Checking personal e-mail (72%)
Enjoying entertainment such as movies, music and games (56%)
Gathering trip information online (45%)
Checking and sending work related email (43%)." Full article here.

The fact that half of all respondents to the survey are planning to take a laptop on their next vacation should be proof enough that laptops have solidified their place as 'another one' of the many electronic devices we carry with us when we travel. In my view, this has a couple of important implications: battery life and weight.

I used to have an Alienware Area-51 laptop (before the on-board ATI vid card expired, but that's a story for another day) and the thing was heavy. A 10 pound desktop-replacement laptop is just not really suitable for the teensy trays in an airplane's tourist section. But the point is moot, since the battery died two hours into the flight after a full night's charging. This specific trip lasted 10 hours, so the whole argument about 'laptops are a good thing to carry when traveling' to "Enjoy entertainment such as movies, music and games (56%)" is crap. Yes, I understand that Alienwares are not really the best suited for battery-operated laptop use, but the fact that most manufacturers gloat about a '3.5hour' battery life should prove my point. It just so happens that the battery is the single heaviest component of a laptop, which just means that a) all fingers point to the batteries and b) the work for engineers is cut out in front of them.

What do you think? What are your experiences with laptop batteries while traveling?

posted by daniel @ 6:23 AM 0 comments

Laptop World Is Born

This is the first post of what will hopefully be a very informative blog about laptop computers. My plan is to write about the latest developments on laptop and notebook computers, their users, and the companies that make them. I want to emphasize that the posts I write are really meant to be a starter for discussions on the topic, so I encourage anyone and everyone that likes a post or has comments to make about it to please go ahead and write. That way we can all learn from each other's experiences and information.

posted by daniel @ 6:12 AM 0 comments