Missy and I have a craaaaazy old Mac laptop.

We decided that it's time for a new one, so we're in the market.

But neither of us know what current standards are for a good one.

Oh, I should point out that we're looking for a PC - and before you jump down our throats, it's strictly for price, we still love Macs

So let the suggestions fly - I know you guys have some.

Thanks.

It always helps to list what you want performance-wise:

- Are you planning to process high resolution graphics and video?
-Will you be using software that is memory intensive?
-Will you be installing a lot of applications (this will give you some idea of how large you want your hard-disk to be)
-What operating system do you plan to use? 2007 or Vista?

If you are working with large files and software that uses a lot of RAM to process your work, this will give you some measure of how much RAM you'll need.

Storage space is dirt cheap these days, you can buy a very reliable terrabyte external hard-disk (instant plugin to your laptop and use) from $100-150.

I tend to use lots of software that require some intensive processing and manipulation of some huge files (averaging a gigabyte and more). I find it very convenient to have 3-5 applications open at once, so I can start work with one software and finish the task using several other applications later on down the line.

If you can, go for the maximum amount of RAM for your laptop (2 GB at the very least, 4GB will give you a machine that will last for quite some time). Good luck with the hunt

Is there any advantage to Vista? I am thinking of getting a new PC too, but I am hesitating because almost all of them have Vista installed and I still use Windows XP. Any suggestions; insights?

Sorry to add more questions, but I thought this might help to have this answered too.

first facebook & now this??? i don't know you anymore. where's the old skylar? next you'll be listening to kenny chesney or something and drinking chai lattes.

I can't use Vista, as it causes problems with some of my software. There are other people who say they have no problems with it. I'm running 2003 and 2007. I think you can request a specific operating system, if you call in to order/customize your PC with a reputable vendor.

If there were improvements made in Vista, I'm at a loss as to what they are. A lot of the noticeable changes appear to be cosmetic- the sidebar and navigation interfaces. I spent a half-hour turning off all of the desktop widgets that I could find.

Supposedly Vista is more secure than XP (and you get Windows Defender- a basic AV software).

As Mr. H mentioned, I also had a lot of my software become unusable after migrating over to Vista. In some cases, it was a version problem (i.e., my software was outdated and not caught within the scope of Vista-compatible versions) and in other cases it was a free program not yet updated for Vista use. On the whole, I feel that I lost a lot of functionality when I migrated from XP to Vista and without much in return.

if you're starting from nothing, Vista + a lot of RAM (4GB at least for 64bit Vista) is fine. it really depends on what you want to do with the laptop. i don't really know if they even sell any with XP anymore. i got to try the new Windows OS with IE8 and i have to say, it ran much better on the same spec machine than Vista does. really, the best thing to do is say what you want to use the laptop for. me personally, the minimum i would get is 4GB if i can only get a Vista laptop for photoshop. as Mr. Humphries said, storage is cheap with USB+external HD. i've gone from a desktop using Vista-64 with 4GB to Vista-32 with 512MB (work desktops). Do not skimp on the RAM. You will hate your laptop if you do....even if all you do is word processing and surfing. i have found the sidebar to be somewhat useful. having the calendar and a clock in plain sight is nice. the only other 2 things i have on sidebar is weather, and currency exchange rate (USD to JPY...or course). other than that, there really is no advantage to Vista over XP. i'm sure there are a couple people here that can list them...things like live search maybe, but i don't really see it.

I switched to a PC laptop (and still kept my macbook as well) for a few reasons about two months ago and I'm happy with my choice. It was economical as well. Like others have mentioned, RAM and hard drive are probably most important for me, and also in this case video card.

My PC is an MSI, and it is a decent machine for what I paid for it which was around $800. It has the same specs as a new Macbook Pro btw.

Ryan has an MSI Wind which is their netbook and that little machine runs OSX on it with no issues whatsoever. Not that it's of interest, but it also churns through regular World of Warcraft with no difficulty. The netbooks are around $300-400.

Mac can burn in hell as far as I'm concerned and yes, I am a graphic designer who is going against the book of Jobs. All of the Macs I've ever used over the years all crash, crash, crash...something the PC's I've had on my own never did....

Laptop wise you're better bet is to figure out what your need is.

The update for Windows will be out soon = Windows 7. From what I've been hearing this thing is what VIsta should have been so that would be the first step. Honestly, I've never really had any issues with Vista. I run very clean, cracked software - and all heavy duty graphics / motion / video editing software. I am careful about installing odd apps and I refuse to do anything via P2P - that's for people who don't know of better ways of getting software.

Are you getting the laptop for just surfing the web and non-graphical usage? Gaming? Graphics / video? Will you take it out of the apartment or is it a stay-at-home laptop?

From that point you can determine your need. The type of laptop you look at should really fit your need then your budget

Also, many, many computer manufacturers offer financing. I personally went with a Sony Vaio - and love it. I've had Toshibas, and an HP but this one was totally juiced out and had 24 months no interest financing. This 17" bad boy has HDMI, Blu-Ray burner, HD Monitor, built in camera, Bluetooth, tons of USB, video in and out, etc. Ran about $1500 and well worth every penny especially while doing freelance work.

On the opposite end, we dumped my girlfriend's Mac "Powerbook" and went with an Asus EEEPC "netbook". This thing is small, sweet and ultra-portable....for $300. This covers our out-of-house needs along with around the house web surfing and more lower-end needs, although it did handle Adobe CS3 Creative Suite without any issues.

What I normally do when checking out new hardware is to start with brands I like then do some research. Look up the model number and then do a google search for reviews on the computer. I rely on New Egg, Amazon, CNET and a few others for reviews, then balance it out with a dose of common sense. Also, if you can go check the laptop out then do so. Come into the city and hit up B&H Photo, JR and, my fav, Sony Style Store on 5th ave. This was how I decided upon which netbook to buy and I literally bought it the day I checked it out.

Sony Style

Asus EEE PC

New Egg

B&H Photo

JR

Good Luck!

the ASUS eeepc is also a great netbook too!
we had one of those until the wind came out...

As an addition, I don't really have any beefs with Vista. I don't use it for more than basic functionality and a game or two, but it's been ok to me so far.

I bought my laptop with Vista on it and had them load XP on it for me.

The guy told me that's what most folks are doing .

Sorry guys, I should have mentioned what we'd use it for.

Mostly it will be for entertainment stuff - internet, watching movies, taking on vacation to check email, bank accounts, etc.

If I could use it for some light design work, it would be nice, but I'm not interested in spending a ton of more money to make it some crazy powerful machine because that would not be the main use. But if I could possibly run Illustrator or Photoshop for minor adjustments to stuff that would be great.

Mainly I'm looking for it to be small, lighter, and portable, not looking for a giant widescreen thing. Decent battery life would be nice too.

I plan on taking it back and forth to work so I can do some work and writing on my lunch breaks and things like that.

oh and I mainly just don't know what a good processor is. I'm not really familiar with notebook/laptop processors.

I'd be willing to spend the money for a good processor and a decent amount of memory, because I'd like to make the laptop last as long as I can.

My laptop is older than kids who know how to use laptops.

Seriously. Its 9 this year!

Processor-wise...two things I stay away from are Celeron and AMD. Celeron = way low end and not good for more than doing powerpoint. AMD...well, AMD is in the shithouse and probably won't be around by the end of this year. Or possibly even Q2...

You should also look at how much RAM you can put in and also whether there's a graphics card or if the graphics processor is "on board" i.e. right on the motherboard. Better to have something separate than fixed.

RAM-wise you can probably go up to 4GB these days if not more - and remember that RAM is cheap - don't add it as part of a bundle, take the 2 minutes to do it yourself and save a wad.

To tell you the truth, what you described = a netbook. The 10" version I have only weighs 3lbs, is around 8x10" and about 3/4" thick. This baby has a port to hook up a monitor so no worries about not having more screen space if you need it. Right now...the netbooks don't have a built-in DVD drive, although Asus is releasing one shortly. You can easily pick up an external DVD drive / burner for next to nothing and hook it up through a USB port.

I actually really want one of these, but it's the no on board drive that's the issue for me. Honestly, if they had a DVD player in there, there would be no question.

I know it's very easy to hook it up, but that means having to buy an additional external DVD drive and lugging that around as well.

If I want to watch a movie on a plane, or take it with me on vacation, that seems like an annoying extra little thing.

But it's actually what I started initially looking at.

Perhaps I'll look into this Asus one. Are they a reliable company? I've never heard of them.

This is what you don't need:
http://www.falcon-nw.com/
Fragbook DRX will replace any desktop and carries a hefty price tag to match (call it a downpayment on a luxury sedan)

Dell has a very reputable Customer Service department in case you ever need them. Dell is also the manufacturer of choice for the company I work for. Desktop, laptop, monitor...just about everything is Dell. I know a couple of people that use ASUS and MSI and love them.
I'd say Core2Duo with at least 3GB of RAM will be fine for you guys...but spend a little more and go with 4GB of RAM.

You know...even though I don't have a drive with mine I haven't had any problems. When I was upgrading my PD3 hard drive I bought an external drive from New Egg for $50.

Have you ever heard of Daemon Tools? This is a CD / DVD / Blu-Ray drive emulator. Go with the Lite version - that will work wonders for ya. So what's it good for? Well, if you rip a DVD and create an ISO file then you can "mount" the DVD as if you had a regular DVD drive. Software / Movies will run as if you had a regular drive, which is handy for cracked software. This was how I was able to install the various Adobe products

As for a few things to do with a Netbook, get these apps:

Rocket Dock = SUPER handy especially with the smaller screen

Microsoft XP Toys = get the ClearType Tuner - it is essential! The fonts on the computer will be much crisper. Some of the other add-ons are great too.

VLC Media Player = awesome small, lite player that works really well.

Spybot Search & Destroy = I love this free app. LOVE. This baby not only does an amazing job of blocking malware, spyware and other internet-based problems but does a KILLER job sniffing out existing bad things on your computer. Best of all? It's free and they update the list of bad stuff every few days.

Oh yeah, download the new FireFox and look for compact themes for the browser - this makes a difference when you can eliminate a few pixels here and there

Note: with any of the free apps you need to be careful when installing. sometimes they have a screen that will install the annoying Yahoo toolbar - just deselect this as you are installing.

I have a similar program on my desktop at home where I can mount ISOs, like a virtual drive.

I'm just being lazy. I know that it's totally possible in this day and age to put movies on a thumb drive, ipod, etc. and have them be totally portable.

I just think it would be awesome to grab a DVD off the shelf in the morning and go with it.

What I really want this thing for is the ability to do my writing on lunch/on the go, so if I could run a word processor, be able to check the internet, and watch movies on it I would be golden.

It would just be nice not to have to rip and pre-load all the movies. I have lots and lots of them.

I could see that...although in this day and age of Newsgroup downloads I don't think I've bought anything in a while. Ditto for the WiFi

The other thing I forgot to mention was OpenOffice. This is [b]free, very small footprint (15mb or so) and best of all....it's a fantastic emulation of Microsoft Office! You can open and save as various Microsoft formats so no need to use Office.

This is what I picked up, but in Black. The RAM upgrade is around $20 and takes 2 minutes to install. Upgrading the hard drive is also easy

To tell you the truth - if I had waited a week then I would have picked up the HE, which is the next step up -- and at only a few bucks more. Check it out and read the reviews.

I'm in the minority that still wants to own physical copies of movies

I just made my first purchase off of iTunes and I'm not a fan of paying for electronic copies. I don't buy movies because I don't re-watch them often enough, but I completely understand where you're coming from. I never would have DLed an album from iTunes, but I got a gift card last x-mas and finally put it to use since I don't have any expendable income any longer.
Boo to electronic downloads.

also know a few people that bought from http://ibuypower.com/ and have been happy with their purchase. they're gaming machines but they'll run apps like photoshop and illustrator just fine. plus you won't get a lot of that bloat-ware that you would with a Dell, HP, Sony, or other brand names. you will need your own anti-virus.

Do you have a budget in mind? maybe I missed it..

I sell IT equipment as part of my job and am happy to advise...yes...even if you aren't buying a laptop from my company
I'll look tomorrow to see if we have anything that I can stand behind/recommend..

You can get some good deals from Lenovo right now. I recently priced out a notebook for around $1100 so I'm sure you can get something for a lot less (that was for one of their higher end models). They email me discount coupons all the time so I could forward those on if you are interested.

Just from what you have described as your uses for the notebook I would recommend something like an IBM/Lenovo T60. You can pick one up on eBay in the $500~ (give or take 100 or so) and it would do everything you want more than well. One key is to just boost the RAM right away if it doesn't have 2GB..XP should be fine...I wouldn't bother with Vista for now..it's a resource hog.

_Ethan

Missy, that photo you posted is really funny because we used to have him on my companies website...must be a popular stock photo.