buying new laptops

I have had decent luck with an HP Pavillion Ze4300 which lasted me probably 5 years, quite durable. When the time came I too went with the Lenovo T60, core2duo, 4G ram, 100G Hd, now running a tweaked version of VIsta ultimate and VERY happy.

I don't think any laptop will have the "best" graphics card but over all this T60 is a real work horse and physically very durable and that is also what alot of the reviews talked about as well....very well built physically and for a work, mobile environment as opposed to a more office like environment that is important.

At the TV station where I work all the reporters have IBM Thinkpads and they are about 7 years old, some T43's I think and they are in the news cars all day, on the live trucks, on the floor, indoors, outdoors and reporters are overall rough with equipment and everyone of those laptops looks rough...but is alive and well and working fine and that played a part in my decision to go with a lenovo this time.


QUOTE=JamesBrown;631500]Alright, I don't want to recommend anything special but Lenovo/IBM has been mentioned so I figure I should let you know atleast of my experience.

I have a think pad T-60 running XP I have all of the robotics software on it, including 3d max, Autodesk, and Mplab. I also use Solid works and NX4, I never have any issues. My only complaint about Thinkpads is that they default to using ThinkVantage acess conections for networking which is extremely cumbersome to do alot of things with. However you can uninstall it and just use Windows acess connections instead.

I get bought the 9 cell battery to replace the normal 6 cell, since I am in class all day and need my laptop battery life was important to me. With the 9 cell I get about 5 hours with think pad default settings which is more than enough for using office and web browsing. When I use CAD or compile large amounts of code I put it on max performance which cuts the battery life down to about 3 hours.

Over all I love my laptop and would recommend a thinkpad if you are not planning to spring for a nice Mac Book Pro( they are amazing).

-James[/quote]