Re: Laptop for graphics, writing and fun

["Edgar D' Souza" <edgar -dot- b -dot- dsouza -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 10:02 PM, Pinkham, Jim <Jim -dot- Pinkham -at- voith -dot- com> wrote:
> Good points, all, Ed.

Thanks, Jim... I've been backing and filling on this issue for quite
some time and so have mentally amassed a minimum set of specs for my
laptop. Now I just have to get the go-ahead from my checkbook ;-)

> Re: battery -- some notebooks do come with 8-cell standard; several come
> with 12-cell optional.

Haven't seen any of those in Dell ranges - I think they are in Lenovo
ThinkPad series, and perhaps some other manufacturers.
I more or less discarded everyone but Dell early on in my thinking,
for two major reasons:

- Dell offers more configurability on the laptop specs as well as
warranty; other manufacturers by and large seem to have a "this is
what we have; take it... or not" kind of attitude. The models that
interested me had only a 1-year warranty, and the ones with 3-year
warranties didn't interest me, spec-wise.

- I pulled down some of the canned configs of other laptop vendors and
put them in a spreadsheet, and configured equivalent Dell models. Dell
won on the "bang for your buck" front every time. The ThinkPad series
was renowned for ruggedness, reliability and excellent build quality
when it was IBM doing the manufacturing; that still tends to be the
case, with a very few exceptions, with Lenovo - but they are, I feel,
still charging way too much for their laptops. Still, for someone that
needs a rock-solid reliable laptop, the ThinkPad series is always good
to consider!

> Re: hard drive protection -- some notebooks include an accelerometer that
> locks the hard drive if motion is detected that indicates the unit is
> starting to fall. I've heard, but cannot verify, that some Toshiba units
> have an accelerometer that detects in two dimensions; I know there are HP
> notebooks that have what they call "ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection,"
> where the motion detection is even more sophisticated. The point, of course,
> is protecting the user against data loss if the notebook falls off the table
> or slips on the ice. The extended warranty may complement this: Just because
> your data is protected does not mean your computer is undamaged and ready to
> roll.

Oh, yes - ThinkPads have had those for so long that there are
open-source apps out there to enable use of the ThinkPad
accelerometers for human interface purposes... like mentioned at
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-thinkpad/index.html
Regards,
Ed.

-- 
Edgar D'Souza
Technical Editor/Writer, Programmer, Sysadmin
(looking for part-time work)
Check out my GIMP-Python "Tear-off" plugin, useful for tech writers,
at: http://registry.gimp.org/node/10977
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