Laptop Recommendations

[Jeff Richardson]

Buying a laptop for use at work and home use is fairly easy these days. This spring I'll be using Mobile ThreatNet and wondered if anyone had any recommendations on laptops for chasing? If possible, I'd like to keep the price under $1,000 but will welcome any and all suggestions.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Under 1,000? You can get all sorts of great deals now for under 1,000. First off, mobile threatnet probably won't eat up too much memory so anything with at least 2 gigs will do fine for you. I just looked at the best buy ad and you can get a great Dell for 799 on sale. I have never owned a Dell, so I can't tell you much from a reliability standpoint. The Dell has these specs on it:

Intel core Duo processor 2.1 GHz
4GB of RAM
320 GB Hard Drive
DVD±RW/CD-RW
4 USB ports

These specs will be plenty for what you need for a storm chasing laptop.

There are several other brands that have these similar specs in this price range. I can tell you, along with other chaser that I know, HP's are very reliable computers. I have had mine for almost 3 years now with no problems whatsoever. I would look for deals at best buy if I were you. Anyway, hope this helps you out.

I'm actually looking for another computer myself, so I need to look around at some deals too.

 

[Cris Schroeder]

I used a Dell Inspiron 5150 for three or four years, until the motherboard died about a year ago. Mechanically it was solid but it had some annoying quirks. The fan ran all the time and sounded like a hair dryer. The Dell software preload was worthless and they didn't ship any of the source disks...just a master disk that reinstalls all the junk as a package. I wiped the hard drive clean and installed a different license of XP Pro and never had too much trouble after that.

Now I'm using a Toshiba Satellite that I picked up cheap around Christmas last year. So far so good, although the Vista power management tools don't work well with the Toshiba hardware. Most of the energy saving modes cause it to lock up over time. I liked it because it has a 17" widescreen monitor. This is great when you have multiple apps running, but it takes up a lot of space in the car.

The best notebook I've ever used was an old IBM Thinkpad I bought on a corporate closeout on Ebay years ago. It was light, simple and nearly indestructible. The 12" monitor is a little small, but makes it easy to carry around. I would still use it, but it has a Pentium 2 233 MHz processor with 3 megs of RAM. We buy the Lenovo Thinkpads at work and I've had no trouble with them, either, so Lenovo would be my frontrunner. I only bought the Toshiba because I needed something in a hurry when the Dell died.

If you end up with a Vista notebook (likely), make sure you spring for a minimum of 2 Gb of RAM. I have 2 gig in the Toshiba and have had very few problems.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

Now, here's at thread that I am really glad someone started. Thanks, Jeff R!

I have built a lot of PC's for friends, family, & foreigners in my neighborhood back in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, CA). Laptops were a new thing for me when I started storm chasing this year.

Pick the features that you like, but check them against the practicalities of the use for which you intend to use it. I have a Hp Pavilion that I got from TigerDirect for the paltry sum of $700. It has a 17" bright sceen an AMD 1.8 Ghz 64 processor, DVDRW, 1/2 Gb of 333Mhz RAM, and a 80Gb HDD. The best part of it? The fact that it came with Windows Xp - NOT Vista. That is the feature that made the rest practical and trouble-free. NO CONFLICTS with A N Y of the software that I put on it. GR3, Spotter Network, DeLorme, Photoshop, DxO - all run flawlessly and without OS errors! Problem fixed!. Next problem? I wouldn't count on it!

Having a problem with your box? Get a copy of Windows Xp home ($85>) and watch all of any problem melt away into oblivion. If your fan is on all of the time, maybe the heat sink on the CPU isn't fitting correctly - or it has lost enough of the heat compound that goes between the heat sink and the CPU. Most laptop stands for autos don't have a hole behind the fan of your laptop. That is a mod that you will want to establish so that your CPU can be adequately cooled - so that iit keeps your laptop from becoming part of a garbage heap.

The first and last mod that I gave my laptop was the RAM. It came with a pitiful 1//3Gb of 333Mhz DDR RAM. I called up TigerDirect and bought 1 Gb of 400Mhz CORSAIR VALUE RAM for seventy bocks and replaced the anemic stock RAM. 2 Gb is better, but Xp isn't a memory hog - so be happy. Get GOOD RAM ('Corsair' is the BEST - IMHO!); that's far more important than quantity/Gb's - trust me! The difference was day and night. Xp needs a minimum of 1 Gb to run fast - while memory-hog Vista can use up to 4 Gb and then acts like it wants/needs more. BTW - you usually cannot put more than two Gb's of RAM in a laptop - the only R E A L option is to spend the other $80 on the Xp OS - then you are good to go!

Dos it sound like I am down on Vista? You BYA!!! If Vista were to fall off of the face of the Earth tomorrow - I would be the last person to cry. I've had SOOOO much problems with building PC"s because of this HORRIFIC software, that I can't really begin to tell you how much I hate it!!!!

Do yourself and your storm chasing a favor - get some good RAM and put Xp on your laptop - and be good to go!

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

I wouldn't let Vista scare you away from a deal. I have a cheap Acer I got last year for under $500 new. It has Vista and only 1 gig of ram. I run Delorme, GR3, and usually have several tabs open in Firefox(often looping things like Satellite or NWS Radar). I also sometimes have the serial emulator running with spotter network...whenever that thing decides to work right. I think it depends on if it is sunny or cloudy out with that stupid delorme serial emulator.

Vista is a bit of a memory hog as it is installed. I shut down a few things(I need to shut down more) and now have no problem running all that with just 1 gig of ram. One of Vista's programs is the biggest memory hog, something that keeps monitoring your PC. I'd just shut that stupid thing off. Just be sure to disable any wifi card while driving around and I don't see the danger. I forget what the program was even called. Something defender maybe. With nothing else running at all, that would sit there and use up 50% or more of the CPU constantly. Silly.

 

[David Drummond]

I got my new HP laptop at the beginning of the year with Vista on it. I had some initial issues with the Delorme emulator that Mike mentioned and spotter network. I had some difficulties early on, but after Tyler did something with the spotter network client, and after SP1 came out for Vista, I have experienced ZERO issues in MANY months with Vista. Before that I was ready to throw it out. I got a new HP desktop in March and after getting SP1 have also had ZERO problems with Vista.

The only thing about it is that it does things differently that XP and all sorts of things you used to do are done differently and are in different places. That aside, it's been running fantastic on both machines and I would recommend it to anyone over XP at this point.

Not to mention, XP support will be running out eventually, and all new software will be optimized for Vista. Additionaly, if you get a laptop that did not come natively with XP your going to have one hell of a time finding all the drivers for it....if there are any at all. My laptop does not have drivers for XP available.

More memory the better though. Mine came with a gig..I upgraded it to 4 gigs, upgraded the hard drive from a 4300rpm to a 7200 rpm and it's a dual core AMD. I can run GRL3, Delorme, Spotter Network, streaming video, and a number of browser windows all at the same time without trouble. If I shut down the streaming video I can leave the rest running, bring up Adobe Premier and edit and export a video clip for the news all at the same time as well.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

The first laptop that I bought - I intentionally failed to bring up - because it was returned the very next day. I bought a Toshiba from WalMArt for $825; 2Gb RAM, Intel CoreDuo, 160Gb HDD, 15' WXVGA, w/Vista. Yadi, yadi yadda.

It had problems right out of the box. It was so pathetically slow that I just couldnt believe. Or accept it. I removed the supplied anti-virus program (a major memory hog -"Norton") and put on AVG Virus - a better, free, and far mor efficient A/Vprogram.

I then removed all the stupid little programs that they put on in order to sell you more gizmos - you know - crap. That helped a bit. Turning off Defender helped some - too. But overall - after doing these things - and a number more tricks - it just was way, way too slow. I put on GR3 and watched it take TWO MINUTES before it started the program. Then, for no apparent reason - it just up and dumped the program. Just like that. After a few tries, I packed it as carefully as I recieved it and took a jaunt back to WalMart for a refund. I told them the truth - its got problems when I bought it. They refunded me - no questions asked. Apparently, I'm not the only one that had these same complaints. I wouldn't want to ship my boy off to college with that piece of work - either.

I'm not just saying that you will encounter problems with a laptop w/Vista installed and that it will run pathetically slow, but I can practically guarantee that you will within a relatively short period of time. And if it is out of the period that you are allowed to return it - you are screwed, blued, and tatooed. Ad if this be the case with you, the only real remedyis to get a copy of XpHome.

If your laptop has 4Gb of RAM on it - not to worry. You won't benefit from putting faster RAM on it - you're OK. Xp's max RAM is 4Gb's; so the ONLY thing you may want to change is the Operating system to Xp.

the difference between the speed of operation between these two operating systems is nothing less than dramatic. Vista crawls along - while Xp races into you applications and does them with far more efficiency and without errors. It is - quite frankly - no contest.

 

[David Drummond]

I am wondering why your having these results with Vista. On both of my machines, everything FLIES! Nothing is slow in the least, including some games I play. Even with Norton. I never even know it's there until it tells me it updated itself. Been using Norton for over 10 years and have not had a virus in all that time btw.

If I were only having such a positive experience on 1 computer I would be willing to chock it up as an anomaly, but on two? Possibly the one you bought truly had something wrong with the computer itself.

You do have to go through and clean out all the default crap the vendors put on them, but I had to do that with XP machines too. I usually just do a clean reinstall of the OS so I don't have all that "default" stuff they ship them with.

On the other hand, we still have two machines around the house that are on XP, and they have periodically required some troubleshooting.

What are you going to do in a few years when MS no longer updates XP?

And again, many new machines don't have drivers for XP unless they came with XP when they were sold. So switching to XP from a native VISTA machine is a gamble at best.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I think buying a computer today is a lot easier than 5 years ago, in that it is harder to go wrong with any given model. Pretty much anything you get at a major retailer is going to get you a fairly nice machine with equivalent specs at any given price point. Brand is not an issue IMO anymore - all of them are going to get you a decent, reliable machine. Of course, all have their horror stories due to people getting the odd bad apple. You don't see the junk machines as much nowadays (eMachines, Packard Bell, etc). I did the laptop shopping and buying thing last winter, and for what I was willing to spend, nearly every brand had the same specs (with minor variations). For me it really came down to a few minor details, like a firewire port (which a lot of new laptops don't have now, if you do any video work, obviously that is important to have).

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I know that a lot of people who use memory-hog software for digital camras often complain about how slow their PC runs. Hardware vs Software = efficiency (every time).

I am NO STRANGER to building PC's. What I have said comes from YEARS of experience. If you are happy with what you have, then I am happy - too. The caveats that I posted are meant for those who are looking into buying for the first time, or are unhappy with the Vista laptop thay have already, or are thoroughly tired of error messages and slow speeds that are UNnecessary wth the hardware they already possess. Which can be turned around by simply using a far better Operating System. That is it all summed up - in simplicity. Some laptop Mfr's may have made it impossible to change the O/S simply because their proprietary CMOS won't allow for it. (Dell?)

It is true that Microsoft will eventually no longer support Xp. They had better make Vista work before I use the several copies that I have lying dormant in my file cabinet. Steve Ballmer has re-issued the Xp production - so that copies still can be had for those horrified custommers that are disenchanted with the 'cutesey' screen, bloated applications, and unwarranted errors that Vista provides. Even Microsoft knows there is no joy in Vista - and hopefully that will change in the near future.

Even modestly-built XP laptops run speed circles around Vista; the xtra cost of memory isn't warranted unless 'bloatware' is being used. My PC (that I now use for photo processing & games) is a kilowatt-gulping SLI (dual viddy cards) with 10k rpm HDD's - the efficiency and speed withOUT error is without peer to any machine that runs Vista - equally equipped. Those who don't learn from their mistakes will only repeat them. Vista isn't a mistake that I will repeat - short of a major overhaul of Vista. Or a class-action suit that I will support as a multiple injured party.

 

[David Drummond]

I am not exactly noob here either Rob. My first "PC" was a TI99/4a I got back sometime in the 80s for pete's sake. I started building machines for myself and other people around the Intel 386/486 era and dialed in to get text internet on BBS service with a cradle modem for $5/hr. Been building them ever since and at this time regularly maintain 6 different PC machines, two of those Vista, and have built a number of others which I can firmly say run better in every respect to the XP machines. They would all be Vista if I felt like throwing the $$$ at it to make it so.

Speaking of photo software, my Canon software, Adobe Photoshop CS3, Paint Shop Pro X2 all run flawlessly and speedily on both the Vista machines even with other programs running. As does every weather program I want to run and two different high end video editors.

Some of what you have said was true when Vista first hit the stands. But in the time since, SP1 has come out, many updates are out each week, and manufactures just about all have Vista drivers out now.

In fact, about the only people I ever speak to that have vista machines and have any trouble with them are usually either A) very inexperienced pc users and suffer from EBCAK errors all the time B) they are running machines not strong enough for Vista.

It's clear you have had some negative expriences with Vista and that's ok, not doubt some people will, but it's not a true representation of the current state of Vista for morst people. I just don't want anyone shopping for a laptop to severely limit their choices on the idea that Vista currently is some big pile of **** when it's not.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

Then, may all of your experiences with Vista continue to be good ones.
For the rest of us - we will wait for litigation!
OR Service Pack 2.
OR whichever one comes first!
LOL!
(Meant to be funny; not mean)

 

[Dave Kaplow]

I just bought a new laptop, and after much research and many visits to various stores to make real life comparisons - you can't just rely on specs alone - I have to say that the 17" Sony VAIOs have by far the best graphics amongst all the machines I looked at. I had actually settled on a Toshiba initially, but when I lined it up side by side with a Sony there was just no comparison, the Sony was just way brighter and clearer and all around better looking than the Toshiba - better than any other machine I looked at, in fact. If you have the money, I highly recommend any of the Sony VAIO AR-series. I bought my AR850 from J&R for $1725 on sale, I've had it for almost a month and I absolutely love it. And yeah, I got stuck with VISTA, which was not what I wanted but to tell the truth I haven't really had any problems with it, so far everything's been fast and reliable. The Sony has performed flawlessly on several local chases here in CT. If a high quality bright display is important to you, this is the machine to get.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I really like the wide screens with the bright WXVGA ( I think that is the designation - could be wrong). But they aren't as good in daylight or glare situations as I was led to believe. There is a company called 'PC Shade' that helped me out immensely with the glare problem. I highly recommend using a shade and PC Shade in particular. Mine cost me about $40, but I feel it was worth every penny.

Link:
http://www.pcshade.com/

 

[Mark Blue]

My thoughts are this. Folks are either Pro Vista or Pro XP, there isn't much room in between. I have three rigs, 2 with XP and my storm chase laptop has Vista Ultimate on it. I never really did experience any issues with Vista, but it seems some did. I'm an avid reader of Maximum PC and CPU magazines and they haven't had too much positive to say about Vista, until SP1 came out. It does seem as though SP1 has stabilized the OS, but still the opinions run strong and each to his own I guess.

I 4th and 10nd that Delorme Serial Emulator after a few days of getting nowhere with splitting my GPS signal. I purchased GPSGate from the Franson website and have never looked back. I think the program H talks about is Windows Defender. I turned that off - along with UAC - once I realized the insanity of it all. Who needs Windows Defender when you have a commercial antivirus program installed doing a better job anyways?

I would also recommend at least 2 gigs of memory no matter what OS you choose. Memory is getting so cheap these days that it isn't worth watching your life pass you by through an hour glass. Once the SSD drives come down in price I'm thinking on swapping my 4200 rpm 200 gig drive out of my Toshiba for an SSD model, but those have a ways to go yet and the technology is still pretty new.

I believe with your budget of $1000.00 you'll do okay no matter what you buy. If you could go a little higher both Maximum PC and CPU magazines have rated the new Gateway P-7811-FX with really high marks in the October 08 or latest editions of the magazines. My Toshiba is also a 17" model which does make things tight in the car, but if you have an SUV or something it shouldn't be a big deal.

Jeff - Let me know if you'd like me to send you the electronic version of the articles from the magazines mentioned above.