Laptops

Graduate School
1

<p>Hey everyone,</p>

<p>So, I am planning on going onto grad school in the next year or so and my current laptop is having issues. What is a good laptop that has a long battery life (my current one had 5-6 hours and was more of a powerhouse laptop), is slim and doesn't weigh much, and has features like a built in mic (not absolutely necessary but would be nice)? My primary purpose is word processing along with some other office/ statistical/ image apps, nothing intensive like gaming. Price is also an issue for me as well. Any info is appreciated. Thanks in advance</p>

2

<p>do u require a Windows machine? Do you have a particular budget in mind? D you want a 12/13/14/15/17 inch screen?</p>

<p>FYI, I have an Apple MacBookPro and have had it for almost a year....it's doing just fine doing all the stuff you mentioned.</p>

3

<p>I would prefer to spend as little as possible for a machine with a small machine (portability is a must for me). Also, windows is preferred, but since macs can run windows now I guess macs aren't a deal breaker. My current laptop is a 15 incher and is too big for me. I would like to spend $1100 or under, but since I haven't been following the computer market for the past 3 years or so, I don't know if that is realistic.</p>

4

<p>I've seen a lot of Gateway laptops lately. I personally find them to have a cheap look to them, but Dells seem the same to me. Check out this one <a href="http://www.gateway.com/systems/series/529597319.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.gateway.com/systems/series/529597319.php&lt;/a> (look around the website - they have a lot of good deals). I use a pretty regular IBM though - very nice laptop - I would definitely recommend it, but it's kind of overpriced.</p>

5

<p>I'd look at the Apple MacBooks if I were you, it sounds like a MacBook Pro would probably be a bit overkill for what you're looking for. The student discount there is pretty good, or you can try one of the manufacturer refurbished ones.</p>

6

<p>I looked at the MacBooks on the Apple website, and while they seem great, the battery life is listed at 5-6 hours, which seems kind of low.</p>

<p>I have a question for you macbook owners out there though. Do any of you run Windows and Mac OS side by side? If so, how is it? Doesn't it waste a ton of space to install both?</p>

7

<p>I have a MacBook and the battery life is adequate for anything except long periods of field work without electricity (and even that is becoming less of a problem). What do you need a longer battery life for?</p>

<p>You can easily run WinXP or whatever through Parallels over MacOS and still have plenty of HD space left.</p>

<p>I find MacOS easier to use on a laptop because I don't need a mouse (although I don't do design or mouse-intensive stuff on it). It allows for multi-touch navigation on its touchpad (two fingers scrolls a page up and down, for example) and if you move the cursor to the corners of the screen, you can activate the widget screen or bring up a view of all the open windows (I guess you could add this to Windows by way of 3rd party app). The built-in camera is a nice touch too, with iChat.</p>

<p>I would go for a PC laptop if you required special apps that aren't available on MacOS and don't feel like using Parallels to boot up in Windows...also PCs are a bit cheaper.</p>

<p>A final note is that Apple's technical support is easy. I had a cracked key and all I had to do was go to the local Apple store and they replaced it free of charge.</p>

8

<p>I know you said small, but i recently bought a 17 inch laptop (within the past month) from circut city.. its a toshiba satellite p205-s6267, 1.8ghz centrino duo, 2gb ram, 180gb hard drive ( i think) I bought microsoft office seperatley, but circut city had a deal where you get a free printer, wireless router and spyware with laptop purchase.. I think i spent around 1100</p>

9

<p>What field are you going to be in in graduate school? I've heard some grad programs provide computers, but I don't know how true that is. The field that I'm planning going into (Astronomy) is Mac/Linux heavy, and that influenced my decision to get a Macbook.</p>

<p>I don't run Windows side by side since there aren't enough applications I miss enough to boot up my old pc laptop or to pay for another OS (I've long since given up gaming), and my college had enough public computers. I get about four hours on a battery, which is better than the performance of my old laptop (which was garbage).</p>

<p>Be aware that <em>all</em> pc laptops come with Vista these days. Snark about Vista aside, you will need to get a large amount of ram to run it at tolerable levels.</p>

10

<p>Hi, I am planning on going to med school. I need it for long hours because I am planning on going abroad and don't know how common outlets are all over the place (Planning on charging overnight and using throughout the day just on batteries). Is vista installed even on laptops that can't handle it well?</p>

11

<p>The Macbooks are really good for the price, and the battery life is pretty good, all things considered.</p>

<p>Otherwise, check out Lenovo Thinkpads. They're the only other comparatively good brand I'd buy from.</p>

12

<p>
[quote]
Hi, I am planning on going to med school. I need it for long hours because I am planning on going abroad and don't know how common outlets are all over the place (Planning on charging overnight and using throughout the day just on batteries). Is vista installed even on laptops that can't handle it well?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>laptops use Li-ion (some use Li-polymer) batteries which generally last at most 5 hours with light use. the only way to get through the day would be to have multiple batteries</p>

<p>as for your OS, i almost would say try downgrading to something like windows 2000. it is less battery intensive than XP (and certainly more so than vista) and probably better than OSX too (tho i dont know how OS9 would fair for battery consumption on newer laptops)</p>