DellorLenovo :
Interesting stuff here.
What are your thoughts on "business" laptops?
Are they worth the extra cost?
Are they more reliable do you think?
I'm going to replace my 5 year old Dell Latitude (Not one problem ever) and am looking at another Latitude or a ThinkPad T510. Surprisingly the ThinkPad works out cheaper than the Latitude, whereas 5 years ago it was definitely the other way around.
It's funny you should mention the Dell Latitude because I still have my old Dell Latitude C610 with a Pentium-III in it. It was made in 2001 and still works although it's physically falling apart so I use it for my magic jack.
Honestly, I don't really think that there is such a thing as a "business laptop" anymore. I mean, laptops have become not so application-oriented anymore with the exception of gaming laptops. I think that this is because with the exception of high-graphics requirements of games (and video encoding), software has fallen far behind hardware as far as advancement is concerned. Software has become stagnant and business applications are the perfect example of that. For instance, my old Dell Laptop which originally came with Win2000 (I replaced it with XP Pro) can run MS-Office 2007 with no problems. Business applications are primarily text-based and haven't changed much in the last 15 years. MS-Word, for instance, still looks more or less the same today as it did on Windows 95. I can do (and did) an entire powerpoint presentation for University on my eMachines E620 which only has an AMD Athlon 64 2650e running at 1.6GHz with a primitive ATi Radeon X1200 GPU. You can read the rest of the specs earlier on in this thread. That ThinkPad T510 would be a real waste of money because for business apps, you would never notice a difference between the performance of that machine and that of a cheap laptop costing only $500. Business laptops today sometimes have special security features like facial recognition (which has a rather dubious track record) or the fingerprint scanner. If you expect to have a ton of sensitive information on the laptop, it may be worth it but for most situations, it's one of those bells and whistles that few people ever actually use. Honestly, I don't think I could be bothered with it. Now, if you're going to be doing office presentations in HD on a projector and want to use HDMI, then of course you'd get a laptop with an HDMI output. In most cases though, a powerpoint presentation is not done in HD and probably never will be because the whole concept of the powerpoint presentation is to get an idea across and HD doesn't really help in that unless you're trying to sell a graphics engine in which case, it's a gaming laptop that you'd want. Some people feel that in business, the type of laptop you carry affects how people perceive you (As stupid as that is, I can see that being true). If you want to look successful, you have to have an expensive laptop just as you need an expensive suit, car or watch. In recent times however, I think that the way you are perceived in a business environment would be aided by a no-nonsense approach that isn't wasteful of valuable resources ($$$). In that manner, having a laptop that is good enough to do the job but cheap enough to help the bottom line might make you appear intelligent, appropriately frugal and good at making financial decisions. If it were me in your shoes, I'd most likely get a mainstream laptop around $500 with an emphasis on hard drive space and battery life. I think that a 14"-16" screen would be a good size to get a good balance of display quality and portability (bigger screen laptops are bigger, heavier and less portable). I'd get a dual-core CPU of some kind like an Athlon II X2, Pentium Dual-Core or i3 without worrying too much about the GPU (unless you want to play some games to relieve stress in between meetings/presentations) and I'd want a webcam and mic built into it for videoconferencing. That's an ideal situation, balancing cost with efficiency and convenience because in the real world, for most business applications, you can get by just fine with a netbook. The drawbacks to that are of course the small screen and keyboard but the advantage is long battery life and you can keep it in your suit's inside pocket. From a reliability standpoint, I think they're no better or worse than any other. Hell, I've dropped my E620 at least 5 times, it still works perfectly and it cost me only $310CAD in July of 2009. I'd widen my scope to include all brands, not just Dell and IBM(Lenovo). There are great products from Acer (including eMachines, Gateway and Packard-Bell), HP (including Compaq), Lenovo, Dell, Fujitsu, ASUS, MSI, etc. I think you would be remiss to actually care what the brand is. My advice with laptops is the same as my advice with everything else. Get what you need and no more. Imagine you're going to buy a video card. Do you care if it's MSI, ASUS, Sapphire, Powercolor or Palit? With obvious exceptions like XFX, EVGA, Zotac and Sparkle that offer lifetime warranties (which doesn't apply to laptops), nobody really cares what brand of video card they have as long as it has that lovely "GeForce GTX 580" or "Radeon HD 5970" on the box. I know this is a long and wordy answer but that question was a good one and there are so many correct answers to it. If this answer leaves you more confused than before, shoot me a private message with what you do for a living and what you need to do with the laptop and I'll be able to help you further.
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