I am looking for a new laptop, and I need your advice. Two things:
1.) It has to be a Dell.
2.) I need to be able to run Dreamweaver without hiccups or slowdowns. Internal wireless and a cd burner would be a nice addition, too, although I rarely use the one I have for anything other than backing up files.
Also, I need to set this up so that I can easily set up a wireless network in my house to seamlessly transfer data from my desktop to the laptop.
Doctor Gonzo
If you are set on a Dell, I’d just determine how much you want to spend and find a model that is appropriate. Dells aren’t my first choice for laptops, but they aren’t bad.
Setting up a wireless network to transfer data from your desktop to your laptop shouldn’t be too hard no matter what you buy. As long as both are running Windows, it’s generally a simple issue of turning on File and Printer Sharing and ensuring that both computers are in the same workgroup, then sharing what you want to share.
John Cole
I have no choice in the matter. If I were buying this myself, I would probably be buying a toughbook.
Krista
Heh. Funny coincidence, I just received my new Dell 5150 yesterday. You guys won’t be hearing much from me over the next while, as I’ll be immersed in Civ IV.
dc
John,
Linksys make pretty reliable and cheap wireless hubs, unless you just want to set up an ad hoc network betewen your desktop system and your laptop.
tBone
Agreed. I have the WRT54G in 3 different locations and they’ve all been rock solid. Whatever you do, stay far, far away from Netgear.
Too bad about the Dell, though. Now that you can dual-boot OSX and Windows on the Intel Macs, the MacBooks are the only way to go IMO.
John Cole
CIV IV is teh suck.
CIV III took a year of my life, though.
John Cole
Ok- router stuff is tertiary. Of primary importance is the laptop itself.
Krista
Hey, I’ve been waiting months to try it out, ’cause we bought it and failed to remember that our computer had only 256 mB of memory, and it needed 512. So I just started it last night – don’t ruin the months of sweet anticipation for me. I’m just getting used to the differences — it’s a bit weird, but hopefully I’ll get used to it.
dc
tBone,
Your probably correct about the MacBook (just bought an Intel iMac a week ago).
Unfortunately, a Dell laptop will probably be half the price and 1/4 of the quality of the Mac. I’ve read a lot of bad things about Dell laptops.
tBone
I’ve seen it, up close and personal. They make some decent desktops and servers, but their laptops are teh suck.
tBone
Actually I think if you spec out similar machines, the price difference isn’t that bad. I haven’t looked into that closely because I won’t be in the market for a new laptop for a year or two.
Davebo
Dell is my preferred laptop as well.
Tbone: I’ve found the opposite, lousy desktops and servers but good laptops. Macbooks are cute toys I’d agree.
Questions for John.
1. Is weight a big issue. IE: do you plan to lug it around a lot. I carry mine every day and therefore gave up big screens and such for a lightweight Latitude D400. Also keep in mind that that widescreen monitor is going to chew up your battery much faster.
2. Just dreamweaver? No video editing or other resource intensive tasks?
3. Do you want Windows Media Center or XP Pro or Home?
Davebo
And John,
Don’t worry. These days even Stormy could setup a wireless network!
Davebo
And John,
Aren’t Toughbooks still limited to 512mb of Ram?
That would rule them out to me.
tBone
Ouch.
I should add that I don’t have much experience with the higher-end Dell laptops – they do seem to be a company where you definitely get what you pay for, so maybe the more expensive models aren’t the huge PITA that the cheaper ones are.
The Other Steve
Anyway, I can recommend the E1505. You can get them in the $800-900 range. I loaded mine up, with the T2500 2.0Ghz duo Core, 60 Gig 7200 rpm drive, 15.4″ truelife WSXGA+ display, DVD writer, Intel 3945 wireless, bluetooth X1300 video, and a spare 9-cell battery, two year warranty. I’m buying 2 gig of RAM through newegg(for about half what dell wanted). You have to catch their $750 off coupon sales(one is happening right now) to get the best prices. Sometimes there are 40% off and such sales, and EPP sales as well.
I looked at the MacBook Pro in the store, and I can’t see anything to justify it’s $2500 price tag. (twice what my Dell cost for the same performance) For me, the most critical component of any system is the keyboard and the Apple keyboard is probably one of the worst I’ve ever seen on a laptop(besides some Sony systems).
Davebo
Tbone,
I didn’t mean to imply that Macs can’t be very powerful.
Just that there are far too many applications out there that don’t come in Mac versions.
If Jobs had responded to the infamous Gates letter way back when Mickeysoft would probably be a wholly owned subsidy of Apple today rather than apple being a boutique computer maker with around 2% of market share.
tBone
It’ll be interesting to see what Boot Camp and/or virtualization does for Apple’s market share. I have a Mac at home but I wouldn’t have even considered a Mac laptop for business use until now.
Ryan S
I have always heard good things about Tobisha laptops.
db
For the stuff I work on, I went with the Lattitude D800 a couple years back and still have it. I maxed out the memory (which you can purchase a lot cheaper from crucial.com instead of the Dell site).
The ton of memory helps a lot; however, the sucker heats up to levels ten times greater than the sun when I am maxing the memory. I have literally received first degree burns on my legs when I’ve sat that sucker on my lap.
The drawback of the D800 is that it is one heavy sucker as well. But that was the choice I made for the amount of memory I wanted.
I don’t know about other Dells; but the standby status doesn’t do much to preserve battery life.
If you have to do lots of data transfers/backups, you can get a Dell docking station to which you can add an extra harddrive that you can transfer files to/from.
The Other Steve
The key is specing out what you need. If you try to spec out what Apple offers, you’ll have a hard time finding it in other notebooks. Apple has a unique mix. They offer some features that you can only get in the business lines from Dell, HP, Lenovo, along with a price point placing them against the business lines. But they offer support and service that is comparable to the consumer grade stuff you buy at big box stores.
So it all depends on your needs. For my home laptop, the Inspiron was more than adequate. I got similar performance, and a better support agreement for half the price of the MacBook Pro. Sure the MBP has better graphics, and is slightly smaller but I didn’t need that.
As I said, it’s hard to compare them directly. To claim one is clearly superior than another depends solely on what you need.
The Other Steve
It may help Mac sales, but it won’t help Mac OSX, and will probably make things worse.
A thing I learned long ago with Amiga and OS/2. Compatibility with another system(namely Windows) drives away potential market for native ports of the software.
So the Boot Camp stuff will most likely only serve to limit ports of games to Mac OSX, just as the virtualization stuff has served to limit ports of business and personal productivity apps.
It’s kind of a odd chicken and the egg equation, and I don’t have much of an answer other than building a product which is clearly superior in every way. (Which Mac OSX unfortunately is not)
Davebo
Toshiba does make a nice laptop.
But I still haven’t forgiven them for selling submarine silent propulsion technology to the Russians back in the cold war days.
Talk about needing to let go of a grudge eh?
;0)
The Other Steve
One compliment I’ll give to the Mac guys… They make nice accessories.
I just bought one of these at CompUSA:
http://www.raindesigninc.com/ilap.html
I had a similar thing before, but it was made of plastic and it really didn’t help with the heat it just kept it away from my legs. This iLap is made of aluminum and I’ve found it actually helps cool the notebook.
It’s not terribly portable, but I mainly only use it when I’m at home.
Also want to give two thumbs up to the Lowepro Tropolis 1250 backpack. I wish they’d made it with a shoulder strap instead of a backpack, but it’s nicely made.
The Other Steve
Oh yeah, another thumbs up for the Linksys WRT54G. Also the WPA2 encryption. Was very easy to setup and secure my wireless LAN at home.
Similarly, make sure you get the intel wireless chipset in any laptop. Intel for whatever reason has the best drivers and best performance. The 3945 in my Inspiron is even better than the 2200BG I put in my Toshiba.
OCSteve
Don’t worry about the Dell laptops. I’ve been through 3 in the last five years (updated for new features, power – not problems) and had zero problems. I use it as both my desktop (plug in a real USB keyboard and mouse, and a nice flatscreen monitor) and a laptop. Lots of miles, lots of hours, and zero problems. I hated keeping the laptop in synch with the desktop – so I just retired the desktop.
Take the base model that meets your price and then max out the memory and hard drive (unless the standard HD is way more than enough). Make sure you end up with one free PCMCIA slot when you are done. You want to be able to bypass a bad internal NIC if it comes up without shipping back the whole laptop, or have that slot for the gadget coming out tomorrow you will just have to have.
If you have serious battery needs – get a second battery. Plugs in where the DVD goes. Doubles your battery hours. Today’s apps and screens just suck up the juice.
Davebo
OCSteve
Same experience I’ve had and I’ve probably bought over 50 in the past 7 years.
Of course problems do occur. And though I haven’t had any in a few years when I did the turn around time for repairs was incredibly fast. Airborne Expressed off on a Monday and actually got it back on Friday the same week.
Don’t ask me about Compaqs of which I’ve also had a ton of experience. ALL of it bad.
OCSteve
Yeah – even that can be a productivity killer though. Just the time to move your crap to another machine and get set up, then you always forget 20 things that you gradually discover over the week. :)
Early internal NIC (not Dell) I had went flaky. Ran to OfficeMax on lunch, paid $40 for a card, back online in an hour.
Compaq – shudder. Even if their machines weren’t crap I’ve never forgiven them for what they did to DEC.
Tina
I don’t think he has ever cared about civil liberties – he sees his job as protecting us, not protecting our liberties.
Jay C
I got an Inspiron 6000 a couple of months ago, and haven’t had a single problem: for networking, the software is most important, and Win XP Pro makes it mucho simple to hook up with your network (hint: be sure to get the upgraded wireless card: its only $15 more, and is way sensitive (811b and 811g)).
It even works with Apple wireless (the Mrs. is a Mac-head, and my notebook is the only non-Jobs computer in the house).
db
I did have one problem with the Dell I got. The DVD-RW wasn’t reading music CDs properly. If your employer is paying for this, they might pay for Dell’s “Gold” coverage for the laptop, which is what I have. So when I had this problem, Dell shipped out a new drive within 2 days, no questions asked. And that resolved the problem.
John Cole
Thirty comments in, and we finally get a recommendation.
And I wonder why our political threads go haywire.
Davebo
Geez John,
I made a recommendation and asked relevant questions that, had you bothered to answer them, would have provided additional recommendations.
Geez, you’ve apparantly become a whiney titty baby on all subjects now.
Go buy a Compaq.
Davebo
What next.
I need a recomendation on a new vehicle. It has to be a chevy, preferably with four wheels and either a truck, SUV subcompact or station wagon.
Why doesn’t anyone answer me?????
ubernerd83
A solution I’ve used for sharing files between my desktop and laptop (and any other computer for that matter) is to set up my desktop machine as an FTP server. It’s a fairly easy way to share data, and you have the added benefit of being able access your stuff from any machine that has access to the internet.
Disclaimer: I’m not really a computer person. I just work with computer people. A lot of them.
John Cole
Weird. I missed them until you just said something here:
I don’t want to carry the rock of gibralter, but I want a widescreen.
Dreamweaver running flawlessly is the minimum. I probably want at least 2 gigs of memory.
I don;t know the difference.
Andrew
The 8600 model has served me well. They’re not particularly robust, but laptops rarely are. Good screen, at 1680×1050 15.4″ (and you an go higher res) and text look great with subpixel anti-aliasing.
I too, would choose a MacBook today if it were my own money.
Jcricket
John – I second what the first poster said about determining how much money you have and then just buying that laptop from Dell. I’d add this though: see how much screen you want and how much you think you’ll need to move it). Those two factors (screen size & weight) make a good starting point for picking a model. Then just configure it so that all the elements (processor, RAM, disk) come out at the price you want.
At my workplace we purchase Dells, exclusively, for all our laptop/desktop needs (about 3000 people). They’re all about the same in terms of reliability, since they OEM everything from various suppliers. This practice also makes it impossible to claim one dell model is more reliable than any other dell model, especially after 6-7 months when all the models have changed.
I’ve personally used the Inspiron 600m and 700m, which are nice, light-weight laptops. No particular problems to report, except that my 600m is long-in-the-tooth (read: a little slow), but that’s because it’s 2 years old now. Not sure if either is powerful enough to run Dreamweaver.
If you have to go through an Employee Purchase Plan with your university for this, which means you should have a special password for a Dell site that allows you to see EPP pricing. Otherwise, check http://www.dealnews.com/ for Dell coupons. Dell regularly has lots of coupons that make the pricing dramatically different
On a slightly different note, I’ve had good luck with Dell’s service contracts (especially accident care) for laptops. They add $300 or so to the price, but if you’re spending $1.5-2k, and move your laptop around a lot (multiple places at home, work, coffee shops), the service contracts are definitely worth it. I had a friend who dropped her laptop coming down some stairs and Dell was out to replace the entire screen in 2 days, no questions asked. Without the contract that would meant basically buying a new laptop (another $1k at least).
Davebo
OK..
Well, how about an XPS m140. Only 5.5 lbs
Inventory of the Dell Outlet models available if you care about saving a little money here.
http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/topics/global.aspx/arb/online/en/InventorySearch?c=us&cs=22&l=en&lob=INSP&MODEL_DESC=XPS%20M140&s=dfh
If money’s no object and you can wait awhile for Dell to build you one, try here.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m140?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
Jcricket
Forgot to add – Built-in wireless is virtually standard on all Dell (and other) laptops, and a CD-Burner is an option on all the Dell laptops I’ve ever used. Some you can even purchase with a built-in DVD-Burner, which is also handy if you have a lot of files you regularly backup.
Pb
I hate laptops, but I’ll give it a shot…
Oh well.
Well, how hard can that be, really–unless it just sucks.
Ok, so, do you have a price range? You can spec out some pretty nice Dell laptops that should more or less do whatever you want for $1,400 – $1,700, not counting any educational discounts or whatever.
tBone
Media Center is a just a version of XP tweaked to be media-centric; you can hook up your cable to it and use it as a DVR, etc.
XP Pro is the “business” OS and has some networking features that aren’t included in Home, like Remote Desktop and the ability to join a Windows domain. Other than that there’s no real difference, so Home is fine if you don’t need those features.
Gump, Esq
My suggestion is to spend the $10 extra bucks and get the actual XP disk so that you can reinstall the OS when you get it. My friend just bought a dell that ran 66 running processes right out of the box, with about a dozen programs running in the tray.
Richard Bottoms
Doesn’t matter anymore when speeds are above 2GHz
Laptops are all just commodities now. Stick 512K RAM in any laptop made by Dell or just about anyone else, and it will do what you need. Only difference is price & warranty.
StupidityRules
That doesn’t sound safe. But then I don’t know the whole story.
J. Mark English
Get an IMB!! Its the best computer out there.
Congrats on the great site. I look forward to checking it out often.
Take care,
Mark
http://www.americanlegends.blogspot.com
stickler
1. I hate it when people paste in gi-normous links and screw up the comments page.
2. We bought an El Cheapo HP laptop off of Amazon a couple months ago (ca. $799) and it works fine.
3. Got an El Cheapo Belkin wireless router from Staples (ca. $59) and it works fine, too.
4. If anybody knows how to get XP to talk from one machine to another over the router, I’m all ears.
Jcricket
512k of RAM outta be enough for anybody :-)
Actually, this poster is right. Laptops are, roughly, commodities. If you have $1-1.5k to spend you can easily get yourself everything you want by just picking any laptop that seems “attractive” to you at first glance and adding the couple of configuration options that mean the most to you (add a CD burner, add more ram, bigger hard drive, whatever). Assuming the components don’t die, you don’t need to play the latest games or run Photoshop filters on RAW images, my guess is that you’ll be happy for 3 years, at least, with anything you purchase.
There is almost nothing, in the average office worker’s daily routine that taxes any computer out there these days that can be purchased for more than $1k.
After 20 years of purchasing computers, I’ve watched my “personal price point” (the amount I expect to spend on my next computer to get something that satisfies my moderate computing needs) steadily drop, from nearly $4k to under $1k. And if you’re just a real basic home user, you can probably get by for around $500-700.
chopper
GF got a dell a bit ago. standard wintel laptop, no big deal, only 2 problems.
1) standard windows susceptability to spyware etc. not a fault of Dell.
2) the keyboard sucks. somefin weird with the trackpad, after 6 months you couldn’t type on the damn thing because it would magically move the cursor to other places. like you were touching the trackpad when you weren’t.
The Other Steve
I’m still recommending the Inspiron E1505 that I got last week.
This thing rocks!
ppGaz
Here at the ppG compound, the Linksys WRT54G has been rock solid since last year. Most of my posts come to you via this blue gadget. Underneath it, the Linksys cable modem.
At work, an all Dell shop. 800 machines, including servers, desktops and laptops. Solid hardware all. Not a repair ticket on two dozen Dell laptops in two years that I know of.
Rock on, dudes.
tBone
Assuming you didn’t muck around with the network settings on either machine, you shouldn’t have to do anything special – just join both machines to the same workgroup and turn on file sharing for any folders you want accessible via the network.
Matthew
I own a Dell Latitude and have had more problems then a math book. I use to have a Sony Vaio. I wish I stayed with Sony. I bought cheap and got cheap.
Dave in LA
If someone else is going to buy, Latitude D620 or D820. Just released. Comes with dual core pentitum processors, make sure you get 2GB of ram and XP Professional (for mutlithreading).
stickler
Tried that. No dice.
Folders I “want accessible” are enabled for file sharing. Network enabled. Neither computer can see the other. Hours wasted. Bill Gates cursed with a thousand plagues. Life goes on.
Perry Como
Consumer level Dells suck. Stay away from anything that isn’t aimed at business folk. Beyond that (since non-Dell is not an option), another vote for the WRT54G. Great wireless router that’s easy to set up.
quietpc
Be sure to order it with the $10 option for XP CDs to be included. unfortunately Dell installs a ton of adware crap on the default image.
Check out this link on how to de-crapify a Dell notebook.
http://www.yorkspace.com/2006/04/38
rilkefan
If you ever want to run linux on a Dell… but you aren’t going to, so never mind.
I would do stuff like googling on the model and “fan” and so forth (the fan in my 5100 isn’t quite up to the processor heat, esp as there’s some dust clogging issue with the vanes or the intake).
oopla
Let me reccomend getting the extended service plan for a laptop. Laptops have proprietary parts by nature, so they are one of the few things it is actually worthwhile getting a service plan on. Consumer Reports agrees.
tBone
If you go into the network card properties on each machine, do you have “Client for Microsoft Networks” and “File & Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” checked?
If all else fails, you can install NetBEUI on both machines as long as you have an XP install disc.
Barry
The only piece of advice that I have is to write down the specs and price the Dell with those specs. When I was checking out Dell for a laptop ~2 years ago, I noticed that their ‘headline’ specials were for stipped-down computers. By the time that I clicked on the options that I wanted, I had added at least $300 to the price.
Christie S.
My brother got one that did the same thing. Sucks a LOT of memory. Unfortunately, he didn’t spend the money to get disk. One of the pre-installed programs has a glitch and we can’t dump it thru add/remove because part of the glitch is the uninstall file is missing. ::sigh::
db
Rilkefan,
Are you suggesting to buy a new fan or install software that controls the fan speed on Dells? My fan is definitely not up to speed either and it hasn’t been since Day 1… I have thought about buying a meatlocker to work in so my laptop doesn’t overheat.
http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html
Don
In my experience the most important thing is that you get something from the Latitude line and steer far clear of the Inspiron line. I’ve had four different Latitudes over the last 8 years and they’ve all been workhorses. Every Inspiron I have had the misfortune to encounter has been a pain in the ass.
That said, the reason I encounter them is that they’re fucked and someone wants my help. Nobody asks me to assist with their perfectly functional laptop so perhaps the majority of Inspirons are flawless. However nobody has ever brought me a Latitude.
Currently I have a D500 and it’s been great. If I had it to do over again I’d buy the same thing.
The Other Steve
I honestly don’t see much of a difference between my Inspiron and the Latitude’s we have at work. At least not in terms of hardware quality.
What do you mean by pain in the ass?
I wonder if it just isn’t past bad experiences. I mean, I didn’t like Thinkpads for years because of my experiences with the 760s.
ubernerd83
Well, the FTP programs I’ve used require that you set up password protected user accounts. As I said, I’m not really a computer person, so I don’t know all the details of how safe it is. A lot of computer people I know do the same thing, though.
terry chay
Umm, the letter was between Gates and Sculley, not Jobs. The reason it was not acted on was obvious given Apple’s previous experiences and the power of Jean-Louis Gassée.
What you are repeating is something portrayed on Pirates of Silicon Valley, done in the interest of narrative economy.
Gray
“1.) It has to be a Dell.”
I’ve got some professional IT experience, but I don’t give advice to people who are obviously completely out of their minds. Pls consult a Voodoo priest, a fortune-teller or some other crook instead.
Ian
All I know is that I have the Dell 700M and I couldn’t be any more satisfied with it. It even has the Glenn seal of approval!
S.W. Anderson
John, I can’t speak from personal experience with a Dell laptop. However, awhile back I wrote a post based on a news story about a young Dell customer who felt she had been treated badly by the company after her laptop suffered a fatal breakdown just past the warranty expiration. The feeling is that it was a defective design and/or parts problem, one that was so expensive to fix it would almost pay to get another laptop.
Her experience was far from unique, to put it mildly. I am still getting comments from angry Dell laptop owners who want to share their bad experience.
See the post here and decide for yourself.
Whatever you end up getting, good luck.
Gray
Don’t forget that Jeff Jarvis story about the fun he had with his dell. And check google for those defective power sources that affected whole series of Dell notebooks. Plus search for customers’ stories about their Dell experiences, especially about the ‘support’ they received.
Not every Dell will turn out to be crap, but a high percentage of them. And if you got one of the bad eggs, you’re screwed. There are better choices for the same price and there are devices with a similar ‘quality’ for a lower price.
So, why Dell?
John Steven
Don’t forget to use the Dell De-Crapifier once it arrives… it removes all the junk trial software and unnecessary extra widgets so your Dell will boot up/run faster/use less resources.
http://www.yorkspace.com/dell-de-crapifier/
Sine.Qua.Non
John,
I have the Dell 9000 with 2gig processor, 17″ lots of memory and a 100gig harddrive. Juat got it in November and it has all the internal wifi and i have it hooked to my existing wireless…found it without me doing a thing.
Yes, you do have to decrapify it. And, i bought mine with the least amount of software possible, since i already had everything i wanted on it.
The last Dell i had lasted 5 years and its still running, an 8000 inspiron.
Sine.Qua.Non
Stick with an Inspiron and stay away from the Latitude.
Sine.Qua.Non
Stupid me, I am actually typing on an Inspiron 9300 not a 9000.