Tee-hee:
My laptop is experiencing hot flashes and wheezing piteously, which means I’ll have to hitch up the wagon for a trip into town to see if I can find a Super Bowl sale this weekend. Any laptop recommendations?
[H/T: Buzzfeed]Reader Interactions
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ant
macbook
kooks
Macbook pro
Lee
I was shopping for a laptop a couple of years ago. The brand with the best feature/price ratio seemed to be Toshiba. Works like a champ.
SiubhanDuinne
You go, Sandra Day!
Cat Lady
@Lee:
Ditto.
Viva BrisVegas
@SiubhanDuinne:
Isn’t she the one who handed W his job because she wanted to retire under a Republican President?
MikeJ
I always buy laptops locally so I can take a linux thumb drive to the store and be sure everything will work.
amanda
Toshiba Portege works great and very lightweight…love mine
Cacti
@Viva BrisVegas:
Yep.
JPL
@Viva BrisVegas: Maybe she is making amends.
Legalize
Mrs. Legalize’s laptop crapped out recently. We went with a Mac Book Pro. Seems to be pretty good.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Rather than tossing out a brand like so many ‘smart’ people love to do, how about some input on what you intend to use the notebook for? Internet, music, media? Video editing, gaming or ???
Before you start looking (or asking) you need to ask yourself what you want to use it for and then aim for something that fills your needs.
If that’s too tiresome and you don’t care about money then just get a Mac. :)
RossInDetroit
I only buy refurbed off-lease Dells, and always for less than $200. They’re way behind the technology curve but they’re stable and hell for strong.
The heat/wheezing could just be a dusted-up cooling channel. Laptops run at the ragged edge of their heat dissipation capacity and any obstruction in airflow can send them critical. The fix, if you want to keep that machine, may be as easy as blowing out or vacuuming out the cooling fins.
Palli
@Viva BrisVegas: Yes, but unlike most officials who retire/resign “to spend more time with the family” that was her true reason. Her husband was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease.
I think, quietly, she has been redeeming herself after his death.
Lawnguylander
If you can afford it, definitely worth spending the extra money to get a MacBook Pro. If there’s an Apple store near you, you can save $100 by asking for a student discount since you have kids. Also, as of December there were previous generation MB Pros available online at pretty good discounts. I think the processors and hard drives were upgraded some time in the fall. My siblings and I chipped in and got one for the Old Gray Fellow for Christmas. If you do that just make sure you get one with Lion installed because having to upgrade from Snow Leopard will eat into the savings. I think you can also get the student discount one of those.
Wag
@Odie Hugh Manatee: @Odie Hugh Manatee:
If that’s too tiresome and you don’t care about money then just get a Mac. :)
Cacti
@Palli:
How does one “quietly redeem herself” from handing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney the keys to the kingdom?
There are times when “I’m sorry” just don’t cut it.
Southern Beale
MacBook, of course. Once you go Mac, you never go back….
Wag
Here’s the block quote I tried to get in above.
Wag
Here’s the block quote I tried to get in above.
debit
I love my Asus for gaming and my Macbook for everything else.
weezer
If you go with an Apple, make sure you keep your eyes peeled in the parking lot. We bought a Macbook pro at the Apple store on Wed night, put the computer in the trunk and headed to a restaurant 3 or 4 miles away. We parked right in front in a well lit area with a lot of people coming and going. We were told by witnesses that right after we went in a car pulled up, a guy got out, broke the driver’s window, popped the trunk release, took the computer and hauled ass – all in less than 10 seconds. The cop that showed up says that people are followed from an Apple store more frequently than you would think. This was in Fort Worth. Naive behavior on our part I guess.
Angela
I don’t game, my computing needs are simple, and I love my Macbook Air.
RossInDetroit
I’m an outlier in the computer world, but I’ve been involved with them since the ’70s. I get the minimum machine that will meet my needs. I get it as cheap as possible and I make it last. As a technology guy I’m used to shaving pennies off of the cost of everything. Remember that whatever new/shiny you buy is a depreciated used machine as soon as you take it out of the box. I try to avoid taking that hit.
Corbin Dallas Multipass
Lenovo.
My Idea Pad is a solid machine, has a full keyboard with numpad. Lenovo puts a lot of thought into their machines and it shows, more than Dell or Asus. I got it on after christmas sale. It’ll save you a chunk of change on a mac. And none of the risk of theft according to weezer above.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: By quietly hanging herself & leaving a note explaining that.
Betty Cracker
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I’m not a gamer, but I use it for work 10+ hours a day, mostly in Microsoft apps (Word, PPT, etc.), content management systems, etc. I also use it for web surfing, video viewing, amateurish video editing and Photoshopping, etc. Basically, it has to be pretty durable because I’m on it all day.
TooManyJens
@JPL:
It’ll take a lot more than a few insults aimed at Romney and Gingrich to make amends for installing Bush the Lesser.
Betty Cracker
@RossInDetroit: Thanks. I did blow out the fins, and it helped somewhat. But this laptop is on its last legs, I think. God forbid I should try to charge my phone on it while doing anything else.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Let’s put it a different way: Even the Conservative Sandra Day O’Connor realizes how fucked up Mitt and Newt are.
JR
I got an Acer Aspire not too long ago, works pretty well with Ubuntu Linux on it. But I will never understand why Shuttlecock put a nickel back into that UI they call Unify (or maybe Unity?) ’cause it is a total waste of time to re-engineer the UI just “because I wanted to”.
It is a little more like a Mac, but so what? who cares? The old one was like all the other before it…
Windows isn’t all that bad, unless you have an itch to scratch, like I do. Having had to hassle with it professionally for years, now I keep a workstation around for Windows and have Linux on all the in use daily machines.
Soonergrunt
What do you want to use it for?
I should think that for the vast majority of persons who do not live on their computers, the following should be the 90% solution:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834200367
DELL Inspiron 14R-N4110 Refurbished Notebook Intel Pentium B940(2.00GHz) 14″ 4GB Memory 320GB HDD DVD±R/RW Intel HD Graphics 3000, 802.11n WLAN, Windows 7 Home Premium
Betty Cracker
Macbook peeps: I used Macs back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I always had issues when trading Microsoft documents back and forth with PC users. Stuff like em dashes being converted to little squares and such like.
Some folks have assured me these compatibility issues have been resolved, but others have told me that they still crop up. I’m generally a fan of Apple products, but that (and the price, of course) is what holds me back.
MikeJ
@JR: I’m with you. Can’t stand Unity, and 12.04 is probably going to be even worse. I’m trying to decide which distro to switch to.
WaterGirl
Macbook. Any Macbook is good, but I recommend the Macbook Pro or the Macbook Air 13″. I recently replaced my Macbook Pro with a new Macbook Air and I am loving it!
With as much time as I spend with my computer on my lap, I won’t go back to a regular sized (and heavier) laptop. I got the Air in early november and there hasn’t been a single thing I couldn’t do on my Macbook Air that I could do on my Macbook Pro. (Not true of the macbook air 2 years ago, by the way)
Edit: I thought I might miss the 15″ screen (my macbook air is 13″) but I don’t miss it at all.
Lee
@Betty Cracker:
I recommend a Toshiba. Mine has held up to 2 kids banging it around for a couple of years.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Betty Cracker:
In that case I would look for something with an Core i5 CPU, minimum of 4 gigs of RAM and a mid-range dedicated graphics card, Lenovo or Dell both have good candidates. Since you are in Win apps a lot it would make more sense to go with Win7, preferably Ultimate edition.
A system with dedicated graphics is a bit more but you get much better performance out of it. You might get by with a Core i3 too but the i5 would give you some longevity.
@MikeJ:
Fedora, it just works good. :) I use FC15 with XFCE on my HP DL580G2 & G3 servers and it runs as stable as a rock. I like a GUI for everyday stuff and XFCE is a nice, lightweight one.
Soonergrunt
@Betty Cracker: Here you are, then.
ASUS G74SX-NH71 Notebook Intel Core i7 2670QM(2.20GHz) 17.3″ 12GB Memory DDR3 500GB HDD 7200rpm DL DVD±RW/CD-RW NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M
You may not like the keyboard, though. It looks kind of chiclet-ish.
WaterGirl
@weezer: That must have been a heartbreaker! Hopefully your insurance covered a replacement?
danielx
Been playing with a Macbook Pro (not mine) for a week now, and it’s a nice machine. Picked it out for my sis-in-law, who is an Apple person and a doc who generally isn’t concerned with cost. However…from my perspective it was hellish expensive for a laptop, by the time you got done adding the three year protection plan. This was the only option offered at the Apple store, by the way, which seems to be the Apple way – anything you want as long as it’s the way we provide it. Shorter: you’ll take it and like it because we’re the best. All that being said, it’s a fast powerful and elegant machine.
However….if you’ve been using PC type computers for a couple of decades, like me, I’m not sure I’d make the jump. I don’t have to think about how I want to do something on a PC type laptop, I just do it. You have to learn a whole new set of keyboard shortcuts , etc, and I’m not sure the time and effort is worth it, especially considering the cost factor. Plus there’s a shitload more software available for a PC type machine. And, leave us not forget, the PC machine comes with a mouse. I really, really hate touch pads.
As far as other laptops? I’ve heard good things about both Toshiba and Lenovo, and you can get a fairly powerful machine with extended warranty for half the cost of a Macbook Pro. DO NOT buy HP, their quality on the suckometer where 1 is no problem and 10 is send it back about six times to get a defective component replaced….is about 150.
As to Ms. O’Connor…great quote, Sandra. However, if you think that’s going to get you off the hook for helping to subject us to eight years of the Boy Warlord and his Iago, you’d best think again. Al Gore might not have been the best preznit EVAR, as W supporters used to say about him, but i’m willing to bet fifty bucks against a stale doughnut that if he’d been elected in 2000 that there would be a lot more people alive today.
The Moar You Know
Just bought a kick-ass Lenovo from Newegg for 400 bucks. Awesome machines and dirt cheap. Or you can spent 4 times that amount for a MacBook Pro that isn’t any better. They do look cool, though. Especially if you’re one of those “I love to sit in a coffeeshop and flaunt my disposable income” types.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Soonergrunt:
Now if you want a flamethrower of a notebook… ;)
Good choice though! :)
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: If you want to do an experiment, include a list of the characters you are concerned about, I will create a document that contains those characters and send it to you via email so you can see for yourself.
I can send a .doc file and/or a .docx file (most current version of word).
RossInDetroit
I have some experience with Toshiba and I like them a lot. My wife runs Unigraphics and Autocad, hard core pro CAD systems, on a 17″ as her travel machine and it’s never missed a step. I don’t know how their features compare, but their basic engineering looks solid.
catclub
Did anyone else look at that picture and think she was the wife of Emperor Palpatine?
Maybe its just me.
dmbeaster
Yeah, she is one of the hacks who was glad to toss the law out in order to install a Republican president. She was a major Republican political operative before she went onto the bench.
But that also puts this comment in a special light. Here is someone who should be cheering for her team, and she makes this biting pithy remark. Talk out being unhappy with your current crop of contenders.
Tone In DC
Damn. Hope the cops catch that guy.
My car’s stereo has been stolen twice. The insurance broken glass deductible is more than the cost of a new stereo.
Paul in KY
@catclub: That or one of those weird ladies in ‘Brazil’.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
I’ve historically been a Mac user at home, but IMO laptops are basically disposable commodity items now. And Win7 really isn’t all that bad. Processor speed isn’t even a real issue anymore, as long as you get 4GB RAM.
Current home laptop is a Toshiba named ‘sputnik’ that I got for $360 at Best Buy back in August. It’s not very pretty, but it’s built solid, and it even has a proper numeric keypad. (I named it sputnik because of its looks… If the USSR had won the Cold War, this is what all the laptops would look like, right down to the 1970s “computer” font on the keycaps).
baldheadeddork
If you can’t afford to drop $1500 on a laptop, I’d recommend these:
@Best Buy
http://deals.bestbuy.com/computers++tablets2/product/4693864/sony++vaio+e+series+laptop++charcoal+black
Set this one up for my niece last Sunday. Good laptop and the price is decent. Sony support is very good and their reliability is way above average.
Also at BB if you want a 14″: http://deals.bestbuy.com/computers++tablets2/product/4707182/samsung++series+3+laptop++blacktitanium
@Office Depot –
http://officedepot.shoplocal.com/officedepot/default.aspx?action=entryflash&SiteID=145&PretailerID=-99860&CityStateZip=&sid=ZRNDFZBdykKOmHHxoMz5NJI&odserver=www.officedepot.com
Really nice specs and Asus has excellent reliability.
General laptop guidelines –
*Avoid AMD machines. Love the processors, but the reliability of the motherboard chipsets is horrible compared to Intel.
*Stay away from sub-$500 machines. The sweet spot is to find a $750-900 machine on sale for $600-700.
*Brands with the best reliability are Samsung, Toshiba, Asus, Sony and Lenovo Think Pad. HP and Dell depend on the model, and avoid Acer and Gateway like the plague.
*How a laptop looks and feels to you is as important as the specs or brand. Go to a store and play around with different brands to find the keyboard and display you like the best.
a.j.
Betty – I was for years a PC support guy and had hated the old Macs I’d tried when Jerry Falwell’s grandpa was riding his dinosaur into battle against gay hoplites.
But my local Best Buy had a 14-day “no-charge return” thing on the Macbooks where they wouldn’t charge me restocking or anything, so I tried it out.
Remember – I used to troubleshoot Windows for a living, so I was sure the Macbook Pro would go back to the store after a couple of days. But I can tell you, I will never buy another Dell (total shit-show) or Windows machine again, this thing just runs without all the slow rebooting and random PITA windows stuff, and I can open and close it a bajillion times and it just works.
At least on my Dell (which was only slightly cheaper) I can’t reliably open and close it more than once per complete power-all-the-way and then power-all-the-way-off again before it forgets its name or decides that the middle of a long gaming session would be the PERFECT time to randomly restart for a Windows Update — every 4 days.
If you can have a risk-free way of trying a MacBook for a few days, it’s worth at least experimenting. They are worlds apart from the crap I hated when I used them ages ago.
roc
I’m a lifelong-Windows guy (professional geek) who recently switched for personal use. I used to do exactly what RossInDetroit did: off-lease refurbs. It’s impossible to beat price/performance if you want to save money and don’t need the latest/greatest.
Now I recommend the macbook air to anyone who can swing it. Largely because I don’t want to do desktop support anymore: macs are cleaner out of the box (no lame adware and pack-ins), harder to junk up and when it does happen (it does still happen) it’s solved by someone else.
Other things to like about macs:
Their trackpads are hands-down the best I’ve ever used. I *hate* trackpads, but Apple trackpads I don’t mind. Nothing else I’ve used comes anywhere close.
The machines are physically well-buit. solid hinges, rigid case, no creaking and flexing. I can’t speak to the plastic ones, but the aluminum shells are just great.
The batteries are awesome. Out of the box, without paying more for extended batteries or having a workable 4-hour battery become an obnoxious 90-minute battery in under a year. (Apple’s one-year warranty actually covers the battery’s ability to hold a charge. if it’s under half in a year, they’ll replace it.)
Sleep. I find OSX is just better at sleep than any Windows laptop I’ve seen or used. And if you do get an Air with a solid state drive, there’s no PC that can come close. You don’t even shut them off. Just close the lid, it goes to sleep and it can stay that way for *days*. (you’ll lose ~3% battery life per *day* of sleep) When you come back later, lift the lid and it’s up and waiting for you before the lid is fully open. it sounds like a little thing, but in day to day use you really appreciate it. And it’s unspeakably awesome to never have to do the mental sleep/shutdown debate. (where you try to puzzle out whether you’ll need your laptop again soon-enough that you would rather sleep it than wait for startup/shutdown, or whether sleep will eat too much battery before you get back to it)
The support, again, is great.
Solid-state drives provide the biggest user-noticeable boost in computing performance in *years*. Regardless of whether you go Windows or Mac, I would highly recommend them to anyone if they can afford it. And by the time you add a decent battery and an SSD to a Windows laptop, they’re not far from Apple prices at all.
And lastly, resale. Old macs get bought and sold all the time. It’s a lot easier to justify a thousand dollar machine when you see three-year-old machines going for $400 or more.
(I’m in no way trying to say you *can’t* get those things out of a Windows laptop experience. –Aside from the macbook air sleep experience. I don’t think you can even buy/build a windows machine that actually comes close to that– I’m just saying that most people don’t. Most laptops being sold won’t. And when you price out Windows machines that compare better, the price differential largely goes away and it becomes a question of personal preference.)
burnspbesq
MacBook Air. Light weight, SSD, best keyboard on any laptop I’ve ever used, even the 11″ display is great.
If there are Windows apps you can’t live without, install VMWare Fusion and run a Windows virtual machine right along side your Mac apps.
Windows 2011 for Mac is missing a couple of things whose absence is annoying (no Metadata Assistant is a royal pain in the ass), but it’s solid and there’s no learning curve.
And when you whip it out in a meeting, the jealous sighs are worth the price of admission.
And if you go MBA and have a spare $999, go for the 27″ Thunderbolt display. You’ll be amazed how much more efficient you can be when you can see every open window.
Villago Delenda Est
@Paul in KY:
That’s about the only way out for her.
She committed an unforgivable, treasonous crime.
xian
@Cacti: that’s true, but “I’m sorry” would be a start. I don’t believe anyone is making amends if they haven’t yet confessed their transgression and apologized for it explicitly.
dr. luba
I’m a Mac user since 1995 (my first computer), and the quality has improved tremendously over the years. Current laptops are solid machines. And I like that they’ve gotten away from the two-tier model (consumer and pro). I would love a new one, but my four year old model is chugging along just fine, and still does everything I want it to.
IIRC, Consumer Reports decided that the Apple extended warranty was the only one out there worth buying. And I’ve never regretted purchasing it. I had a laptop go bad on me just a month before it would have gone out of warranty (i.e. two years 11 months), and, when the Apple service center couldn’t fix it to my Apple Store’s satisfaction, they gave me a brand new laptop off the shelf.
BTW, for non-geeks at least, the Genius bar at the Apple store is great. Free in person tech support essentially forever.
eemom
@Villago Delenda Est:
roger that. That woman will never wash the blood off her hands.
Truly a case where a single vile action renders everything else she ever said or did irrelevant.
Palli
@Cacti:
I should have said “trying” to redeem herself. In the morning I try to be charitable but reality sets in…she has knowingly pushed the retreat from progress into democracy
Franklin
For the love of god, get a Mac! You don’t have to fuss with them; you just turn them on, and they work. Yes, they’re more expensive, but you get that time back; with Windows, I was always wasting time just to keep the damned things working.
It is hard to change, because of the different shortcut keys. But after a month, if you go back to Windows, you’ll wonder how you were ever able to use such a horrible operating system.
60th Street
The Macs today are super awesome and compatibility issues between PCs are nonexistent in my experience. You’ll have more compatibility issues between older versions of Windows and Office and post-Windows 7/Office than between Mac and PC now.
I’m saying this as a PC guy who has had to work on both platforms for going on 15 years.
Last summer I caved and bought an iMac to replace my main workstation for the first time ever.
(So I guess that makes me not much of a PC guy anymore)
Mac’s dirty little secret is that, since Macs went Intel, you can partition the hard drives on them, install Windows and boot them up as PCs flawlessly. So, I now have my PC and Mac in one workstation that can run either using the system’s full resources.
Before this was only possible on a Mac by virtualizing the windows environment via software, so both operating systems had to run at the same time, which taxed the computer’s resources too much.
All that has been alleviated. On the days I need to work in Windows, I boot it up in Windows. This was key in the beginning during the transition. Now I only do that occasionally and mostly just run it as a Mac.
This is possible on any new Mac or Macbook.
Leslie
What 60th Street said. You can have both Windows and Mac as needed, plus the durability and quality of Macs generally.
I had a Toshiba laptop that I used 10-12 hours a day, like you do, until it finally died; fortunately, I managed to get my data backed up before I lost it. Now I’m on a MacBook Pro, and don’t miss the PC laptop at all. I can do everything I need to on the Mac, plus it’s steady, reliable, and boots up in about 10 seconds.
amanda
I meant to mention earlier that my geek friends have told me that the Apple refurb department is very highly regarded, so if you decide to go with a Mac laptop you might check refurb’d machines as you could save a few hundred $ off the hig price. They go over each machine very thoroughly and give you a new warranty — so a very good deal. Also refurbished machines from MicroCenter come highly recommended by my geek friends — that’s where I got my Toshiba, saved several hundred $…Good luck!
JC
Oh SNAP!
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: I was pretty much being serious. I know you would agree. Probably the most horrible decision since Dred-Scott.
tavella
I adore my MacBook Pro, though half of that is because it’s Unix under the pretty skin, so I can do my QA work in a proper environment.
I also have a recent HP, which ended up annoying me — the mousepad is terrible, and I hate having to hook up an external mouse.
luc
There might be alot of laptops to recommend, but they come in such great variety, e.g. from 11 inch screeen to 17 inch, and priceranges from $200 (I am typing on one of these) to $1700.
I guess all recommendations migth be in vain until you specify a bit what you are looking for.
wrb
@Betty Cracker: I haven’t had those problems lately
trollhattan
@ Betty Cracker
Mine (laptop) died an untimely, unseemly death last fall and after studious shopping I ended up with an HP Pavilion DV6 Quad, from Costco. I went with Costco because of both the deal and their two-year warranty. At the time I couldn’t beat the price but of course a month later it was back on sale for a hundred bucks less. What are you gonna do?
Importantly, the thing is FAST–i7 quad core, 8GB RAM, 750GB HDD, discrete Radeon graphics card with 1GB RAM, USB3. I’m also happy with how cool it runs–I think my old one died of heat exhaustion.
All this of course presumes you have a collection of Windoz software. If you have a dying Mac, prepare to spend 2.5X as much for your new computer, but know it will be very pretty. Ask them for USB3, just for laughs.
Good luck!
Ecks
Used to believe the hype about macs, till had to use my wife’s one. It crashes. It gets the little rainbow spiny wheel of death. It’s only 3ish years old, but suddenly doesn’t play most videos on the web, because they demand the latest release of flash, and she’d apparently need to buy an operating system upgrade to accommodate this. She had to buy an extra dongle in order to plug her laptop into projectors, and then when she upgraded laptops had to buy a new dongle too, because the old one wouldn’t plug into the new machine.
I’m not down on macs per se, but I certainly don’t buy this utopian view others here seem to have.
The Golux
I have a Samsung QX410 (Intel i5 processor, 4GB ram) and I absolutely love it. Fast as hell – I’m not sure which matters more, the 4GB or the quad core processor, but it never bogs down, and has excellent battery life (6+ hours, especially if I remember to turn off the Wi-fi). Very good-looking, too.
les
Compaq refurb, $300 from Microcenter; full keyboard, full software, excellent built in wifi, hasn’t had a problem in 2 1/2 years. Doin’ mostly docs, spreadsheets, surfin’.
Smedley the Uncertain
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Absolutely right!! I wish more people would think through their requirements before asking me to get a machine for them.
Nothing’s changed in the 30 odd years (some odder than others) that I’ve been around this business. That said, the best variety of cost effective solutions are PC’s for the average users. My Mac friends generally have unique and often more demanding requirements. PC’s are a commodity so most brand names are valid choice. I have been placing a lot of Lenovo’s lately, mine’s an aging HP and Toshiba also has good product line. Criteria: CPU speed, RAM storage and Hard Drive storage (bigger numbers/$$ are better). Oh yeah, they all have wireless. If you have a PC now then you have an investment in software to reuse.
Betty Cracker
Thanks so much for the laptop opinions and recommendations, everyone. Big decisions! Big decisions!
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: That would be swell, WaterGirl, if it’s not too much trouble. Could you do a .doc and a docx with em dashes, en dashes, standard bullets with text, an inserted bullet symbol and a Euro symbol? To [email protected]? Many thanks!
Darkrose
I would strongly advise against a refurbished Dell. My wife and I got identical Dell laptops optimized for gaming in December of 2010. Since then, hers has had two separate hard drive failures. The original drive and the first replacement both turned out to be refurbished; after the second failure I kicked and screamed and insisted that they send me a new disk.
I’d still buy a Dell, but only new, with new parts.
Lord Baldrick
Just bought one at Costco – Samsung RC512 for $750 including tax. All the bells and whistles, 2-year warranty, 90-day return without a fight….running just fine.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Late coming back to the thread, but I will indeed create that document and send it to you.
ruemara
@Betty Cracker: I cross platform everyday and have for over a decade. If you’re having odd characters popup, you r doing it rong. And considering macs are now intel machines, throw in the new MS Word and you are good to go.
Citizen Alan
The think that defines O’Connor for me is that she disgraced herself to put Bush in the White House and he repaired her for her generosity by replacing her with someone (Alito) who will vote to overturn nearly every precedent she set. Does anyone think that the Endorsement Test is still good law in Establishment Clause cases?
Also too, that picture above is horrific. I was wondering if Waylon Flowers is just out of shot with his hand stuck up O’Connor’s ass.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Just sent the email with the sample files. If it doesn’t arrive, please let me know. (I’m sure you can find my email address somewhere at balloon juice.)
kelly
Where you buy is more important. Costco has the best warranty and return program. That is, unless you’re an Apple person…they don’t carry.
Dream On
Avoid Gateway, that’s for sure. HP is not what it was. Now I’m absorbed into my MacBook Pro. And I’m happy now. I’m really very very happy.
MGLoraine
Re: “Justice” SDO – Haha! Very funny! Now throw her ass in jail for subverting the will of the electorate by appointing Dick Cheney to be the Unitary Executive in 2000. No, I will NEVER “get over it”.
Re: Laptops – Fogeddaboudit! Get a desktop for home use (much cheaper and more powerful) and a smart-phone or tablet for mobile use. You could get one of each for about the price of a MacBook.
Lojasmo
Another vote for a MacBook pro. Just got a base model for mrs. Lojasmo, and it is AWESOME.
Fck SDO
jmg
I am to Thinkpads what others are to Macs. I love that you can download a maintenance manual from Lenovo that will tell you how to tear the whole thing down to its bones and rebuild it, but I’m a tinkerer. If you are looking for a bargain (and if you are a bit of a gambler), I bought this a few months ago, put in a SSD and transferred my Win7 license and I’m really satisfied with what I got for $400.
Mac refurbs are a great deal, too, if that’s your thing.