The all-in-one action. Laptop bag, usb optical mouse, usb floppy included.
slightly less than $42,000NT from Guanghua in Taipei. 2 year warranty in Taiwan, 1 year global.
So far rock solid. I carry it all over the place and no problems so far (knock on wood).
Assuming you’ll be in taiwan for a bit, I’d go with either Asus or Acer. More bang for the buck. I used to work with Dell laptops a lot and their keyboards or LCD would go bad with moderate handling. Plus I had to have a guy come over 3 times to fix the keyboard. One good thing about Acer/Asus is that the service is done by actual company’s guys here in Taiwan vs. 3rd parties for Dell in the states. Can’t say anything on Toshiba, HP/Compaq. IBM is good but too pricey for the “average” joe for the “average” workload.
I used to think that, but a friend that has got one set me straight. Apparently Sony are a bit slack with driver updates etc [/quote]
My son has one, bought by his mother who believed the sales person.
The Sony is an OK computer but you cannot download new drivers. Their web site always says to refer to your installation disk. So when something new comes out you can’t download the drivers. Daft sense of customer service.
robi666 wrote [quote]avoid acer, leo and benq[/quote]
Any reason you say that? They’re all Taiwanese makes too. Before I bought my mac, I had a twinhead laptop (another Taiwanese brand) and when something went wrong I’d just take it to any of the twinhead authorised dealers, and there were a few around because it was made here.
I’ve got a friend that’s had his acer for 5 years and had no trouble at all with it. Unlike my twinhead that I had to get serviced a few times, he’s had no trouble with his acer. Their travelmates are quite reputable. A quick browse on cnet.com, zdnet.com confirms this.
Acer TravelMate 803LCi cnet editor review 8.5
Acer Aspire 2000 cnet editor review 8.2
As for benq, I thought they were just a branch off of acer. Their recent joybook had been well received in reviews too. BenQ, in general recently won a string of innovation awards and are now becoming more recognised. I bought my dlp cinema projector from benq and think it’s a ripper.
Not quite. BenQ used to be the OEM manufacturer of Acer branded peripherals, but were a separate company. A few years back they decided to stop being an just OEM producer and established their own brand.
Under no circumstances should anyone even consider buying an ACER notebook.
They are pure CRAP, CRAP, CRAP!
I am sorry to say this since i am one of the losers that actually purchased one. Not only that, 4 of my friends also bought Acers over the past few years and -surprise, all crapped out as well. Mine: Model is Acer TX-525 Travelmate Problems: Steel hinge snapped in half after about a year of average use, plastic casing cracked, IR cover fell off, Battery burn out in about 6 months. (duh, with Acer notebooks you are supposedly suppose to remove the battery whenever the power is plugged in). First notebook i ever had that i had to do this. Also, the internal CDburner has never worked 100%. My Friend: Battery burn out, motherboard burned out and keyboard had some keys that stopped working. My other friend: battery burn out, then complete system failure (suspect mb as well). My other friend: XX-100 (new small model with LCD panel that can rotate, not sure the #) - Plastic casing large crack.
I should have known better because i bought an Acer Altos server about 7 years ago and constantly had trouble with it. Also, I setup a 60 station network and 10 of the Acer desktops were DOA. I definitely want to support Taiwan companies, but Acer is a MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT! The sorriest part about the company is that they are one of the few companies from Taiwan that was able to build a global brand, but in my mind, their products are nothing but crap.
…i feel better now for releasing (for good) this pent up disgust. Thanks for creating this post. My next computer for home i’m thinking about the minimac with a 19" screen. I like the mac OS and am tired of windows file manager quirkiness. (or maybe the G5 imac, since it is almost a portable)
Asus probably offers the best laptops nowadays. They are an Intel “A” site, meaning they get the latest CPUs first and help intel debug them, which shows they have very competent engineers. They are the #1 motherboard company in Taiwan. IBMs are good too, but not sure if the quality will be maintained with Leveno now the owners. Plus, I believe the PLA/Norinco has some investment in Leveno (legend). Not someone that i want to support.
I’m as ahppy as a pig in shit over my new IBM R40E. after some start up problems due to my ignorence everything was fine. It’s a basic model but it sems to work well for average applications.
Well, I do the same thing with my Powerbook as it should be standard procedure on any notebook. A standard Li/Ion battery has a lifetime of about 3 years, no matter if you use the battery or not. This lifetime is shortend with every charging cycle, no matter if it goes from empty to full or just from almost full to full. Leaving the battery in the notebook all the time even when the powersupply is attached will trigger several cycles a day charging the battery from almost full to full. I am not sure how many, but that probably depends on the charging electronics. So if you have the battery in all the time that you are using the power supply, a huge chunk of this 3 years is taken away from you battery. This can of course shorten the lifetime of the battery to just 6 months if you have the notebook on the power supply all the time.
Yes, i realize that, but most newer, good quality laptops with Li-Ion batteries have a circuitry built into the battery that performs two functions, one is to calibrate the full charge capacity, the other is to prevent overcharge. My battery has to stick out the side blocking my cd drive. it is just annoying as hell.
That still doesn’t solve the problem that your battery goes through a charging cycles each time the electronic detects that it is not fully charged anymore, not matter if 90% or 1% of charge is used. So it is always better for battery lifetime to remove it if you use your notebook with the power supply. I can even provide references if you can read german. So Acer might not be doing good PR by mentioning this fact to there customer, but at least they want their customers to get the most use out of their batteries.
Thinkpad notebooks don’t charge the battery unless it’s less than 90% charged.
I’ve had the battery at 92% for one month, since I use the notebook almost exclusively on power supply.
That sounds like a good alternative, but what if you want to travel, so you will have to play with your notebook for a while, so the battery goes below 90%, then you can charge it, and then you can take it of the power supply. That also sounds a little inconvenient.
Also, my X40 at work charges the battery all the way to 100% no matter if it is at 50%, 90% or 99%.
I had a Compaq a few years ago. It burned and crackled before being repaired. Somthing to do with a heat sink and no paste.
Also had a Think pad. Yes, it did stink like a stinkpad.
I purchased a local brand one year ago.
Lemel notebook with 17" screen, 1.6ghz.
Its given me no trouble at all. Numeric full keypad is a huge bonus for number crunchers.
I had a 22" crt screen hooked into the previous 14" notebook and found I was better just looking at the 17" as it is nearly as wide but obviously not as tall.
47,000nt from a small computer company with english xp professional operating system (legal version)
I have no idea why these are not more mainstream. Maybe I got lucky with no trouble.
Downside: They are heavy. 6kg I think. Not quite a down side but the lemel brand makes me think Lemon. Stupid Chinglish name. They could have called it just about anything else and done better.
Actually, you can set the start and stop thresholds for charging.
If you need to travel you can set the start threshold at 100%, so it will charge it anyway.
I guess that on Thinkpad X series the threshold is already set at 100%, since these are “ultraportables”, and are supposed to run mostly on battery.
So, there’s no way out! IBM really did a very good job at power and battery management, compared to Acer or others.
Thanks for the info. I guess I just never explored all the options in the battery management. Since everything is in chinese I could not read anything anyway. I will have to take a look into that, then I would not have to remove the battery all the time, and I can just change the option.
I bought an Acer (travelmate 350 series) 3,5 years ago and have never had any problems with it. It’s light, tough and the screen still looks great. I know a couple of other guys with Acers and no problems either.
Well, I guess all of us have some anecdotal evidence that such and such brand is trash. I say, stay away from Dell, Compaq and any one of the small nonames in Taiwan. My next notebook will be an IBM T42 or maybe, just maybe an ibook g4. Not an Acer again, since I don’t like the design any longer.
I don’t know about this being true or not. My company provided teachers for ACER a LONG time ago, but the engineers at Acer said they didn’t think their pcs were any good… they preferred LEMEL pcs.
IBM really did a very good job at power and battery management, compared to Acer or others.