Sony vs. Toshiba Laptops

[JHZR2]

Hi,

We're getting a few new work laptops. These get real train, airplane, etc use, on the road, quite a bit.

We have had IBMs, but havent been too happy since they changed to lenovo. Dell hasnt been all that great either.

A few folks have bought sony vaio laptops, and have loved them. Ive seen that the toshiba (tecra?) line seems to be decent too, and toshiba gets good consumer reports (FWIW) numbers too. My father has an OLD toshiba (100 mhz, i think), that still runs fine!

which of the two would you buy and why?

Im looking ofr a widescreen one, but not larger than 15.4... this allows side by side text, while still fitting in a normal work bag.

Thanks!

JMH

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

We've purchased all of those...

The Dell X1 is pure joy! Managers LOVE these things. It's like corporate candy. Seriously. I deliver a few of these every month. They don't care about the benefits of the wide-screen layout when it's soooo convienient. Battery life is excellent. The standard battery gives 3-3.5 hours of life and the optional extra battery gives about 5-6 hours of life. Great for long plane rides.

The Sony Vaio with the 13.3" X-Brite screen is another nifty product, but the price is never cheap, it doesn't feel that fast (even after I put a 7200rpm drive in it) and re-loading them from an XP-sysprep/standard image load stand point isn't fun nor as easy as the X1.

The Toshiba A4's are nice, but unless you order the dedicated ATI video, they feel sluggish. They do offer the "Tru-Brite" screen which is the way to go nowadays. If you can't go for the Dell X1 given it's smaller size, then Toshiba gets my vote. Stick with the 7200 RPM disks and 2x512MB RAM modules to get the most out of DDR memory performance.

 

[kkreit01]

The old Toshiba laptops were horrible (Techra 8000 series). We used them at work, and they had lot of problems. We've switch to Dell, and much better now.

 

[1 FMF]

I have a toshiba a75-s209 for personal use. Was in a rush to get one and got it at bestbuy. I am happy with it, can't say anything bad about toshiba. The screen is 15.4, very good display and excellent for dvd's. biggest downside is it's a 3gz P4 and battery life is short. It's also heavy. More of a compromise really, I knew that when I bought it but it had what I wanted for the price range.

The laptop market is so dynamic that you can't really label a manufacturer as good or bad. They all have runs of certain models that are crappy. So unless you buy a model that's been out for a year or so which had enough reviews you can make a decision off of you won't know if that newer model is dependable or not.

Our older dell laptops here at work were junk in terms of performance but that may be due to the IT maintenance of them. The newer dell laptops we just got refreshed with seem to be getting good comments- light, good battery life, nice display, fast (enough).

 

[GoldenRod]

JHZR2,

I never hear you talk about oil; just power tools, string trimmers, and appliances. What's up with that? You do realize this is a forum about oil and lubricants don't you?

 

[Racerjk]

I love my Toshiba laptop! However, the fan is NOISY! It was supposed to be fixed, but it started doing it again. Other than that, it's been great.

 

[JHZR2]

quote:

---

Originally posted by GoldenRod:
JHZR2,

I never hear you talk about oil; just power tools, string trimmers, and appliances. What's up with that? You do realize this is a forum about oil and lubricants don't you?

---

I've been on here a LONG time... Ive done a LOT of reading and posting in the oil, diesel, additives, etc. sections... Heck, I was even a moderator for a time. I've done my share of oil related posting, and fortunately, Ive set up some good oil choices that are optimized to my vehicles' usage profiles. So I need to have less involvement in oil related stuff now as a result - for better or worse.

What is happening is that Im in the process of buying my first house, so that takes all precidence. This site is a wealth of info besides oil, so its a nice all in one to get all of my questions answered.

You're right, I ought to spend more time back in the oil related forums... I just need to conjure up some time

JMH