What laptop have you got?

[Andy Black]

I can't use laptops anymore. I spent too many years working and then playing online poker on laptops. Now I get excruciating neck and shoulder ache whenever I'm on a laptop for even 10 minutes . So much so I have to see a physio to get unknotted.

My chiropractor tells me he gets a lot of youngsters in now who display the signs of whiplash. Their necks have lost their natural curve from looking down at laptop screens all day long. This curve acts like suspension for our heads when we're walking along. He says things are getting steadily worse due to smartphone usage - because people bend their head down even further now, towards their bellies even.

Just be careful using laptops and smartphones too much.

 

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[Imgal]

I've done both Mac and PC and both have had their pluses and minuses and to be honest while a few years ago I'd have said Apple had the edge, I can't honestly say that I see a huge difference between the two.

My Macbook died after I poured coffee on it (it probably wouldn't have if I didn't do it just before having to leave before going to a funeral and not being able to do a thing about it), but before that it was a real workhorse. Acer got crossed off my list after forking out a heap of money and then for the wifi, ethernet port and keyboard all dying within 8 months (without any added coffee).

Currently on a Lenovo and it's more than doing the job ... and I seriously hammer mine to death. The only reason I don't go with Mac is because of that fact I've come to realise I'm going to go through laptops every year or so and so I'd much rather pay for something that will work its guts out during that time than pay out the extra for the shiny looks. Having said that if you travel a lot then the Macbook Air or Pro would be worth considering. At the mo I'm more back and forth between UK and US only so not a big factor.

 

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[Vigilante]

Dual screen Apple iMac for office.

Google Chromebook for travel and mobile use.

Never going back. Google is getting better, and better, and better.

 

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[SBS.95]

@MJ DeMarco did you ever start using your Google Chromebook?

I am obsessed. They're so cheap, and so great.

I currently have a Toshiba Chromebook. It does 99% of what I need a computer for. The heavy lifting 1% you shouldn't be doing on a laptop anyway. (design work, etc...)

I previously had a Macbook and swore by it, and I am telling you .... I like the Chromebook MORE because of the Google seamless integration.

https://www.google.com/chromebook/

Holy shit this has been my exact same setup for a year.

I hate laptops. They are always impossible to fix and don't last as long as desktops. I would rather work on a desktop all the time.

But for when I do need to be on the go, my Chromebook is great. They weigh nothing, they boot up instantly, and it's exactly what I want on a mobile computer- simple internet access. Can't argue with the price either, mine was $200 with a couple discounts.

 

[JasonR]

2014 Macbook Pro 13" Retina that I bought refurbished. Put some miles on this thing already in the last 6 months with lots of travel and a handful of drops. One of the best machines I've ever owned.

I'm itching for the new 12" Macbook, but the processor just isn't up to snuff yet. If you're traveling, get the lightest gear you can.

 

[Vigilante]

I can't use laptops anymore. I spent too many years working and then playing online poker on laptops. Now I get excruciating neck and shoulder ache whenever I'm on a laptop for even 10 minutes . So much so I have to see a physio to get unknotted.

My chiropractor tells me he gets a lot of youngsters in now who display the signs of whiplash. Their necks have lost their natural curve from looking down at laptop screens all day long. This curve acts like suspension for our heads when we're walking along. He says things are getting steadily worse due to smartphone usage - because people bend their head down even further now, towards their bellies even.

Just be careful using laptops and smartphones too much.

From our local news today!

http://wfla.com/2015/09/24/chiropractors-treating-more-tech-neck-cases-in-tampa/

 

[geekboy]

Bought a Dell XPS 13 back in June and love it.

Almost as slim as a MacBook Air with a smaller footprint. Solid state drive so windows loads in about 5 seconds and battery can last about 8 hours depending on what your doing. Buy it!

 

[Hackdroot]

Chromebook. Cheap and light.

For serious work I use a PC desktop.

 

[Vigilante]

About 4 months old... I got a refurbished model so got all the dodgy stuff wiped off before even got started with!



Stop it already. I'm trying to resist adding more to my collection and that's not helping.

@MJ DeMarco did you ever start using your Google Chromebook?

I am obsessed. They're so cheap, and so great.

I currently have a Toshiba Chromebook. It does 99% of what I need a computer for. The heavy lifting 1% you shouldn't be doing on a laptop anyway. (design work, etc...)

I previously had a Macbook and swore by it, and I am telling you .... I like the Chromebook MORE because of the Google seamless integration.

https://www.google.com/chromebook/

 

[MJ DeMarco]

@MJ DeMarco did you ever start using your Google Chromebook?

I use it periodically-- it has served its purpose real well since I only use it to access the internet and write. It's light and very mobile with long battery life. I'm very happy I only paid a few hundred bucks for it VS shelling out big bux for an Apple.

 

[Imgal]

Best Buy and the office superstores (Depot, Staples, and Office Max) regularly drop the Chromebooks (subsidized heavily by Google) down $75 (+/-) so don't buy it unless it has an instant discount, and stick with the Toshiba or Samsung models (or maybe HP). However, for sub $300 (likely around $200!) you will fall in love.

Great advice! Actually very similar to @MJ DeMarco would mostly use it for writing and internet needs on the move. I will keep my beady offer eye peeled!

 

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[Hackdroot]

Dual screen Apple iMac for office.

Google Chromebook for travel and mobile use.

Never going back. Google is getting better, and better, and better.

Exactly. I have two chromebooks now. A cheap $150 model and a higher end $350 model.

I use my google drive for cloud storage, google docs for authoring and editing on the go, and a flurry of other utilities that integrate beautifully into the OS.

With google voice, I have a free single phone number that forwards to all my phones (cell, landline, and office) and to my chromebook via hangouts. Voicemail transcriptions and the ability to send/receive texts and make phone calls when I only have wifi connectivity as well. Skype also works on it.

Plus, I dual boot the chromebook into ubuntu linux when I have work that requires additional utilities.

For as low as $150, you really get a helluva tool.

 

[Kevind88]

I use a Mac Mini for desktop, Samsung laptop and a Toshiba Chromebook. Now that I can use web based Skype, I am starting to use the Chromebook more and more lately for most of my daily tasks.

 

[CommonCents]

Thx, this is a great point, i'll make an effort to raise my laptop a bit higher and utilize eye level screens while at my desk. I'll also check into a standing desk. Just got a killer new office suite too! I"m guessing there might be a desk top adjustable work surface/computer/screen stand that'll work.

I can't use laptops anymore. I spent too many years working and then playing online poker on laptops. Now I get excruciating neck and shoulder ache whenever I'm on a laptop for even 10 minutes . So much so I have to see a physio to get unknotted.

My chiropractor tells me he gets a lot of youngsters in now who display the signs of whiplash. Their necks have lost their natural curve from looking down at laptop screens all day long. This curve acts like suspension for our heads when we're walking along. He says things are getting steadily worse due to smartphone usage - because people bend their head down even further now, towards their bellies even.

Just be careful using laptops and smartphones too much.

 

[TJPB]

Lenovo Thinkpads. It's the standard at my (very large) employer and I have beat on them since before they were Lenovo.

Currently I use the X series and they are awesome.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x250/

 

[Jon L]

I have an Apple. I switched a year and a half ago after being a PC guy all my life. I was expecting the OS to be perfect and never crash. It isn't perfect. I'd say that there are as many annoyances with the Mac OS as there are with Windows. They're just different. There are some things about the Mac OS that I love though. Some things are simply brilliant. I mean BRILLIANT. And, then there's some things that you just scratch your head on and wonder why they used a 5th grader to put THAT together. Like - why do they put all your pictures into a database by default (a database that can be instantly corrupted, thus losing years worth of photos in a second). Etc. Or, when something doesn't work, it simply doesn't show up in the list of things that you can do. No error messages, no nothing. For example, in Itunes, if you have the wrong version of iTunes installed and it isn't compatible with the IOS version of your iPhone, your iPhone simply wont show up in the list in iTunes. At all. You have to google, 'why isn't my iphone showing up in itunes.' You'll get a bunch of different possibilities, and you'll have to work through all the possibilities to figure out why yours isn't working. If they would have shown an error message, even a cryptic one, you could at least google that and get to the right answer more quickly.

The build quality, though, is simply superb. I have a mid-2012 mac book pro, retina, 15". The screen is amazing. Things are so crisp. I still notice the difference even now - after I've had the laptop for 18 months. It also runs on a solid state drive, which is blazing fast. From pressing the power button, it takes me just as long to get my hands into position to type in my password as it does to boot to the password prompt...a couple seconds.

Also, I bought mine on eBay from a reputable eBay seller. I paid $1500 which is about $1000 less than the brand new price. The laptop was about a year and a half old when I bought it.

 

[DrkSide]

I'll throw in my $.02 to the mix. I am looking at getting a new one probably after the first of the year.

After 10+ years in low level and high level IT support, planning, and infrastructure development I will tell you they all have problems.

I am not partial to one OS over the other as long as I have chrome. My desktop is the real workhorse that I do any design or development on.

Apple will get my business due to the build quality and the battery life. Those are the only two things that I really look at when purchasing a laptop and they seem to have the best going.

 

[Mattie]

I have a packard bell & Mac Pro. I've had Acers in the past. I really never had problems with my desktops and at the time, I thought they took a good beating for gaming and lasted quite awhile. Although I'm nice to these ones because I don't play games, and my son's not using it. He's still on the one back home. I don't like the Mac Pro much for writing. That's why I bought this one. I've only had it for a year. No problems so far.

 

[Mattie]

@Mattie your comment on writing puts me off a little though.

My reasoning was because I didn't want to waste time trying to figure out the programs and crap for formatting and books for publishing. Most of them take windows files and I know they have a program for Mac Pro, but I just wasn't interested in learning all that extra stuff when I was used too Windows and I didn't like using the Mac as much when I got here. It was driving me nuts. lol And some of the companies don't have mac chat and one place I needed to go didn't accept the chat service I wanted to use. So It was making me frustrated and just easier to have what I do. It makes my life easier in many ways. And I don't like Macs because you can steal people's work on them. I ran some ebooks through it and people have access to your writing.

 

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[sija1]

- HP Pavilion P6240F (Desktop) - Bought in 2009
- HP Pavilion dv6 (Laptop) - Bought in 2010 for college
- Dell XPS 8700 Special Edition (Desktop) - Bought in July

Even tho HPs still work perfectly, 5-6 years is too much in the tech field so I needed something better to run emulators and visualization software. I have never tried a MAC. Had Asus, Acer and a lot of my close friends have Toshibas (never have problems with them). From personal experience, I never had any problems with HP. On the other hand, my laptop (don't know if this is the case with other HP laptops as well) can heat so much when running games or other resource demanding software, that I need to open a window even during the winter (in Quebec it's between -25 and -40).
Still don't know about Dell, it's been only 2 months and this is my first experience with them (they get a lot of complaints tho for the crappy client service)

 

[socaldude]

2007 Macbook---Still going strong! Never any problems. Only upgraded the RAM. I got a great value out of it.

2014 Macbook Pro 15inch---Excellent laptop for anything but it is pricey.

And I do have a PC desktop with a few monitors.

 

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[James Thornton]

Surface Pro 3. Best thing ever for digital art. I prefer it over a laptop, but don't think everyone would.

 

[prof]

I've got a 15" 2010 MacBook Pro. I can't actually believe it's 5 years old. I actually never turn the thing off. It's practically been running for that whole time too! I only power it off (as opposed to shutting the lid or triggering sleep mode) when I know I'll be away from it for a long time.

I have a second monitor which hooks up with this laptop at the desk on home. The laptop itself sits on a Roost stand to give me an effective twin display.

MacBook Pro's look great, can run pretty much anything and the OS provides a far superior user experience than any Windows based machine in my opinion. I could never go back to a Windows laptop now after 10 years of MacBooks.

 

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[rmanal1]

Switched to Mac a year ago after being hardcore anti-Mac, and honestly have become a fanboy.

It took my last laptop 7 minutes to turn on and get on the Internet. MacBook is right about 20 seconds max.

I find the multitouch works a little better as well.

I can't speak for longevity but I've had colleagues who have kept theirs for 5-7 years, really bringing that per year cost to on of if not better than a PC.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Carnage]

I've done both Mac and PC and both have had their pluses and minuses and to be honest while a few years ago I'd have said Apple had the edge, I can't honestly say that I see a huge difference between the two.

My Macbook died after I poured coffee on it (it probably wouldn't have if I didn't do it just before having to leave before going to a funeral and not being able to do a thing about it), but before that it was a real workhorse. Acer got crossed off my list after forking out a heap of money and then for the wifi, ethernet port and keyboard all dying within 8 months (without any added coffee).

Currently on a Lenovo and it's more than doing the job ... and I seriously hammer mine to death. The only reason I don't go with Mac is because of that fact I've come to realise I'm going to go through laptops every year or so and so I'd much rather pay for something that will work its guts out during that time than pay out the extra for the shiny looks. Having said that if you travel a lot then the Macbook Air or Pro would be worth considering. At the mo I'm more back and forth between UK and US only so not a big factor.

I also use Lenovo, best laptop I've ever used.
How old is your Lenovo? They had issues with recent laptops with superphishing problems.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2886...re-that-hijacks-https-traffic-on-new-pcs.html

 

[Imgal]

I also use Lenovo, best laptop I've ever used.
How old is your Lenovo? They had issues with recent laptops with superphishing problems.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2886...re-that-hijacks-https-traffic-on-new-pcs.html

About 4 months old... I got a refurbished model so got all the dodgy stuff wiped off before even got started with!

Google Chromebook for travel and mobile use.

Never going back. Google is getting better, and better, and better.

Stop it already. I'm trying to resist adding more to my collection and that's not helping.

 

[Imgal]

@Vigilante - you just had to post the link didn't you... now there's no hope for me

 

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[Vigilante]

@Vigilante - you just had to post the link didn't you... now there's no hope for me

Best Buy and the office superstores (Depot, Staples, and Office Max) regularly drop the Chromebooks (subsidized heavily by Google) down $75 (+/-) so don't buy it unless it has an instant discount, and stick with the Toshiba or Samsung models (or maybe HP). However, for sub $300 (likely around $200!) you will fall in love.

 

[James Thornton]

It took my last laptop 7 minutes to turn on and get on the Internet. MacBook is right about 20 seconds max.

That's not a Mac vs PC thing, that's a hard disk drive vs solid state drive thing. All computers with an ssd boot that fast.

The Mac trackpad is better. Both the hardware and gesture support is better.

I need a pen though, so no more shiny Macs for me.

 

[rmanal1]

James, great point on SSD.

So you're getting a iPad Pro, haha?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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