------------------------<snip>------------------- > Hello All. > > I am in the market for a new notebook/laptop. I am looking at DeLL, > Toshiba and recommendations from this group. > Any suggestions are gratefully appreciated. > > One thing that has turned me off is having no choice between Vista & > XP Pro. > > TIA
As a frugal small-business employee, I get a new laptop roughly once every 3 years, typically next to top-of-the-line with all the fixin's. I have owned Toshiba Satellite Pros (2) and Tecras (2) for the last 12 years; I have no desktop machine and my laptop runs nearly 24x7, though I've started using Stand-By more frequently to reduce machine wear. After some frustration with Toshiba customer service and a few too many hard-drive and power supply depot-repair experiences, I made the switch to IBM ThinkPad two year ago, and I'll never go back to Toshiba, unless I see some change with the Lenovo purchase and the company's attitude to customer service -- as of today, I'm quite happy with the decision and I'm looking forward to my next machine in 2008. I do recommend purchasing the 3-year warranty, if not included in the price, and you can typically call the company to purchase the additional 2-year coverage, after purchase. It's an individual decision though as to whether or not one must touch a particular brand/model machine (keyboard layout / form-factor) before purchasing, so the last consideration I would contribute is whether you buy online (my preference is CDW -- they have great ready-to-ship machines with no-fluff, installed OEM business software packages, and they will most likely match other mail-order prices) or at your local electronics store (we have no such big-box gadget here in Key West, Florida, and I don't do RadioShack, not even for batteries anymore). Regards, Scott Barry SBBWorks, Inc. P. S. Purchase (or upgrade) as much memory as you can afford, and if possible purchase the largest single-chip size (for example, one 1GB chip instead of two 512MB chips), in order to consider an upgrade say at holiday time! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
