I've just been through an interesting exercise in helping the missus buy a laptop. It's interesting because her previous one is a MacBook Pro and I've never needed a laptop, so we're both relative newbies on the subject. I see people in here talking about developer laptops in the $2000+ and far beyond range, but I was shocked to see the high power and low price of laptops when we wandered into JB Southland last Saturday to check out their sale. Things have changed in the 10 years!
There were 6 DELL laptops lined-up on display from $599 to $1699. Only the 5th one had the full HD screen with a beautiful "creamy" smooth look, so I told her to buy that one. This Studio 1558 has 6GB RAM, 600GB HDD, i7 and heaps of plugs and devices I haven't even figured out what they do yet. I don't know what the battery life is like yet. I've even "stolen" a piece of it by creating a VS2010 development environment in VM Player so I can borrow when I go out for a meeting next week. I get the impression the Studio series is for home users, but it's so powerful that it can easily be used for development. Which leads me to ask what major differences are there between the DELL Studio and laptops that people in here consider suitable for development? Is it ruggedness, weight, battery life, warranty and repairs, or what? What do ThinkPads have over the Studio series? I plan to get a laptop within a few months, so I want to be sure I'm looking at the right sort of brand and series for the right reasons. General comments would be welcome. Greg
