Buying a new Laptop

[SHADOWFOX]

The laptop will be used for the following:

* editing and creating movies off a mini DV videocam for vacation and family movies
* editing family and vacation pictures by using Photoshop CS
* be able to play around with Sketch up or CAD Software for woodworking
* play non-graphics intensive game like Age of Empires. I don't play shoot-em bang bang games anymore, I have the PS3 for that.
* smoothly browse the web
* smoothly use MS office applications.
* smoothly use NERO ultra edition software

Given the list above, will these laptops suffice my needs?

[TheRic]

Now knowing what you are going to use it for.....

I would suggest the Toshiba, then Sony.

Pictures / movies eat up space, a large hard drive will be nice. Yea, yea I know you will burn them to DVD (eventually). The large hard drive will also allow you keep a few versions around until you decide which one you want. The larger screen size will be nice, when editing pictures, and work with CAD. Editing pictures will eat up memory, the 2 Gig will be nice.

Surfing the web, your bottle neck will be your connection to the house, any of the three will work. Office application (other than large number crunching) the bottle neck will be the user, any of the three will work.
Age of Empires (About the only game I play, but I don't play often). Does not need much, any of the three will work.

I hope you realize that you can get a lot more bang for your buck by going with a desktop unit instead of a laptop.

[Russianwolf]

Anything but the MAC.

The poor ethics they've shown over trademark uses (iphone and basically renegging on agreements that they made with Apple Corp [Beatles label]) have pretty much made me avoid them like the plague. Good thing I never became a pod person.

[Anna]

Anything but the MAC.

The poor ethics they've shown over trademark uses (iphone and basically renegging on agreements that they made with Apple Corp [Beatles label]) have pretty much made me avoid them like the plague. Good thing I never became a pod person.

Oh, right. So... how's it going with that paragon of virtue called Microsoft?

[Jeffrey Schronce]

Voted for Sony. Soooooo many Toshibas have been recalled lately. I just bought a new laptop last week. HP. Arrived with dead screen back light. Nice. So returning it and likely getting Sony.
Oh, however my situation requires Windows machines. If I did not have biz requirements I would have 100% Mac in my home.

[onedash]

Are you talking about the original AOE or III? I have III and until I got a PCIE graphics card it was pretty slow and choppy.

I have a HP 3800 athlon desktop with 2 GB RAM and it plays pretty good now. I still wish I had mroe speed and power for editing 16MB NEF files.
I bought a new USB card reader and its at least 4 times faster than the built in reader. my cheap thumb drive was faster than my 133x CF card so for whatever reason the card readers next to my USB 2 slots are not running at USB 2 speed. It still takes almost 7 minutes to dump 1 GB onto my hard drive. Slower than that on my PC adapter on my laptop.

[LinuxRandal]

The laptop will be used for the following:

* editing and creating movies off a mini DV videocam for vacation and family movies
* editing family and vacation pictures by using Photoshop CS
* be able to play around with Sketch up or CAD Software for woodworking
* play non-graphics intensive game like Age of Empires. I don't play shoot-em bang bang games anymore, I have the PS3 for that.
* smoothly browse the web
* smoothly use MS office applications.
* smoothly use NERO ultra edition software

Given the list above, will these laptops suffice my needs?

The only thing that I see that says portability is needed would possibly be vacation. Then it is a theft attractor. (plus typical internet connection charges, etc that go with that). That still makes me think you should either save your money and buy a desktop, or even a couple, for less then the laptop.

Voted for Sony. Soooooo many Toshibas have been recalled lately. I just bought a new laptop last week. HP. Arrived with dead screen back light. Nice. So returning it and likely getting Sony.
Oh, however my situation requires Windows machines. If I did not have biz requirements I would have 100% Mac in my home.

A lot of the recalls in the last year have been due to Sony Batteries (Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Apple, are the ones I know of). I believe Toshiba had a memory recall too.

[Russianwolf]

Oh, right. So... how's it going with that paragon of virtue called Microsoft?

You don't have to use MS on a PC. there are other OS available and other software companies.

But even if you do want to use MS, at least they do some good with the Gates Foundation.

[moc]

Go Mac or go home.

I will agree with this.

...And I knew chalkhappens would say it based on his photobooth photo

*moc

[SHADOWFOX]

Thanks for the input folks. Went to several retail stores and tried out each of these laptops and me and the LOML were pretty impressed with the SONY VAIO so we pulled the trigger on it $1099.00 after MIR at Compusa. LOML thought the macbook was too small and the Toshiba was okay but VAIO was slick and pretty powerful for what we need. I guess I will just have to save up for a macbook pro whenever that will be

[softop41]

From my experience with Vista Home Premium, Vista is not ready for 'prime time' yet; stay wiht XP Pro or reformat your chose computer and install XP Pro.
IMHO
Jerry

[vaking]

I voted for Sony.
From my experience Toshiba products are flimsy. They are loaded with hardware and features but unreliable.
MAC makes me nervous. All indicators are saying that Apple is planning to get out of computer business and into Pod, tune, etc. There is a good chance with Apple to get stock without any support shortly.
Sony seems OK. I have in my family 2 laptops. One is Lenovo with specs very similar to the laptops you are considering. Works great. The other is HP, but HP is really a "desktop replacement". It's a different category. It has Athlon 64, 17" wide screen, keypad, everything you would want in a desktop. The battery life is about 2 hours and it is heavy enough so you don't want it on the road. But it is great to be on a deck or anywhere else in the house working on your pictures.

[gerti]

MAC makes me nervous. All indicators are saying that Apple is planning to get out of computer business and into Pod, tune, etc. There is a good chance with Apple to get stock without any support shortly.

I heard Bill Gates is pretty sick of the business too, and plans on dismantling Microsoft since Windows is a lost cause anyway, just not maintainable anymore. But as an avid WW and BT fan he wants to buy all companies connected to Ryobi and force them to come out with a BT2008.

Now back to the real world...