Laptop Recommendations?

[ronw]

My Gazelle p6 is coming up on 3 years old. I went with the Gazelle 15.6" screen precisely because of traveling, which in my case includes fairly long walks to and from the subway for most trips.

Battery life is not stellar, but I don't know if that is the battery or Linux, or some of both.

My next laptop will also be from System76 unless something massively better comes along.

[Feathers McGraw]

I only use a few gestures like two finger scrolling, not sure about the rest.

You know there's an option to disable the touch pad for a set time after keyboard input? I find it really useful.

I went for the IPS screen... it's something everyone always comments on. Very crisp, definitely worth it!

[Chopstick]

Btw., Feathers McGraw, what display do you have? The super fancy IPS one or the Full HD? I was wondering if the upgrade would be worth it...?

[Chopstick]

Thanks, Feathers McGraw - that's usefule. The review SteveRiley pointed my to also mentions the excellent keyboard and superior battery life. To be honest, the keyboard is far more important to me than the touchpad! My ideal solution would be just a trackpoint with the old buttons (which are great!), and no touchpad at all - but I suppose that's not available.
Regarding HP, I've asked some friends and actually many complained abotu the heat problems with HP consumer laptops, but no one had experience with the business line.

Btw. sicne the Thinkpads now have a gigantic touchpad, how is gesture support in KDE? (I never use the touchpad on my T60p - I actually used to disable it, because it accidentially activates).

[Feathers McGraw]

I have a T440s, which I love... apart from the touch pad. I never use it to click, always to tap. That's what I am used to doing anyway but i don't like the feel or sound of clicking on the touch pad. In terms of quality, it's at odds with the keyboard, which is excellent (I love the keyboard layout BTW, despite what the naysayers say).

For me, a nicer design would be a solid, unclickable touch pad below some raised individual thumb buttons like the ones on older models. I have a USB ThinkPad with buttons like this and no touch pad, and they are really easy to use with the trackpoint, whereas the monolithic "slab" on the T440s is not.

The battery life on this laptop with the 6 cell battery is incredible, and still impressive with the slimmer 3 cell battery.

One more thing, my old HP had a dodgy heat sink too - in fact it made the palm rest so hot to touch that I bought a new laptop, when it should have lasted longer. To be fair, it wasn't a business grade laptop, but still disappointing.

[Chopstick]

GreyGeek, would you be able to comment on portability, durability, and battery life of your son's System76 Gazelle? I wonder if they are as durable as the Lenovo and HP business laptops.

[Chopstick]

I actually did not realize that the HP EliteBook series are Ultrabooks... indeed that T540p is thicker and quite a bit heavier than the EliteBook 850. Anyway, as long as the hardware meets my requirements, I don't care.
At heart, I think I am more of a Thinkpad person, but performance-wise the two look very similar, so as long as the EliteBook is not significantly more expensive, I still consider it a serious contender.

[SteveRiley]

Most of the complaints regarding the T540p were about the trackpoint and touchpad... but the Thinkpad touchpads being sub-standard is something I've read in many places (not that I use the touchpad very much anyway...).

I use mine a lot. And yeah, I'm pretty sure I'll be suffering through a period of crankiness when I have to deal with the change. Oh well!

Oh, and SteveRiley, I don't know how representative your experience is... I read very positive reviews about the HP EliteBook 850 G1, and they have them in my brother's company and people are quite happy with them (and they also have a trackpoint).

My experience with HP has been only at their consumer level. I'm not sure about their business-grade gear. Also, the EliteBook is an Ultrabook-based machine, the building of which requires meeting certain guidelines set forth by Intel. It's likely that the EliteBook is of much higher quality than HP's cheap Pavilion line. Ultrabooks and ThinkPads are pretty much the opposite of each other -- the former is about sleekness, the latter about power. Choose yer weapon, heh.

[Chopstick]

Oh, and SteveRiley, I don't know how representative your experience is... I read very positive reviews about the HP EliteBook 850 G1, and they have them in my brother's company and people are quite happy with them (and they also have a trackpoint).

[Chopstick]

Actually I think that a lot of the things that people are complaining about are in fact things that are now standard for almost all laptops and there is little anyone can do. For example, I am really not happy about the move towards a 16:9 aspect ration - I really liked the 16:10 that I have, but there is nothing I can do. Similar thing with the asymmetric keyboards, I am afraid.

[Chopstick]

The hardware in Thinkpads is good, no question, and it is highly customizable. Most of the complaints regarding the T540p were about the trackpoint and touchpad, and how they are getting rid of features we have come to like in Thinkpads over the years (like status LEDs). Basically I get the sense that the T530p was much better in this respect.
It also occured to me that a lot of people who are writing those extremely negative reviews, probably just don't like change... but the Thinkpad touchpads being sub-standard is something I've read in many places (not that I use the touchpad very much anyway...).

[SteveRiley]

Oh, and here's a review of the T540p that concentrates on the hardware aspects of the machine. Overall, the review is quite positive.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-....114312.0.html

[SteveRiley]

The natural successor for the T60p would be the Lenovo T540p, but the reviews I read are less than favorable... so I should probably look elsewhere... maybe HP?

I would encourage you to place many of those reviews aside. Remember that it's likely the reviewer was using the machine with the Lenovo-supplied Windows operating system. How much of a factor was that in those reviews?

In my experience, ThinkPads provide some of the best compatibility for Linux. I have a T520 and an X1; I will likely be upgrading the T520 to a T540 soon. Some of the reasons why I will always stick with ThinkPads:

• Rugged and well built, can take abuse
• An active Linux community, including a well-maintained wiki -- ThinkWiki
• A highly configurable firmware, which makes it much easier to deal with UEFI and graphics configuration
• Well supported Intel hardware (CPU, Ethernet, wireless, graphics, audio)
• Easy to obtain spare parts and repair manuals

One recommendation: do not buy HP. Three years ago, my wife's DV9000 burnt itself up. Shoddy heat sinks. Read about my adventures:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post340940
Follow the links there for the full story.

[Chopstick]

One thing regarding discrete video cards: I noticed that the Bonobo Extreme comes with a 330W power unit! Wouldn't that be heavy as a brick? And is power consumption not a general problem with dedicated video cards? Does this impact battery life? I really don't need a fancy video card.

[Chopstick]

Hm... so I guess I should really consider that... actually I do travel quite often and I need a laptop that fits into a standard backpack, so that's why I would go with 15.6". In my experience, even my 15.6" Thinkpad is stretching the portability a bit, and I imagine 17" would clearly be to much, and the Bonobo is also a bit heavy; my girlfriend has a 17" and I find it clearly too heavy and cluncky (she has an ipad for travelling, which is not an option for me, as I need to be able to do serious coding and data analysis when I'm travelling). Actually the 1TB HDD + 240GB SSD option for the Gazelle looks extremely tempting! (I actually have several TB of data, not just movies.)
And there is also a matte option for the Gazelle.