This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

===

I've always been partial to HPs. I believe their engineering and
reliability are a notch or two above the others. I'd also get a
wireless mouse for it since most touchpads leave a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately you will probably be stuck with Windows 10 if you buy a
new machine. People seem to like it once they get used to the new
interface but I'm set in my ways in that regard.

On 3/29/2017 6:41 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

===

I've always been partial to HPs. I believe their engineering and
reliability are a notch or two above the others. I'd also get a
wireless mouse for it since most touchpads leave a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately you will probably be stuck with Windows 10 if you buy a
new machine. People seem to like it once they get used to the new
interface but I'm set in my ways in that regard.


I agree with Wayne. My last two laptops have been HP Pavilions. The
first, purchased in 2007, finally died after about 8 years of heavy,
daily use in the guitar shop. The second and the one I am currently
using, is an HP purchased in 2010, still running Win 7. I downloaded
the free upgrade to Win 10 but have not installed it.

That said however, I wonder how much of a particular brand contains
unique and/or proprietary hardware. Seems like most of the major brands
use the same CPU (usually Intel) and hard drives made by others.
I suspect the same is true with mother boards and power supplies.

I'd consider a Dell if I could find one designed for commercial use.
Seems to be many of them around that are still chugging away.

On Wednesday, March 29, 2017 at 8:04:45 AM UTC-4, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 3/29/2017 6:41 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

===

I've always been partial to HPs. I believe their engineering and
reliability are a notch or two above the others. I'd also get a
wireless mouse for it since most touchpads leave a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately you will probably be stuck with Windows 10 if you buy a
new machine. People seem to like it once they get used to the new
interface but I'm set in my ways in that regard.


I agree with Wayne. My last two laptops have been HP Pavilions. The
first, purchased in 2007, finally died after about 8 years of heavy,
daily use in the guitar shop. The second and the one I am currently
using, is an HP purchased in 2010, still running Win 7. I downloaded
the free upgrade to Win 10 but have not installed it.

That said however, I wonder how much of a particular brand contains
unique and/or proprietary hardware. Seems like most of the major brands
use the same CPU (usually Intel) and hard drives made by others.
I suspect the same is true with mother boards and power supplies.

I'd consider a Dell if I could find one designed for commercial use.
Seems to be many of them around that are still chugging away.

Dell does have a "business" side of their online store. I'm not sure they are more rugged, though. It seems that the biggest difference between their personal and business PCs is that the personal line has more availability of fast video cards and other go-fast goodies. You know, for gaming. The business line is more mainstream hardware for doing business apps that don't require the video performance of modern games.

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:04:36 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

I'd consider a Dell if I could find one designed for commercial use.
Seems to be many of them around that are still chugging away.

===

I have an old Dell laptop that lives on the boat, usually at the lower
helm. It gets used mostly for displaying weather information and as a
comm terminal for the SSB radio, but it can double as a navigation
display/chartplotter if necessary. What's not to like? It has always
been flaky and temperature sensitive, requiring periodic reboots to
restore it to operation.

On 3/29/2017 2:09 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:04:36 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

I'd consider a Dell if I could find one designed for commercial use.
Seems to be many of them around that are still chugging away.

===

I have an old Dell laptop that lives on the boat, usually at the lower
helm. It gets used mostly for displaying weather information and as a
comm terminal for the SSB radio, but it can double as a navigation
display/chartplotter if necessary. What's not to like? It has always
been flaky and temperature sensitive, requiring periodic reboots to
restore it to operation.



Tough environment for a computer, I'm sure.

We used to buy computers to run the systems we built in my business but
I've forgotten what they were. They were used for graphical displays,
some computational purposes and storage of various process programs in a
spreadsheet. The actual connection to the system was via an industrial
programmable logic controller (PLC) that served as the input/output
device as well as the actual control and interlock logic.
We liked Allen Bradley for this.

The computers were "industrial" rated, but I am not sure what that meant
other than they were supposed to be physically "rugged".

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 15:38:59 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

The computers were "industrial" rated, but I am not sure what that meant
other than they were supposed to be physically "rugged".

The IBM "industrial" PCs had filters on the fans and usually more fans
(assuming higher ambient temps). The cases were a little more
industrial looking. Other than that they were pretty much the same
inside.

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:04:36 -0400, "Mr. Luddite" wrote:

On 3/29/2017 6:41 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

===

I've always been partial to HPs. I believe their engineering and
reliability are a notch or two above the others. I'd also get a
wireless mouse for it since most touchpads leave a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately you will probably be stuck with Windows 10 if you buy a
new machine. People seem to like it once they get used to the new
interface but I'm set in my ways in that regard.


I agree with Wayne. My last two laptops have been HP Pavilions. The
first, purchased in 2007, finally died after about 8 years of heavy,
daily use in the guitar shop. The second and the one I am currently
using, is an HP purchased in 2010, still running Win 7. I downloaded
the free upgrade to Win 10 but have not installed it.

That said however, I wonder how much of a particular brand contains
unique and/or proprietary hardware. Seems like most of the major brands
use the same CPU (usually Intel) and hard drives made by others.
I suspect the same is true with mother boards and power supplies.

I'd consider a Dell if I could find one designed for commercial use.
Seems to be many of them around that are still chugging away.



My problem with Dell is all the software crap that comes loaded on the computer. Of course, Best Buy
and others will remove, for a fee, all that crap, but still...

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 18:20:17 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:04:36 -0400, "Mr. Luddite" wrote:

On 3/29/2017 6:41 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

===

I've always been partial to HPs. I believe their engineering and
reliability are a notch or two above the others. I'd also get a
wireless mouse for it since most touchpads leave a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately you will probably be stuck with Windows 10 if you buy a
new machine. People seem to like it once they get used to the new
interface but I'm set in my ways in that regard.


I agree with Wayne. My last two laptops have been HP Pavilions. The
first, purchased in 2007, finally died after about 8 years of heavy,
daily use in the guitar shop. The second and the one I am currently
using, is an HP purchased in 2010, still running Win 7. I downloaded
the free upgrade to Win 10 but have not installed it.

That said however, I wonder how much of a particular brand contains
unique and/or proprietary hardware. Seems like most of the major brands
use the same CPU (usually Intel) and hard drives made by others.
I suspect the same is true with mother boards and power supplies.

I'd consider a Dell if I could find one designed for commercial use.
Seems to be many of them around that are still chugging away.



My problem with Dell is all the software crap that comes loaded on the computer. Of course, Best Buy
and others will remove, for a fee, all that crap, but still...

I haven't played with a Dell for a while but they usually come with
all of the install disks so you can wipe it and reload what you really
want. Just "removing" software does not really get rid of it all. A
lot of times they will replace the stock DLLs with theirs on
installation and you are still stuck with it when you remove the
program. There is also stuff in the registry that will not go away.
Dell is also very good with driver support and a lot of time I will
get drivers for other manufacturer's systems if I figure out Dell uses
that chip set on one of their machines.

Poco Deplorevole wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 08:04:36 -0400, "Mr. Luddite" wrote:

On 3/29/2017 6:41 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 05:17:47 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:

This summer will see us doing a bit of travelling, and I'm finally
giving serious thought to getting
a laptop. Any one having good or bad luck with theirs?

===

I've always been partial to HPs. I believe their engineering and
reliability are a notch or two above the others. I'd also get a
wireless mouse for it since most touchpads leave a lot to be desired.
Unfortunately you will probably be stuck with Windows 10 if you buy a
new machine. People seem to like it once they get used to the new
interface but I'm set in my ways in that regard.


I agree with Wayne. My last two laptops have been HP Pavilions. The
first, purchased in 2007, finally died after about 8 years of heavy,
daily use in the guitar shop. The second and the one I am currently
using, is an HP purchased in 2010, still running Win 7. I downloaded
the free upgrade to Win 10 but have not installed it.

That said however, I wonder how much of a particular brand contains
unique and/or proprietary hardware. Seems like most of the major brands
use the same CPU (usually Intel) and hard drives made by others.
I suspect the same is true with mother boards and power supplies.

I'd consider a Dell if I could find one designed for commercial use.
Seems to be many of them around that are still chugging away.



My problem with Dell is all the software crap that comes loaded on the
computer. Of course, Best Buy
and others will remove, for a fee, all that crap, but still...


Just got an advert for Dell at $140.
http://deals.dell.com/mpp/productdet...02922624028084