Broadband Tech > General Questions > Good/sturdy business laptop?

Good/sturdy business laptop?

Latitudes, Thinkpads, and Probooks/Elitebooks are all very good. I'm a latitude man myself. Off the top of my head, I've used these models: D620, D630, D820, E4200, E5400, E5500, E5510, E5520, E5530, E6400, E6500, E6410, E6420, and the E6430.

All have been great except for the E4200, which was a bundle of weird problems. I love my 6410.

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I picked up a used widescreen Thinkpad T61 on ebay a year ago and love it.

Off lease laptops go for pretty short money.

As Oedipus posted Dell Latitudes also have a very good reputation, had a C600 many years ago.

/tom

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I have had good luck getting off-lease business class machines.

Have had good luck with Dell Latitude, buying from:
»www.dfsdirectsales.com/

Another thing to consider is the availability of parts [on sites like EBay for cheap, yet new] that can break easily. And whether the manufacturer provides detailed instructions and manuals to take apart and put all back together. The Dells I have gotten had this.

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Panasonic Toughbook.


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Re: Good/sturdy business laptop?

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Another vote for Dell latitude machines...

Great durability; and fairly easy to service, as laptops go...

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My only concern with putting linux on it would be the HP EliteBooks have an application call HP DriveGuard that is supposed to protect the hard drive. Since I replace about a drive a week I don't know how well it works.

Other than hard drives I haven't had issues with the HP EliteBooks and I don't blame that on HP, just the nature of the beast.
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Looks good to me, presuming general use is intended.

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My family has had approximately six Thinkpads - when they were IBM (made by Lenovo), and now that they are actually branded Lenovo. Two of them have been dropped on concrete floors (I dropped mine taking it out of the case in a hotel room), and they got up and they went on working. One had a tiny little chip in the case and the other didn't close quite so snappishly, but they were around for years. The keyboards remain superb, the hard drives (even if not ssd), are quiet and if you need a repair, they don't quibble, in fact they arrange for it as quickly as possible. If you're in a large city, I've found their authorized repair very good as long as it is understood what is wrong.
CAVEATS:
Don't skimp on the size of your hard drive because they put in a large restore partition in addition to a lot of their own utilities - some of which I've found helpful and some of which just take up some space.
If you take anything apart, do not lose the screws - their screws are very hard to replace. I don't know why, but we've had a lot of them.
Check on the weight of the charger brick - you might want to pay extra for a lighter version.
Some have had adequate but slightly disappointing speakers. Choose a good sound system when you purchase.
It used to be (not sure it's still the case), that some had two antennas for wifi in the screen and some had three. One of mine has two antennas and I find it adequate. However, if you are going to be trying to connect to weak signals, check on the number of antennas it has.
My present Thinkpad is a W520 - it is fairly heavy and I purchased it to use mainly in my home/office. At the time, it was being offered with a special screen (if you wanted to pay for it) - a screen that produces 94 gamut. It is so good that I can use it for photo editing after I calibrate it. And of course, it's a pleasure for movies etc. But for everyday work situation, screens have always been good and there's no need.
GENERAL COMMENTS:
I believe the Thinkpads (rather than the Ideapads etc) are made for business and are made of solid materials and again, the wonderful keyboard. Unless there was a compelling reason, I'd stay with an actual Thinkpad.
When you purchase, configure the machine expecting to have it for several years, because you probably will. So get more memory, a larger hard drive, cutting edge ports etc., because you will want them a few years down the road when your machine is still in perfect condition.

Hope this helps - I've really compiled the experiences of my whole family over the last 10 years or so. This includes a teenager/young adult, who carried two thinkpads back and forth to college everyday and then a newer one, back and forth to grad school (on her back on a bike) and in suitcases etc.

Although I may sound it - I don't work for Lenovo or IBM and never have - I've just enjoyed the solidity and reliability of their products for many years. And they have been more solid and reliable than the many desktops I've had during the same period.

Louise

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i love my lenovo i got this past november. i got it out of there outlet but could not be happier. feels very sturdy.
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I do desktop architecture for my present employer, and we exclusively use Lenovo for our desktops/laptops. The Lenovo T530 (the step up from the edge series, should be very similar to the E530 you're looking at) is a very good laptop. I currently use it as my production machine. My only personal complaint is it is a bit heavy, but other than that, a solid machine.

The team I work on has re-imaged tons of T530s on the bench for testing and development, and we haven't had one fail yet. The only problem I'm aware of (out of hundreds of T530s) is one had a broken trackpad button.