[snip Roy / Ganesh babble]
Jebus but you guys talk to yourselves a lot!
The best laptop 'in the town', without a doubt, is this one I'm using. I
spent quite a bit of time last year tracking it down and paid as much or
more for it (or more) second-hand as I would have paid for a
similarly-specced new (completely plastic) machine.
It's an IBM / Lenovo (both logos on it) T60 2007-7KU. It has a matte finish
4
screen (you can keep your reflection-prone glossy screens and trendy
widescreens thanks). Also, the screen is IPS technology (Google it if you
don't know what it is) and relatively high resolution at 1400x1050 for a 15"
screen. It's a treat to use, easy on the eyes, beautiful colours and simply
awesome viewing angles. These IPS screens aren't used in full-sized laptops
anymore as they're expensive to produce, requiring three times as many
transistors as a TN panel, three per pixel rather than one. These days
people buy on price and adding $500 for a top-of-the-line screen isn't
feasible.
The CPU is a T7400 2.16GHz Core2Duo (which is plenty fast enough for
anything short of heavy-duty computing which should be done on 'heavy iron'
anyway), is 64-bit capable and also has Intel's 'Virtualisation Technology'
which could be essential for future OSes.
The laptop itself has a magnesium-alloy chassis and feels reassuringly solid
and robust, far more so than most laptops that are simply two pieces of
plastic screwed together. The graphics processor is an ATI X1400 with 128MB
of VRAM. While not a high-end gaming machine it's more than adequate for
some of the older games that I play. (Again, like a laptop isn't made for
heavy-duty number crunching (that's what high-power desktops and mainframes
are for) it's not made for high-end gaming, (that's what gaming consoles are
for).
As an overall package the 15" T60 with the T7x00 CPU and the "FlexView" IPS
screen is widely held as the best laptop ever made and they command a high
price (if you can get one). It's probably not "cool" but it is a damn fine
laptop.
--
Shaun.
"When we dream.... that's just our brains defragmenting" G Jackson