Quote from atavachron:
My laptop is a Toshiba piece-of-sh*te, that is my backup trading machine and is also used for surfing, etc.
PS. I also found Toshiba's service to be second rate, they really didn't care.
If you travel internationally then ability to have your PC repaired in another country is most important.
Having owned 14 laptops and having used a number of laptops through work I have developped a preference for having a computer that has a second hard disk in it. This second hard disk is used for the pagefile and backup, enabling me to shut down, do a restore, resync my data, and restart under 10 minutes. (the actual restore takes me just under 6 minutes....) During the moments that I go sightseeing etc this second hard disk comes out of the bay and goes into the hotel safe.
I used to love the old Tecra 500 but after that machine I felt Toshiba went downhill. I next moved to IBM but they have bought up PWC consulting and they now are having some business practices that makes me wonder if they have any brains at all. ( like if you ask for addition memory then they quote you the "spare parts price which is three times the rate of new memory bought with a new laptop. A replacement TFT screen is worth more in spare parts than a total new computer with same specs...duhhh). Am still running 2 IBM A31 laptops, 15" screens 1400 x 1050 and love them. Don't know what to get next, some of these high resolution screens have too much reflection (high gloss screen) and some of the others do not have the world wide service centre's that I need. The Sony VAIO's are nice but I once had one, top of the line and after 1 month it packed up while I was working in another country. Sony did not want to give service and I finished up scrapping a 7K US notebook. Recently we bought some infra red headphones and when we came to look for replacement foam earpads the pads were about 50% of the purchase price of the whole outfit. Outright extortion and I have my principles and won't do business with them anymore.
Had some early Dells, when they were still LCD (DX4-75 with 20Mb memory, now that goes back a long way) they were virtually indistructable, since then I have had a number thorugh work and they were the pits. One was so bad that alomst every month something was wrong with it and it became like my grandfather's axe" new handle, new head but still my grandfather's axe. And the rest is so unknown that you wonder if you ever can get a repair if you are stationed in another country for a while or are on the road all the time.
I do not need more computing power and am still wondering if I should cough up the money to "refurbish" my existing machines or should get some other brand. No rush, I reckon there is still another 2 years of life left in them.
Just my 2c worth.
Sherlock
