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Tue 25 Apr, 2006 07:29 pm
Im getting some new laptops for the people and one for me. Weve had bad luck with Dell. Weve smoked about 1 or more a year, and all the reasons have been understandable, someone left theirs on while it was on a table and it just fried, another had the fan clog up with cat hair (that person needs some housecleaning tips), another just died in the night and another was hooked up improperly to an inverter (dont ask, it was a dead original battery issue)
Weve been able to retrieve most of the hard drive data but the thing that we applaud about laptops (their portability) makes them a problem in backing up because we take them to godawful places and our home workstations have the external backup drives that require us to dock frequently.
Whats a good laptop for business and science , and is there a laptop gizmo that allows backup onto another portable device like a palm or a 5 or so gig mini-server ?. Im not a techno geek and am often confused by the talk of features.
CI , I guess Im asking for any of your experience with laptops. That link was exactly the gobbledegook I was trying to avoid. Anybody selling laptops is going to not tell you that "One of our features youre gonna love is that, if you leave your laptop on while on a rubber mat or a tabletop, it will heat up and burst into flame"
or
"Our laptops require three hands to do a simple task."
I need one and so do a lot of our staffers, however, we need durability, coupled with an ability to backup to something external when were out of range of our servers at home. I also need sturdy.
I figure A2k has more computer jocks per cubic yard than anywhere outside a major U techy lab.
fm, Before I purchased my laptop, I went to Fry's Electronics and asked the maintenance people which laptop had the least amount of maintenance problems, and they told me Fujitsu; they also recommended Fujitsu. I bought the Fujitsu Lifebook.
I bought a smaller laptop to take on trips that has wireless; a used IBM thinkpad that I won't mind breaking or losing. I purchased a pocket pc with wireless today to take on trips to access the web. I'm trying to reduce the weight of my luggage in my old age.
I think you need to ask timber or fishin for advise on computers; they're the experts.
As to the back up question farmer. What kind of files are you backing up?
Assuming mostly word and excel documents you can probably do just fine with a 1 gig or smaller flash drive. Even medium sized databases will probably back up fine that way. You just need to secure the flash drives so they aren't lost or stolen. You may want to encrypt them if the data is sensitive.
Will you have internet access with the laptops? You can also do backups over the net depending on file size and type of access. I wouldn't suggest backing up over dial up.
It would also be helpful to know what the primary use of the laptop will be. Different costs and requirements for data entry in a harsh chemical environment vs full scale video presentations to clients.
I wont be using this l for client presentations. Its primarily my data downloader and my personal machine for writing . Normal stuff like Excel and other programs are easy. When we do geophysics and site work, we rely on a lot of Imaging and the data files with **** like multispectral scans , are many gigs worth of stuff , and well repeat them over and over as we refine our models.
I often backup steps onto a DVD or CD, but have no routine in the field.
Every scientist I know has the same damn Apple Powerbook. They all seem to love it. I can't speak to durability, as ...
OK, just asked E.G. (who's right over thataway on his Powerbook) whether it's durable, and he said no. Then he said to search for "ruggedized" or "rugged laptops." Not a brand, but laptops that have been modified for fieldwork.
Sample result:
http://www.ruggednotebooks.com/
I've had Apple laptops for years and wouldn't use anything else but...
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