Laptop question

[christopherboffoli]

redblack: iTunes is actually very MP3 friendly. So you can in fact import MP3’s or rip your CDs into MP3 format to iTunes. In the import settings you can specify if you want MP3, WAV, AIFF or AAC. And unless I’m mistaken, you can export playlists of both MP3 and AAC songs to MP3 CD’s.

Downloads from the iTunes Music Store don’t have any DRM anymore. They are in AAC format. Apple’s goal is less about proprietary formats and more about the quality of the user experience. Their goal with AAC format was to offer a level of compression to maximize space (and download time) while offering a sound quality as good as the older MP3 format. And many of the video compression formats they have had a hand in developing and/or propagating they have made open formats, like MPEG-4, H.264 and the HTML5 video codecs.

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[redblack]

yeah, christopher, but the fact that itunes pretty much takes over your music files is what aggravates me. sometimes it’s like wrestling an alligator to get itunes to do what i want.

and all new song downloads are in .m4p format, are they not?

i understand the attraction of importing my media files to itunes; heck, i’ve been ripping the highlights of my cd collection to .mp3 for over a decade. but i’m an old-school luser, and i still like to be able to plug-and-play across formats, machines, and networks. itunes is just… bossy. after seeing how it “took over” my wife’s laptop – and all of the trouble she has had with its various incarnations – i went out of my way to find other software to sync my ipod with my desktop box.

to each his own, eh? i’m quite happy living itunes-free.

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[Ken]

ok. Experience talking here.

Macs are nice. I like Macs. I run OSX on a pc since I cannot afford a mac.

Macs are somewhat expensive especially when the TCO relies on nothing going wrong and the user not needing any specialty software. Office is not free with your Mac. Neither is photoshop. And there are very few free or low cost apps of any kind for Mac since the Developers know they have already got you when you start looking for software that meets your needs.

Mac hardware is not magical.

Apple has spent millions if not billions to create the fanboy attitude but it is based on advertising and hardware of the past rather than current reality. Current Macs are built from the exact same parts that are used to make pc’s and the boards, drives and peripherals are made in the exact same chinese factories that most of the rest of the worlds computers are made in. The differences in Mac hardware are intended to make sure you cannot buy an off the shelf replacement for their DVD burner (aka superdrive combo) or upgrade anything but the ram.

In 2004/2005 Apple made hardware suffered from the exact same flaws and hardware problems that the big name pc makers suffered from: bulging and exploding capacitors. Dell, HP, Sony and acer made it into the news. Apple did not.

Apple is just as likely to obsolete your new hard ware with software changes with no notice.

OSX 10.5.6 installed on either power pc or intel machines. OSX 10.5.8 only installed on Intel cpu machines. osx 10.6.x is the current OS.

So like I said. Most users don’t need an expensive machine. They certainly don’t need an expensive Mac unless the work they do (and their tax structure) allow for a quick and advantageous depreciation and is rooted in the graphics oriented sectors.

I build servers and graphics workstations for a high end “Fine Art” distributor. They are PC’s. The TCO demands it since the equivalent Mac hardware would be 3k and up. I can build them for 1.5k to 2k at any time.

Also note: I get macs to repair and work on mainly due to the snooty attitude and unbelievable lines of bull$hit customers get from the local “Genius Bar” at the Mac store, where they start suggesting you get a new mac as soon as your warranty runs out and as an incentive, charging you half the value of a new machine for any repair.

I will address other brand specific comments in the next post.

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[Jiggers]

I don’t understand 90% of the lingo here except I like Dell and had a Dell desktop before. I just want a laptop that does everything like my desktop used to. Dell maybe my choice. I just hope I can get a decent price for it. My friend uses itunes and is happy with them. Jan…

you must connect with job. I’m recovering at my moms home in Vancouver but, I won’t be fully recovered for 4 months. I’ll be back in Seattle next year.

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[lizru]

Here’s my 2 cents: I understand your attachment to Dell. They used to make great computers and their support was terrific. But I’ve been hearing bad things about Dell reliability recently. Here’s what the kids at Consumer Reports like in terms of laptop reliability:

Best:

Toshiba

Acer

Apple (I know, too expensive)

Bottom of their list:

Dell

HP

Sony

I think support is a really important thing that you buy along with a computer. You don’t want to be abandoned just when you’ve bought the thing. Also, I would take a look at Amazon. They frequently have great deals on electronics. If you can get to one, Best Buy also has good deals.

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[lizru]

Oh, and one more thing. Get over the “I want it to work like my Dell”. On a new laptop you’ll get a new operating system, probably Windows 7 and it will probably work very differently than what you’re currently using. Because Microsoft won’t apologize to you for this, I will: Really sorry about that. We all hate software companies for this, by the way. And one of the more onerous updates is MS Office (Word, Excel etc.) You won’t be able to find ANYTHING! On the other hand, when you get used to Win 7 it is pretty rockin’.

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[GaryGnu42]

I don’t really subscribe to the whole “Apple is expensive and has no advantage over others except to fanboys” arguments. I’ve relied on Apple products intensely over the past decade and what I appreciate most (over my experiences with the PC realm) is the quality of the experience with a system in which the same company designs both the software and the hardware. When it comes to industrial design, Apple’s level of taste is unsurpassed. And the elegant design of the operating system and software makes the user experience intuitive and easy to use. Considering the huge advances in market share and stock price that Apple has enjoyed over the past five years I’m guessing that I’m not the only person who has experienced the benefits of working and playing with Apple products.

Another benefit with Apple laptops is that you can install both the Windows and Mac OS systems on the same computer and run them side by side. The same cannot be said of all of those 3rd party laptops.

And lastly, if you knew the amount of Apple hardware that is used in the production of this excellent news site you might wonder if Apple has an ownership stake in it :-). Surely the fact that the best micro-local news site in the industry uses Apple hardware must be some kind of endorsement.

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[JanS]

jiggers…yes, I hang with JoB on occasion :)

hope that you’re recovering well. Having just this summer been dx with a fairly rare autoimmune disease, I sympathize…

go get what best fits for you and the money you have to spend :)

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[christopherboffoli]

Redblack: When I purchase songs from the iTunes store they are in AAC format with no DRM. I move them freely between my desktop Mac, laptop, iPad, iPods, iPhone and Apple TV. I also burn them to MP3 CDs. All of the song files are in folders under the artist’s name (in alpha order) in the Music folder in my Library. I’m not sure how this could be construed as “taking over” my music files. But maybe you’re trying to do something different than I am.

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[Ken]

Lenovo/thinkpad:

Lenovo bought the rights to the thinkpad, ideapad and thinkbook lines as well as several lesser known IBM hardware brands. Lenovo (formerly Legend) is 65% owned by the Chinese government. They produced thinkpads for IBM for several years before IBM decided to get out of the consumer PC business. Pre sale Think-xx hardware was based on IBM designs. Post sale hardware has shown an increase in weight reduction techniques which may make the feel of things like keyboards, hinges and external cases flimsier and less solid feeling even though the core components still follow IBM design. The “value line” laptops from lenovo do not have any IBM predecessors. They are mostly cheap but usable and a good value for the price.

Don’t expect any laptop brand to be trouble free beyond the warranty period though.

HP/Compaq:

Hp and Compaq merged. HP is Hewlett Packard and also is the largest maker of printers on the planet.

Their laptops are no better and no worse than any others but they are one of the few vendors that have extensive manuals, detailed Q&A info and cheap replacement cd/dvd’s for factory recovery available long after the sale. Parts are available for years after also since Compaq/HP are big suppliers of corporate laptops.

HP/Compaq I think still has depot warranty service in Tukwila at NWCS As does Toshiba.

Dell:

Another laptop vendor. also has parts and recovery cd/dvds for a cheap price (7.00 + shipping for some) Note the OEM recovery disk/OS disk is tied to the bios so It will not ask for a cd key on a dell, but will require one on any other computer brand. (HP is the same but each model series has its own complete recovery disk set and can’t work across mixed models.

Dell warranty work is done in Texas and you have to ship it back at your expense.

Sony, Panasonic:

Japanese hardware and a pretty good design, but forget fixing them. Neither has aftermarket parts or sells parts. Panasonic does not even let you into their support site without an in warranty device and Sony has very limited info and no way to replace os cd’s.

This time of year, look out for special editions designed and built to meet the price point of large retailers. Laptop ( and desktop) vendors contract with walmart, best buy and office depot to build as the lowest bidder and will create special one off models to match whatever insane goal the retailer has set. The contract is signed a year before production is finished and any error in the bid has to be adjusted by the laptop maker by using cheaper parts or losing money. Guess which one happens.

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[dhg]

Google HP dv hinge crack and look at the myriad of sites. HP designed a laptop that had a single vent for heat, which was easily clogged, which created such intense heat the left hinge would freeze and you’d crack the screen trying to open it. I have not seen any brilliant engineering by HP in a long time.

Panasonic: claims quality control results in fewest problems out of the gate. Their toughbook series are pricey but they stand up to a lot of abuse.

Sony: Beautiful design but built like a porcelain doll. Just look at it too hard and it’ll break.

Lenovo Thinkpad: Contains a membrane under the keyboard to contain spills. An accidental bit of wine isn’t going to kill this machine. (Toshiba is now also doing this across all lines.)

Apple Mac: No membrane, just a moisture detector. The detector does you no good but it allows them to weasel out of repairs. if the color changes on the moisture detector (and FOG can do this) then they are not on the hook for fixing you laptop.

The only company that makes the entire laptop from drive to screen is Toshiba.

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[WSB]

Jiggers: I hope “recovering” is a promising description of whatever’s up with you – thanks for checking in, even from 100-plus miles away.

I just caught up on some posts and had to comment on GaryGnu’s note. Funny. We do have three Apple computers in here – MacMini, 2 1/2-year-old MacBook 13″, new-ish MacBook Pro 15″ (which has battery challenges – unfortunately Mac now builds its notebooks so you can’t swap the batteries – the older MacBook was swappable so I have two spare batteries for it and at one point that was good for 12 or so hours total – now the built-in battery for the new one is good for maybe 5 hours total, turns out it wasn’t designed to work with some of the optional features you can get). Also an iPhone – though it’s “just” a 3, waiting for an upgrade to be reasonably priced before going for 4. Which means that five minutes later Apple will announce a 5.

But we also have PCs and a BlackBerry in the house. I had an awesome HewlettPackard laptop that was my only parting gift from The Walt Disney Company when my job and 400 others were cut in early 2001, one year after Disney gave many of us what were at the time top-of-the-line HP laptops … it was megafast for the time, 700 mHz chip, ha!!!! Unfortunately it will no longer fire up, so we sometimes bring it to street fairs as a paperweight.

You *can* buy great stuff on a budget. Just don’t buy a VAIO. Torin had one and it didn’t live long.

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[Ken]

Not all the DV line have the hinge issue and single vent/ heat sink felting issue has struck nearly all laptop makers as their cooling was outstripped by the actual heat produced by some Intel and AMD chips that was far beyond their pre production press releases and their design specs.

Early dual core chips were the worst offenders. The race to market is what I blame. Engineers have not been in charge at any consumer computer maker in a decade. Marketers make those decisions.

I have three Dell 600m laptops in the parts pile that have busted hinges. Heat had nothing to do with them.

Smaller die sizes and lower power draw chips (cpu and gpu) have eased the cooling requirements a bit recently, but you can still expect a gaming level laptop to have massive fans and still get too hot for your lap.

Also note: Hp and Compaq make internally identical laptops for each brand. An hp dv6000 and a compaq v6000 will take the same recovery disk and the same driver disk. HP/Compaq also make dozens of special hardware configurations under the CTO model number modifier code.

Toshiba had intake felting issues with several models.

I have to admit that for the last ten years I have bought or caused others to buy more Toshiba laptops than any other since I can either repair them if they are out of warranty, or get in warranty repairs done quickly at the local depot repair facility.

Looking around at the working laptops in the house, the majority are Toshiba.

Re aac vs mp3.

Sure aac works on all your apple branded hardware. A few other players will accept it too.

But mp3 can be ripped at a nearly lossless rate if you want.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

And will play on everything but a tin can and string.

Converting your AAC itunes files to mp3 will automatically write them at a much worse compression ratio since the AAC was a compressed format to begin with.

I don’t care about file size. I have raid servers for storage. I want the audio files I rip from cd to be as close as I can get to the original, DRM free and capable of being used on any current and future player.

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[sam-c]

Jiggers- we have an MSI CX700 17″ laptop that we’ve been happy with. it handles autocad, revit (drafting programs), sketchup, etc, well, and we’ve uploaded lots of large files. we watch videos dowloaded from i-Tunes.. it has a good graphics card, which is good for rendering, or…. video games.

we got it for $ 699 I think, from newegg.com- a year ago.

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[redblack]

christopher: yeah! what ken said! :)

i seriously think apple is trying to proprietize music file formats. real networks tried that and failed miserably. come to think of it, microsoft did, too.

but i see ms is going to give it another try with their media center in win 7. looks to me like they’re trying to out-itunes itunes.

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[Jiggers]

Tracy thanks. I check in here from my moms house. I need to keep in touch with W.S.

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[Jiggers]

I don’t play video games. I just listen to music my CD”s, and would like to learn how to watch movies without buying used DVD’s on my new laptop..

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[redblack]

sorry for hijacking your thread, jiggers.

after you get a new laptop, if you have 1Mbps or faster broadband internet, you can get a netflix subscription and download movies to your computer. (they have many sizes of subscriptions, so you can get as much or as little as you can afford.)

you’ll want to consider that when picking a motherboard, video and sound hardware, and onboard memory.

read through ken’s posts about hardware and ask questions if you have to. it takes an informed decision to get what you want, and there’s a lot of good info there.

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[sam-c]

I don’t play video games either, but was just identifying a computer/ brand for the right price that operated well. A good graphics card also means good for watching movies if not video games. I am just looking at the sticker and it is an ATI Radeon HD4330.

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[lizru]

Netflix has a new account: $7.99 a month for unlimited downloads. Be aware that movies are released on DVD first, then for downloading at a later date. So DVD’s have a broader selection sooner. For now. All the providers iTunes, Amazon, Hulu etc. have the same/similar release dates, as these are set by the movie studios. Do a little surfing on Netflix first to see if what they have available for download is what you’d want to watch.

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[Jiggers]

Thanks lizru. That’s the type of info I was looking for. Maybe I’ll try Netflix first. I hate Hulu.

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[redblack]

does anyone here download feature-length movies?

what is the average size/download speed for a movie? and what formats are we talking about with netflix?

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[lizru]

Hey redblack: It’s rumored that Netflix is currently streaming through Amazon Cloud Services and using Flash. Talk is that folks may be moving to html 5 sometime in the future. I’ve done some video downloading, not tons. Just enough to confirm that Netflix’s download service has improved LOTS. I can tell you that companies are starting to make some serious money on video downloads, so that implies some kind of success by their customers. I do like the new “all you can eat” rate from Netflix. This is a new deal for the movie studios but has been standard in the audio/music world for awhile. Audio/music has settled in at around $10 a month, so this is a great deal for movies, but assume it will go up in a bit.

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[Ken]

I am on the mailing list of every laptop makers marketing dept. I will pass along a few deals as they come in and I figure out how to strip off my id number:

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/home.to

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[Ken]

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11596213&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84&N=4001604&Mo=82&No=0&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=4797&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&topnav=

since the link breaks here at wsb, copy and past the whole url into a browser.

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[Author]

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