notebook with good build quality

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Lord Nikon6

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Hi All

So I will soon be in the market for a new notebook, and I was wondering if anyone knows of a notebook with decent build quality, such as the macbook pro.

My issues with the macbook pro is the following:

1. I have never been a fan of apple products
2. that well known "apple tax"

3.The OS is not an issue, as I will be running Linux on the notebook anyway.

I have been looking around, but I have not really seen anything that compares in build quality, apart from the Lenovo thinkpads, which I can only order online.

I am looking for somethnig with fairly high specs, 8GB memory minimum, and a solid state drive. It will mostly be used for software development and penetration testing, and running virtual machines.

Does anyone have any recommendations?
 
Get a Surface Pro 3.

I played with one in Canada last week, great computer.

The SP2 is also still good, and can now be obtained for discounted prices.

But the i7 8GB 512GB SP3 will only be available in October, only the i5 is available now.
 
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If you want best build quality and high reliability I'd import a Panasonic Let's Note.
If you want high specs with that, be prepared to pay $4,000 before VAT, duties and shipping charges. And no local warranty either.

Link for reference, you can probably get it cheaper direct from Japan.
http://www.dynamism.com/top-notebooks/panasonic-ax-series.shtml

Now maybe get a cheapo Macbook Retina instead. :)
 
Jola said:
Get a Surface Pro 3.

I played with one in Canada last week, great computer.

The SP2 is also still good, and can now be obtained for discounted prices.

But the i7 8GB 512GB SP3 will only be available in October, only the i5 is available now.
Click to expand...

Thanks. This looks quite decent actually, I will just have to check for linux compatibility of the hardware.

Space_Chief said:
If you want best build quality and high reliability I'd import a Panasonic Let's Note.
If you want high specs with that, be prepared to pay $4,000 before VAT, duties and shipping charges. And no local warranty either.

Link for reference, you can probably get it cheaper direct from Japan.
http://www.dynamism.com/top-notebooks/panasonic-ax-series.shtml

Now maybe get a cheapo Macbook Retina instead. :)
Click to expand...

This looks brilliant, but a bit huge, in body, and more importantly, in price O_O
 
Hi,

My suggestion would be the Dell Latitude E Series, build with aluminium (tri something), I have a E6230 8gig ram, and 256SSD, and its moving, 7 seconds from cold start to ready to work in win7. To suspend/sleep and wake even faster.
I'm running VMware with 3 servers also. you can take the ram to 16Gig for just under 1k.

The second number in after the E, basically give the screen size, the first one the model range, and the last two - sort off a revision.
Mine is thus the 12", then E6430 would be 14 and so on..

The latest range is the 7 range E7240 etc., I just bought one, but that heavy solid feeling is a bit less than the 6 series. (they say same materials, but lighter to be more Ultrabook like)

Other nice feature is the 3 years next business day onsite warranty that really works!

Then you can buy a docking station and nice big Dell monitors, like the U2412M. 2x of them and a wireless keyboard and mouse set work excellent!

If you are looking for a flashy/bling-bling notebook, you would be disappointed, as this is a "dull-ish" business notebook, with just the right features.

Debian works on both

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/latit/dell_latitude_e6230_spec_sheet.pdf
http://partnerdirect.dell.com/sites...atitude-7000-Series-Ultrabooks-Spec-Sheet.pdf
 
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I bought an i5 8GB RAM 256GB SSD SP2, and am very impressed with it.

I preferred the SP2 because of the price, and also because the SP2 supports Wacom graphics, whereas the SP3 supports N-Trig graphics, for which there are no drivers.
 
gfmalan said:
Hi,

My suggestion would be the Dell Latitude E Series, build with aluminium (tri something), I have a E6230 8gig ram, and 256SSD, and its moving, 7 seconds from cold start to ready to work in win7. To suspend/sleep and wake even faster.
I'm running VMware with 3 servers also. you can take the ram to 16Gig for just under 1k.

The second number in after the E, basically give the screen size, the first one the model range, and the last two - sort off a revision.
Mine is thus the 12", then E6430 would be 14 and so on..

The latest range is the 7 range E7240 etc., I just bought one, but that heavy solid feeling is a bit less than the 6 series. (they say same materials, but lighter to be more Ultrabook like)

Other nice feature is the 3 years next business day onsite warranty that really works!

Then you can buy a docking station and nice big Dell monitors, like the U2412M. 2x of them and a wireless keyboard and mouse set work excellent!

If you are looking for a flashy/bling-bling notebook, you would be disappointed, as this is a "dull-ish" business notebook, with just the right features.

Debian works on both

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/latit/dell_latitude_e6230_spec_sheet.pdf
http://partnerdirect.dell.com/sites...atitude-7000-Series-Ultrabooks-Spec-Sheet.pdf
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for the detailed post. This looks like a good option. I'm not bothered by bling at all, although I had a very short "oooh this macbook is shiny" moment, but then remembered that I think apple is the evil behind all that is evil, and that I am not a teenage girl that should base a hardware purchase on the way it looks :p

Jola said:
I bought an i5 8GB RAM 256GB SSD SP2, and am very impressed with it.

I preferred the SP2 because of the price, and also because the SP2 supports Wacom graphics, whereas the SP3 supports N-Trig graphics, for which there are no drivers.
Click to expand...

I wonder why they are so highly priced though? It must be the build quality. Perhaps if I get someone to bring it in duty free though. I didn't know much about these before, but I am going to research them now.
 
Lord Nikon6 said:
Thanks very much for the detailed post. This looks like a good option. I'm not bothered by bling at all, although I had a very short "oooh this macbook is shiny" moment, but then remembered that I think apple is the evil behind all that is evil, and that I am not a teenage girl that should base a hardware purchase on the way it looks :p
Click to expand...

The Retina MBP is a very nice, much lighter machine. The screen is excellent. It's no longer brick heavy. It's got 2 USB3 ports on opposite sides unlike the older models where the one port was usually obscured by the plug of the first port. You can buy a 480GB SSD from Macsales.com later if the base model 256GB is not enough to offset the initial pricing. Two Thunderbolt ports also which you can use to plug in external SSDs and enjoy the same speed as though they were internally based so you can expand it that way. You can of course dual boot Windows and ignore OSX completely.

This is posted on a rMBP 15.
 
Jola said:
I bought an i5 8GB RAM 256GB SSD SP2, and am very impressed with it.

I preferred the SP2 because of the price, and also because the SP2 supports Wacom graphics, whereas the SP3 supports N-Trig graphics, for which there are no drivers.
Click to expand...

Wacom graphics is good to know, won't have issues with display in that case. It also looks very portable.



Space_Chief said:
The Retina MBP is a very nice, much lighter machine. The screen is excellent. It's no longer brick heavy. It's got 2 USB3 ports on opposite sides unlike the older models where the one port was usually obscured by the plug of the first port. You can buy a 480GB SSD from Macsales.com later if the base model 256GB is not enough to offset the initial pricing. Two Thunderbolt ports also which you can use to plug in external SSDs and enjoy the same speed as though they were internally based so you can expand it that way. You can of course dual boot Windows and ignore OSX completely.

This is posted on a rMBP 15.
Click to expand...

The new ones are indeed very thin, and I don't mind it not having Windows, the notebook will get a linux install as soon as I get it, might keep the default OS as dual boot. The question though is still, is it worth the R26 000, and going against my somewhat biased principles.
 
I'd recommend Fujitsu.

They have an ultrabook series, they are expensive though. I had the Fujitsu UH572 and I found it to be very fast and very nice to use, it also had magnesium casing.

The screen at the back did indent a little if you press your hand against it but you still have to give it a reasonable amount of pressure; it did go exactly back to form after removing your hand.

They also have other ultrabooks that are more premium, the UH572 is meant to be a cheaper option. It sells for around R10 000 depending on where you buy it.

The RAM on it is upgradeable, a guy managed to put in 16GB of RAM and it was stable and worked as intended. You can also upgrade the HDD to SSD, though it already has a SSD that is (I think) integrated on the motherboard along with a conventional HDD for data/storage/applications.
 
Lord Nikon6 said:
The new ones are indeed very thin, and I don't mind it not having Windows, the notebook will get a linux install as soon as I get it, might keep the default OS as dual boot. The question though is still, is it worth the R26 000, and going against my somewhat biased principles.
Click to expand...

The build quality is very good. And the screen is very good. Now will Linux take advantage of the Retina display to display sharper graphics or just make everything incredibly small, I dunno. In fact I dunno how Windows handles that sort or resolution either.
 
Space_Chief said:
Now will Linux take advantage of the Retina display to display sharper graphics or just make everything incredibly small, I dunno. In fact I dunno how Windows handles that sort or resolution either.
Click to expand...

Neither handles it really well.
 
ponder said:
Neither handles it really well.
Click to expand...

Interesting point, and something I have not given a lot of thought. We booted Kali Linux up on a mbp retina the other day, and it seemed okay, as well as archassualt, but the latter was running in a VM.

I have only ever heard of general dynamic laptops, and they are supposedly the most rugged in the industry, am I thinking of the right ones?
 
beans100 said:
Get the Lenovo, I have 2. Really built to last.
Click to expand...
Seconded. Preferably the T series. I have a T420s, and it has an option of an SSD or mSATA drive, upgradable to 16GB RAM and you can choose between a Core i5 and i7. Display resolution is 1600x900. The current equivalent model would be the T440s.

If you want something less mainstream, I'd definitely consider Fujitsu as well.
 
On topic, what laptop manufactures other than apple make aluminium laptops?

Except that $4000 one.
 
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