You have to love the process of buying a desktop computer these days. They are usually more than powerful enough for any application (save gaming), and easy to setup. Go to Red Flag Deals and look for some sales. When something pops up for a moderately powerful computer, pick it up. Upgrade the monitor and sound equipment peacemeal and you will have a computer that can last 5 years at least. A desktop is that it doesn’t get hauled around very much. You don’t have to worry about it getting bent out of shape, left in the car, or stolen (in most cases anyway). You don’t need something made out of polycarbonate steel – just something that your table will support, and you will be fine. A laptop is different though.

A Laptop’s durability is an open question. A quick look at Notebookreviews.com shows that even expensive laptops (Alienware, high end Asus) can fall apart, and that technical support is pretty much non-existant, despite a company’s complaints to the contrary. Some companies pissed away their reputation after many years of bad decisions (Hewlett Packard), and bureaucracy can be a huge problem, especially at the larger companies like IBM or foreign companies like Lenovo. Pricing is always bloated on a Notebook computer, but cutting corners is the stupidest thing one can do – after all, who wants a shabby low-end Dell?
My requirements were for a computer that could survive the cold, had a Firewire port, at least 2 USBs. Bonus points were given if I could directly plug my camera’s Compact Flash into the slot. I needed to have enough memory for proper performance, and a hard disk that was fast enough to do some video editing on. Some of the newer gadgets (Fingerprint reader, etc…) were fresh in my mind. I also wanted a new computer if at all possible; no more browsing the used computers on EBay.

After exhaustive searching, I came up with a list of vendors with whom I could do business, and a list I could not do business with.

Vendors to Avoid

• ACER (Whoops, thanks Mr. Yue): Cheap low-end laptops, but their high end (Ferrari) are hideously overpriced for the power they deliver.
• Hewlett Packard: I own a HP Pavilion which is a decent computer. I bought it cheaply during a cash crunch, and had it on a zero percent loan for 6 months until I paid it all off. However, I do not intend to ever buy an HP portable device. I briefly owned an HP Digitial Camera, which was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. Their Research and Development division was gutted for short term profits by previous management; I don’t intend to entrust my business to a computer which makes such short-term and harmful (to my own future, as an IT professional) decisions.
• Alienware: The computer game industry is filled with idiots, and game fanboys are even worse. However, even worse than the game fanboy scum is when they become company fanboy scum. Only they could cheer on a company like this that produces brittle low-quality garbage, and elevate it to a position of being “cool”. Alienware is as cool as having my testicles chopped off. I haven’t seen a single person mention it as a good choice, except for stylistic purposes. I don’t get the purpose of having a nerd fanboy laptop for style anyways. The only person I knew who was into Style didn’t have a clue what Alienware was – she was a fan of Sony.
• Sony: I had a very close friend who loved Sony, to the point where she wanted to buy a new one just because it had a brand new pink cover. I very much respect her opinion, but I hate Sony. Besides their obviously overpriced designs (possibly tolerable because ofthe supposed quality of the designs), they did not release their best computers in Canada – and more to the point never forget the rootkit. I did not even bother looking at the Viao as a result, eventhough I was willing to spend up until $3,000 for a new Laptop.
• Toshiba: Ok, I only excluded them because (sigh) “Sword Angel” (I can’t believe I am calling him that) told me to exclude them. Keyboard layout is screwy anyways.

Vendors Worth Examining

• Lenovo/IBM: Lenovo bought out IBM’s Thinkpad line, and the Thinkpad has a well-earned reputation for being a worthy investment.
• Dell: Cheap, and the lower end computers are junk, but the higher end computers have a pretty good reputation. I have heard they fall apart after 3 or 4 years.
• Apple: No explanation needed. Other than Sony, this is the only really “Stylish” notepad for someone who wants to really impress someone.
• Panasonic: The Toughbook is probably one of the few laptops that can survive a beating intact.

Right off the bat, I had to remove Panasonic from the list. It turns out that the Toughbook is brutally expensive, reaching more than $4000. Even then the Toughbooks were underpowered. If I ever end up a military engineer in a World War I might reconsider, but until then it really makes no practical sense to own one.

Apple is a more difficult proposition. The new Macbook Pro, which uses Intel chips, is actually pretty good. All things being equal, I would have bought it and have been happy with it – unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Picture editing software is thankfully much cheaper (since we can just go out and get The Gimp), but Video editing software isn’t – and that is a big problem. It would have added about $1200 to the price of a Macbook to get a video editing package, like the one I have for PC. Add on any other software I might be using, and it only becomes more blatent. I like the ergonomics of an Apple, and regret that I couldn’t own one.

My next choice after Apple was Lenovo. To be honest, there is no practical reason for me not owning a Lenovo right now – it didn’t appear so expensive that I couldn’t afford it. On the contrary, their prices were fairly reasonable. However, the website for Lenovo is an outright insult. They basically took the Chinese website, and threw in garbage wherever they could. I even made a list of all the mistakes:

• The design is far from professional. They have the same colours as my site, and somehow it looks a heck of a lot worse! They are having a lot of fun playing with gradients – it is too bad they look so ugly. This is an insult at two levels; one, they clearly refused to hire any Canadians to do the site and went with cheap 3rd world labour. This means a guy like me was deprived of a job, and that they don’t consider my business worth spending even $5000 on building a decent site.
• The price is listed in Chinese fashion with top-bottom orientation on text, rather than left-right.
• No way to upgrade components on a laptop like you can at Dell. If it has a 4 cell battery, you need to buy an extra 8 cell battery.
• If you click “Business” you get taken to a better interface – however that interface turns out to be the American interface, and without you knowing, you are being billed in US Dolalrs.
• The Server crashed when I clicked “purchase now”.
• Confusing terminology on their page (again, cheap Chinese -> English business translators who have no idea how to phrase things in a natural fashion). Just look at how they contrast the business warranty with the regular warranty – I felt like I was only step separated from ordering it off the back of a truck in Taiwan.
• Did I mention that somehow a computer that costs $2000 USD somehow costs $3700 CAD? That wouldn’t be tenible even during the height of our currency crash a few years ago.

In the end, Lenovo FORCED me to buy a different computer. What a pathetic company of third grade losers. I ended up with my last choice (Dell) and got a steal of a deal on an IXP-170, their highest-line of computers, for merely $2200.00. What a crock.

-Update-

So it turns out one of the big design headaches I was having problems with was because I was using Firefox. In IE, the page was displaying properly (IE: No vertical text). This doesn’t excuse the other issues, but at least I am reassured that they weren’t being almost obscenely negligent in maintaining their website. (However, considering that IBM is planning to move completely over to OSS, wouldn’t it be wise for Lenovo to actually test other browsers?)