What laptop? (powerful, large, light).

[Mr.Whippy]

My shortlist (in current order of preference) is.

Sony Vaio
Apple Mac Pro/Air
Dell
Lenovo thinkpad 520
Toshiba M11

advice please

Don't get a Vaio.... I bought one once, never again... bits were falling off and had to be glued back on within months. They're not very well built imo.

[eek]

Don't get a Vaio.... I bought one once, never again... bits were falling off and had to be glued back on within months. They're not very well built imo.

The Z series are fine as they are built in Japan for the Japanese market. Shame there's not one available at the moment.

[richard101]

As I said Thinkpad wad my first choice but for technical consultancy I need half an eye on looks. Is apple a capable choice? And more importantly will its lack of windows7 be a problem? Given my requirements

[Bunk]

As I said Thinkpad wad my first choice but for technical consultancy I need half an eye on looks. Is apple a capable choice? And more importantly will its lack of windows7 be a problem? Given my requirements

Your laptop's looks are important for technical consultancy? Do you realise how strange that sounds?

If you really are worried about looks then get a Macbook Pro. I've got one of the new ones with a quad core I7 and 8GB of RAM so it munches through anything I throw at it. I can dual-boot into Windows 7 if I need to, or just run it in a VM in VMWare Fusion.

[amcdonald]

First IBM Thinkpad 760CD lasted seven years (1995-2002).
Second IBM Thinkpad T23 lasted seven years (2002-2009).
Then switched to Dell.....
Dell Vostro 1520 lasted just two years (2009-2011).
Just bought a new Lenovo Thinkpad T520.

Notice it's a Lenovo Thinkpad brand now not IBM, it will be interesting to see if build quality is still the same

[Moscow Mule]

Another +1 for the macbook. Mine's pretty awesome.

Mind you, it should be for £3k.

[oracleslave]

As I said Thinkpad wad my first choice but for technical consultancy I need half an eye on looks.

[doodab]

I like the "monolith from 2001" look myself, it's purposeful and businesslike.

[Spacecadet]

First IBM Thinkpad 760CD lasted seven years (1995-2002).
Second IBM Thinkpad T23 lasted seven years (2002-2009).
Then switched to Dell.....
Dell Vostro 1520 lasted just two years (2009-2011).
Just bought a new Lenovo Thinkpad T520.

Not surprising really... the vostro is more consumer orientated and designed/priced accordingly which your comparing to a corporate class T series IBM

[BoredBloke]

I've just taken the plunge and bought a Dell laptop from their outlet site. The spec is a quad core i7 with 6gb Ram, 640gb HD and a 15 inch screen. It's not light though but it's battery life is pretty good (9 cell one). It's got a 2gb nVidia 540m graphics card. It cost £570 with a 1 year warranty. So far I'm pretty impressed!