Order Apple MacBook Pro MB990LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop

Let me start by saying this is my first foray into the world of Macs, I couldn't be more pleased. I've used HP's, Dell's, a high end Alienware, Compaq's etc. They all feel cheap next to the MacBook Pro.

Pros:

AWESOME multitouch trackpad, once you try it, there is no going back.
Backlit keyboard is very nice when typing in lower light conditions.
iSight camera is the best I've seen in a laptop or a desktop webcam. And the built in mic is surprisingly good.
The magsafe power adapter is a big improvement over the standard "tube" adapters.
The screen is crisp and clear, no washy colors or blurry images.
It stays in the 40-50c range for web browsing and editing documents, and cools down quickly when it does heat up.
The chicklet style keyboard has excellent feedback, and is very comfortable to type on.
The aluminum enclosure is extremely classy, yet very durable. I expect this laptop to last a long time.
Battery life is very good, I can use it off and on for a full day before I need to recharge.
Startup and shutdown times are much faster than the PC based laptops I've used.

Last but not least, OS X. While not suited for gaming, it's nearly perfect for everything else, and it's particularly good as a laptop OS.

Cons:

Not a hardcore gaming machine by any means. Though I can play TF2 via bootcamp and pull an average 45-55fps, with spikes up to 100fps, and a minimum around 20fps.
Only 2 USB ports
No dedicated mic port, you will need a USB mic. But the built in mic should be good enough for most people.



Overall this is a fantastic laptop, light and snappy running OS X or Windows 7, and the multitouch trackpad makes mobile use SO MUCH EASIER. I've found myself gravitating to the trackpad even when I've had my high end gaming mouse plugged in, that should tell you something.

If you are a heavy gamer, avoid. For anyone else, this is a must have laptop.Get more detail about Apple MacBook Pro MB990LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop.

Where To Buy Apple MacBook MC207LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop

I've had this mac for a month and i completely love it. I switched from a pc to a mac and i couldn't be happier! This Mac is so easy to us, only thing i wish it had was a camera card slot, but other than that it's wonderful!Get more detail about Apple MacBook MC207LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop.

Shop For Toshiba Satellite L505-S5993 TruBrite 15.6-Inch Grey/Black Laptop - 2 Hours 25 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

After purchasing this laptop and installing all the software I needed, lo and behold, Windows 7 is not compatible with my 2-year-old printer, so I had to return it. Such a shame.Get more detail about Toshiba Satellite L505-S5993 TruBrite 15.6-Inch Grey/Black Laptop - 2 Hours 25 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

Purchase HP Pavilion DV6-1354US 15.6-Inch Black Laptop - Up to 4 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

Should have known better than to buy an HP again. HP DVD drives always die. This one just died on mine after only 45 days. Why HP? Why can you not get it together. Just out of warranty. What a coincidence. The keyboard and finger-pad are all glossy now so they get filthy very fast. And glossy keys reflect so much light you can't even see the letters.Get more detail about HP Pavilion DV6-1354US 15.6-Inch Black Laptop - Up to 4 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

Buy ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop - 12 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

I rarely buy a computer I'm not able to try out, but Amazon was the only source I could find for this model, which on paper was exactly what I need. After a month of use, I'm thoroughly pleased with my purchase. The chiclet keyboard, performance and overall feel have exceeded my expectations. Bear in mind that I had tried an ACER ultralight and already knew I was willing to give up a built in DVD in exchange for lighter weight. I already had an external LG DVD writer that I used with my netbook, which is now gathering dust. The screen is bright and vivid with outstanding contrast and excellent response. I have adapted to glossy, reflective screens and do not use it where glare would be a problem. Internet TV looks fine but darker DVD movies don't show well. The hardware can handle the video fine but the screen image is often too shadowy (not sure of the technical term for this). There is a built in utility that is designed to optimize the screen settings for different purposes but I have not experimented with it, since I rarely watch DVD's on my laptop. The build quality is good, though there are a couple of spots where the plastic gives a bit, as though the frame pieces did not mesh exactly. If this were an issue for me, I would have spent twice as much and bought a Lenovo. The touchpad has taken some getting used to, and it does respond to accidental thumb strikes when typing. I plan to try out the drivers mentioned in other reviews. I love the semigloss exterior, which does show fingerprint smudges but not as much a my wife's HP. When my co-workers saw it, they were uniformly impressed and compared it to the Mac Air. It's become a cliche, but my overall sense is that everything seems to "just work" -- the power button is right where I would have put it, the keyboard layout seems natural, there is no obvious bottleneck in doing ordinary things, the cool features are understated and don't draw unnecessary attention to themselves, and the balance seems just right when you pick it up with one hand.Get more detail about ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop - 12 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

Buying Dell Inspiron 11z 11.6-Inch Obsidian Black Laptop (Windows 7 Premium)

Powerful, feature rich, laptop small enough to fall into the netbook catagory. Streaming or stored video plays bautifully due to the dual core CPU, good video processor, and high definition screen. Keyboard is large enough to type on normally after some practice. Only faults are the lack of a VGA output, has only HDMI, and the awful fingerprint gathering glossy black finish. Price on Amazon is the lowest I've found for comparable laptop. As always the packing and shipping were excellent.Get more detail about Dell Inspiron 11z 11.6-Inch Obsidian Black Laptop (Windows 7 Premium).

Cheapest Dell Inspiron 1545 15.6-Inch Jet Black Laptop - Up to 4 Hours 34 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

I love everthing about this product and service. It was delivered on time. The product is wonderful. THe price was top of the line Get more detail about Dell Inspiron 1545 15.6-Inch Jet Black Laptop - Up to 4 Hours 34 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

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i am very happy with this pc and so far have not found anything i don't like about it. fast, sharp looking,and great value for the price.Get more detail about ASUS K50IJ-X8 15.6-Inch Black Versatile Entertainment Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium).

Discount Apple MacBook Pro MB991LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop

Just a short review here. Got this item fast and trouble-free from Amazon. Great laptop, you cant go wrong with it. Best of all worlds: OS X, Windows, and Linux. Can do basically anything you can imagine. Hardware is to-die-for gorgeous!! Great solid, sturdy feel. Keyboard has great touch-feel. Touch-pad is killer feature, you really cant go back to using a normal Synaptics touch pad after this. Software is as expected, Snow Leopard is a charm. Hardware specs could have been a bit higher for a $1200 laptop tho (either bigger HD or 4 GB RAM or both). But I upgraded both of these after purchase. Great buy, whether your new to Mac or not. Remember, it *IS* Apple's Most Popular Mac right now!!! :) :)Get more detail about Apple MacBook Pro MB991LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop.

Low Price Sony VAIO VGN-FW510F/B 16.4-Inch Black Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium)

I wanted a tidy wireless replacement and am very happy with my Sony Vaio. Weighing in at over 6lbs. it is not suitable for travel but works well anywhere in the house with a wireless router. The speakers are disappointing and tinny sounding, but that's forgiveable considering the overall quality of my purchase.Get more detail about Sony VAIO VGN-FW510F/B 16.4-Inch Black Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium).

Save Toshiba Satellite T135-S1310 TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Black Laptop - 9 Hours 22 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

Whatever you do, don't send this notebook or any Toshiba notebook to their repair depot. My function keys failed to work out of the box. After spending months intermittently trying to fix them via Toshiba phone support and their web site, I sent it into their repair depot with the assurance that it would take 7-10 days to repair. That was two months ago. I talked with a "customer relations" representative today who told me that my only option was to wait however long it took for the repair - if it took forever, well so be it. Today I learned that it will be in the repair facility for at least another month! That's three months on a repair that was supposed to take 7-10 days. So what's the difference between this kind of confiscation and theft? I feel as though my notebook has been stolen.Get more detail about Toshiba Satellite T135-S1310 TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Black Laptop - 9 Hours 22 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

Lowest Price Apple MacBook Pro MC118LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop

I thought it would be really diffucult to change from a PC to a Mac. I was wrong! Mac is very user friendly especially for someone like me who does not like change.. Love my Mac I find more things every day that make me love it even more.Get more detail about Apple MacBook Pro MC118LL/A 15.4-Inch Laptop.

Sony VAIO VGN-NW240F/S 15.5-Inch Silver Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) Right now

I have received the product defective.
On the LCD there's a darker area and it seems that it's a hardware issue.

Unfortunately, had to travel to Europe, therefore cannot get a refund in 30 days.

On the other hand, although Amazon is advertising 1-year international service plan on this web page - so that i can fix the LCD while abroad - in fact it's just a great lye.

More likely i'm stuck with a defective product!!!Get more detail about Sony VAIO VGN-NW240F/S 15.5-Inch Silver Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium).

ASUS UL80Vt-A1 14-Inch Thin and Light Black Laptop - 11.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) Decide Now

Anyone know of a fix or driver update fo the elan trackpad on this laptop?

When using the trackpad, it:

1) automatically clicks on items when I did not click or touch the pad
2) the mouse location in in-accurate (it moves around by itself and is hard to make fine movements
3) the mouse pointer stutters. it moves, then stops for bit, then moves again (hiccups)

It's a pain to use. Other than that, and some sharp edges near the led light in the front because the top/bottom case is not aligned well, the laptop is a good one. But the trackpad is so painful to use daily that it's the real reason for the low rating.


UPDATE: found a solution, just uninstall the crappy elan driver and software using the control panel's programs and features section. After the reboot, you'll get the default microsoft ps2 mouse drivers and now it's working fine. No two finger gestures but that was gimmicky anyways. At least now the trackpad works reliably.
Get more detail about ASUS UL80Vt-A1 14-Inch Thin and Light Black Laptop - 11.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

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this is a great little laptop! it's powerful enough run photoshop cs4 and visual studios 2008 at the same time. not too happy with all those bloatware that hp installed with it, but overall it's awesome for the price paid.Get more detail about HP Pavilion DV4-1541US 14.1-Inch Espresso Laptop - Up to 4.25 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

HP Pavilion DV6-2150US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black) Buy Now

I posted a long review of the current crop of DV6-21xx series of notebooks here: HP Pavilion DV6-2170US. The models are mostly the same with different CPUs (one has a discrete graphics chip). All include the newest mobile processors from Intel which eclipse the older Core2 line in terms of performance. Those with integrated graphics include Intel's new HD graphics which are also a big improvement over Intel's old 4500HD graphics (which are still inferior to discrete graphics chips from AMD/ATI and Nvidia when it come to 3D gaming). I would suggest avoiding the older DV6 13xx and 12xx series unless you can get a really good price (which may happen as HP discontinues them).

Here is the summary of models I posted in that review:

If you're staring at the various DV6 models trying to decide which one to buy my advice is (based on the models available when I wrote this):

- For home users who aren't gamers you can save about $100 if you go with the HP Pavilion DV6-2150US 15.6-Inch Laptop which combines a Core i3 with Win 7 Premium and a 6 cell battery. The performance for non-gaming software will be very close to the more expensive i5 models and you'll save money by going with Win 7 Premium and a smaller battery.

- If you need good battery life, run higher end software, or like to game a bit go for the HP Pavilion DV6-2170US which combines the Core i5 with the 12 cell battery. The Intel graphics aren't the best but it's a big improvement over past products. This is the model I think has the best balance of features.

- If gaming matters more than battery life you should probably look at other laptop lines but if you are sold on the DV6 go for the HP Pavilion DV6-2190US which has a quad CPU Core i7 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M graphics. It's only got a 6 cell battery and that CPU and graphics are going to drain it quickly. You'll pay about $200 over this model.

- If you have a lot of older software consider the HP Pavilion DV6-2157SB Small Business Edition which comes with Windows 7 Pro (which can run older software on a WinXP kernel). It has a Core i3 and a 6 cell battery. It also has a different finish ("Plaid Mocha") but I haven't seen it so I can't comment on it.
Get more detail about HP Pavilion DV6-2150US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black).

HP Pavilion DV6-1350US 15.6-Inch Espresso Laptop - Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) Get it now!

lousy product from hp
pile of ugly issues experienced
1. network card keeps shutting off randomly
2. windows media center periodically stops working with message ( windows media center crashed)
3. hp advisor keeps crashing on startup

Get more detail about HP Pavilion DV6-1350US 15.6-Inch Espresso Laptop - Up to 8 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

Acer Aspire AS1410-8414 11.6-Inch Sapphire Blue Laptop - 6 Hour Battery Life Best Quality

Had been looking for a netbook/smaller notebook to use at school to do powerpoint presentations as well as travel with. Netbooks seemed a little too small then I saw the 11.6 notebooks. After much searching and comparing I decided on the Acer1410. (A colleague has the Gateway 11.6) I was looking for 2G ram, 250G HD, a faster processor and good battery life. Got it all with the Acer 1410. For my needs Vista is good for now, besides after running the compatibility test I didn't want to have to start changing everything to put WIndows 7 on.

This machine is fast, crystal clear screen, and the full-size keyboard is perfect for paws like mine. I used it this weekend and when I opened it up it showed 7+ hrs of battery life.

Can't believe people complain about it being a fingerprint magnet! Wipe it off or be more careful handling it.

Need a small, fast, powerful notebook? Acer 1410-8414 is it.Get more detail about Acer Aspire AS1410-8414 11.6-Inch Sapphire Blue Laptop - 6 Hour Battery Life.

Toshiba Satellite T135-S1310RD TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Black/Red Laptop - 9 Hours 22 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) Immediately

I received this beauty 3 days ago and I am very pleased with the purchase. The design is gorgeous and so light weight compared to my old laptop.

As others have mentioned the mouse buttons are pretty substandard but everything else meets my expectations. I am not a gamer so that wasn't part of my criteria but I must say the display is beautiful.

I am not a willing windows user except I will need it for working from home but I will be installing Ubuntu to dual boot. I will review my success after Christmas.Get more detail about Toshiba Satellite T135-S1310RD TruBrite 13.3-Inch Ultrathin Black/Red Laptop - 9 Hours 22 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

Acer Aspire Timeline AS4810TZ-4508 14-Inch Aluminum Laptop - Over 8 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) This instant

It's is a beautiful looking laptop and I was very excited about it. Bought it for my sister who was visiting for a week. Though, I doubt that this product line has a lot of flawed machines, it simply freezes a lot at least 5 - 10 times daily since I bought it until I returned it. Same issues happened to 2 of my friends, I updated the BIOS as well as all drivers ans still it simply freezes sporadically. It's a shame I had to return it, have to admit Buy.com where I bought it were very professional and they sent me a free return service via UPS since it was a product issue. I ended up buying an overpriced Dell 14z from best buy as there was no time to buy via mail before my sister leaves town, it didn't look as nice as the acer and was a bit heavier, but had no issues with it. Get more detail about Acer Aspire Timeline AS4810TZ-4508 14-Inch Aluminum Laptop - Over 8 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).

ASUS UL20A-A1 Thin and Light 12.1-Inch Silver Laptop - 7.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) Top Quality

I tried some netbooks for a while but they were simply too small and limited. Dishing out some mega bucks could have helped me along, but I was trying to stay under $600. I then came across the UL20A. I've always been an Asus fan and most people seemed to like the laptop, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

The first thing I noticed when I got it out was the quality. While the Acer did feel very sturdy, this raises the bar. The metal top is a nice touch, but the plastics in general are very ridged and solid. The top/palm area is smooth and not quite as solid as the lower half, but still feels great with very clean edges.

As I started working on it, I was rather impressed by the keyboard. I never was a huge fan of the "chiclet" style keyboard, but this feels very nice. Keys are very easy to depress but have a decent depth and give a nice amount of feedback. It's by far one of the nicest keyboards I've used on a laptop. The touchpad is nice too. Some people complained about it, but I rather like it. Initially the surface felt sticky, but after using it for a bit, it was very smooth worked very well for me. Now the buttons are a bit stiff, but I typically "tap-click" so that's not a huge deal.

The screen is OK. At first glance it's quite nice, and works well indoors. However, it is very glossy (I prefer no gloss personally) and there's a fair amount of light bleeding around the edges. Under most circumstances though, it does looks quite nice, and the 1366x768 make for very sharp images. It also makes for some tiny images on such a small screen.

Speakers are nothing to write home about. They sound OK and do get quite loud without much distortion, but most HPs I've worked with had MUCH better sound systems on their laptops. Even my old Dell Inspiron 1420 sounds better. Another drawback is the bottom-mounted speakers. At least for me, I normally use this in my lap, thus the sound isn't so great. To really come alive, it needs to be on a desk or some hard surface.

Performance and heat are good. Honestly I was hoping for a bit better performance out of it. On normal/high-performance, it can handle most any HD video or flash material you throw at it. However, I tend to run my computers on power-saver to help with heat and battery life. My Dell Inspiron 1420 (T5550) could manage HD videos on youtube on Powersaver, but this one struggles. I was really hoping for them to be more equal, but perhaps that's a bit much for a ULV CPU... Heat is managed quite well. The fan is running pretty much all the time, but it's near silent. You can feel a hot breeze coming from the vents, but it's not bad at all.

Oh, and Asus makes it very easy for us to upgrade to 4GB of RAM, installing only a single 2GB stick!

All in all I'm pleased with it. There are some flaws keeping it from being a perfect laptop, but given the goods, they do outweigh the bads.Get more detail about ASUS UL20A-A1 Thin and Light 12.1-Inch Silver Laptop - 7.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).