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Author Topic: Laptops for field engineers Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-12-2000 03:08 PM                     Well my back up laptop finally died (both were Toshiba Satelites) and I am just wondering what every one else is useing and the pro's and cons they have discovered I am interested in the Panasonic with the magnesium case Compatability with the R2 the UltraStereo light meter, SDDS and CinemaACoustic processors is also a consideration  |  IP: Logged Ken Layton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1452 From: Olympia, Wash. USA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 02-12-2000 07:59 PM                     I've got a UMAX Actionbook which just sort of Ok. Mediocre is more like it. Regal cinemas gave their techs in the northwest all AST laptops with external floppies and external cd rom drives.  |  IP: Logged Ian Price Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1714 From: Denver, CO Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-13-2000 01:08 AM                     I have been wondering about buying this e-Machine, e-Slate. It is supposed to be the first good $1,000 laptop. I am including the link so you can look at the specs. If anyone has an opinion, please chime in. http://www.e4me.com/infocentral/product_eslate400k.html  |  IP: Logged Stefan Scholz Expert Film Handler Posts: 223 From: Schoenberg, Germany Registered: Sep 1999 posted 02-13-2000 11:14 AM                        In my tech work in cinema and cellphone industry, I am currently a Dell Lattitude laptop. This was chosen from cellphone Corp.'s hHQ, as ithas a very good 14.5" display, and in comparison to most other brand was extremely solid, even though it does not look like this. They even made drop and smash tests with full Hard Drive activity, and thery kept on going. The delivered BIOS and Windows system was total crap and had to be redone before actual usage. But I think this applies to any computer bought offshelf  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-13-2000 12:17 PM                        I deal with laptops all the time at work (mostly fixing problems with them). My general feeling is that all laptops suck, but some suck less than others. We're currently buying IBM 600E laptops, which are pretty decent and are about the only laptops that I've seen that will actually run WinNT reasonably well (amazingly, it is much easier to get Linux to run happily on laptops than NT!). The IBM laptops aren't the greatest and they certainly are expensive, but they generally seem to play nicely with NT and require relatively little support. As for the others: Toshibas used to be decent, but I've not had good experiences with them recently. Some of the NEC laptops are decent, but they generally don't like NT very much (which may or may not be an issue for you). Not sure about Dell, although I hear that they're "just OK."  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-13-2000 02:02 PM                     Of os on my laptop I usually partition it for 4 operating systems PC DOS WIN98 OS2 Warp4 Linux The 2 toshibas had no problem with any of them they just were not that reliable especially after the Xray machines at airports  |  IP: Logged Jason Burroughs Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 654 From: Allen, TX Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-13-2000 04:03 PM                     Godon, You may want to consider looking into the Dell Latitude line, these are business end computers, the higher end ones come with a 15" screen. Dell has been rated highly for sometime for the abuse that their laptops can take. I've worked with these for sometime, and have found them to be VERY reliable.  |  IP: Logged Greg Mueller Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1687 From: Port Gamble, WA Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-13-2000 05:38 PM                        I'm looking into laptops for my hobby of CCD astronomy, and after surveying a fairly large user group the consensus of opinion was Toshiba for bullet proofness and cold weather capability and general reliability. First choice actually was IBM, but they're way to expensive, which tipped the scales in favor of Toshiba.  |  IP: Logged Richard Hamilton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1341 From: Evansville, Indiana Registered: Jan 2000 posted 02-13-2000 10:41 PM                     Scott, I asked the computer gurus at the office and they had no real response, so I will ask you; Why do you want NT on a laptop? I had a Thinkpad with win95 on it and I loved it. They decided to give me a new computer with NT and it seems to have some problems.  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 02-14-2000 10:38 AM                        Many companies (like Kodak) use a Windows NT platform, with Lotus Notes. So that's what our laptops are configured for. I'm using an IBM 760XL ThinkPad that's showing its age and is really slow by today's standards. Larger corporate IT departments keep close control of what's configured and what software is installed (it makes their job easier, and avoids conficting, buggy, or virus-infected software), which can be limiting. New versions of software take months to approve, since they don't want to have to deal with early bugs. ------------------ John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist Worldwide Technical Services, Professional Motion Imaging Eastman Kodak Company Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419 Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243 E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-14-2000 04:54 PM                     Gord, I have had no problems with my Toshiba 435cds. I've had it now, I think, for almost 4 years and have yet to have problem 1. Even the battery is still chugging along...although it does not have the capacity that it used to. I bought mine based on reliability reports from Lucasfilm. They were all using the same Toshiba notebooks. Of course by todays standards its a dinosaur, but then it does always work and I like the fact that the HD is shock mounted in sorbethane. Why not see what the guys at Lucasfilm are using these days as they travel extensively. BTW: I also use this Toshiba for alot of other lighting programs as well and its never even hickupped. Mark  |  IP: Logged Lance C. McFetridge Expert Film Handler Posts: 135 From: Penn Yan, New York Registered: Jul 99 posted 02-14-2000 07:54 PM                     Gord, I have a gateway solo 2550, with a pentium III, 6gig and a ton of ram. No problems at all, and I put it through the mill with graphics software. Nicest thing is the IR port and how my DC265 digital camera downloads without a cord. Thing with Gateway is the great support. For what it's worth. Lance  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-15-2000 08:38 AM                        John pretty much said it; we won't run anything less than WinNT here. From an administrative point of view, support costs go way down when users have an OS that is slightly more stable than Win9x, is significantly less insecure than Win9x, and which makes it much more difficult for users to screw themselves. <grin> For these reasons, the only machines that we'll connect to the network here are running WinNT, Linux, or Solaris.  |  IP: Logged Jason Burroughs Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 654 From: Allen, TX Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-16-2000 02:54 PM                     Well I suppose this post may be a little bit pre-mature. But now there is a BETTER of the 2 worlds.... Windows 2000. Which has many benefits for the user of Win98, the stability of WinNT (and then some). And...... its VERY laptop friendly. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but they did a good job with this new OS.  |  IP: Logged Ari Nordström Master Film Handler Posts: 283 From: Göteborg, Sweden Registered: Jan 2000 posted 02-17-2000 04:09 PM                     >>"Well I suppose this post may be a little bit pre-mature. But now there is a BETTER of the 2 worlds.... Windows 2000."<< I've run Win2000 beta on my Asus laptop for about six months now, without any other problems than a known hibernation mode bug. I use the laptop for field operations, and the combination Asus/Win2000 works just fine for me.  |  IP: Logged

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