Strong laptop

headcase

Off to Zambia for 6 months. Anyone recommend a laptop make that has a strong case. I do not want a cheap plastic case. I've found that Acer are very bendy at the keybroad. I've got upto £750 to spend. Looking for 4gb of ram and about 320 or 500 gb of hard drive as well as 17 inch screen. Also waould like to extend the 12 month warrenty to 2 or 3 years if I can get the warenty cover for Zambia. , as when back off to uni. Also any ideas for the best price for microsoft windows student 2010. Thank you.

Knarf44

based on what poster "Hammyman" says about IBM Thinkpad laptops being as tough as nails perhaps one of those might be what you want.

Software4Students sell MS Office 2010 for £39 incl VAT and Del.

JasX

Dust and overheating are other good reasons for avoiding a cheap plastic case..... tbh in your circumstances i'd be looking for something as cheap and functional as possible around the £350 - Dell special deal range, keep good backups and not be too upset if you end up replacing it shortly after comming back.

getting an expensive one, spending more money on an extended warranty, then taking it off round africa exposing it to the sun/elements/dust/agressive natives is asking for trouble.

....also laptops are suprisingly easy to sell on second hand in less accessible parts of the world (well certainly over the boarder in Angola/Luanda from my experience there) if you care to take that route....

Hammyman

Definitely the T series. Had to pop off the lid off a 3 year old ex-corporate one to replace a hinge which had a slight bit of play in. Underneath the lid is a solid metal plate a good few millimetres thick. You can pretty much stand on the laptop and not knack the screen. The thing weighs loads compared to anything you'd find in PC World simply due to the amount of metal there is in the chassis and lid.

Honestly you don't need 4GB or a large HDD or a large screen. What you do need is a matte finished screen otherwise you'll get nothing but reflections off a gloss one. In regards to the HDD, more important is its shock and drop resistance than the size when travelling as you can get a large external drive so you can back stuff up onto it. In my desktop I have 2 hard drives. Bearing in mind I keep image copies of recovery discs which can be up to 3GB, I have 84GB of stuff on my main drive (inc loads of photos and 11GB of music) and 199GB of stuff on my secondary drive I store data and windows 7 backups etc on.

Hammyman

JasX wrote: »

Dust and overheating are other good reasons for avoiding a cheap plastic case..... tbh in your circumstances i'd be looking for something as cheap and functional as possible around the £350 - Dell special deal range, keep good backups and not be too upset if you end up replacing it shortly after comming back.

A good point. Many of my laptops go to Afghanistan with the troops as there's the largest military driver training school just up the road. Virtually non of them come back - they're treated as disposable items.

Apples2

We used to use these bad boys in the forces

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PANASONIC-TOUGHBOOK-CF-29-RUGGED-LAPTOP,-OBD,-OBD2,-017_W0QQitemZ380282713798QQcmdZViewItem?rvr_id=159642309004&rvr_id=159642309004&cguid=63689e4912b0a0aa17251455ffd251e4

Don't get me wrong, they are woefully poor spec wise but they are rugged, they definitely bounce. I even dropped one out of a boat whilst it was switced on and it still worked.

I don't recall ever banging a nail in with one but I'm sure it would have done the job, you could even play solitaire whilst banging the nail in !!



nb. All laptops are consumable items in the Forces, it works out cheaper to replace them than having some complicated insurance/accounting procedure in place.

Russel245

It's not quite up to your specs, but it's designed for harsh environments so might be worth a look:


http://www.review-displays.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_JNB-1401.html


It's fanless so I don't think it has any internal air flow to stop dust issues.

The case is also designed to withstand some punishment.

Wh05apk

Some interesting assumptions being made here, the op said he was off to Zambia, so everyone seems to assume he will be using outside on the plains in the dust! I suspect a could case is required as will be ported around a lot, and then used as most people do, indoors.

Apples2

Wh05apk wrote: »

Some interesting assumptions being made here, the op said he was off to Zambia, so everyone seems to assume he will be using outside on the plains in the dust! I suspect a could case is required as will be ported around a lot, and then used as most people do, indoors.

Why would he need a particularly strong case if it is being used indoors?

Carrying stuff in Zamibia is no different from carrying stuff through a UK City.

diable

Apples2 wrote: »

We used to use these bad boys in the forces

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PANASONIC-TOUGHBOOK-CF-29-RUGGED-LAPTOP,-OBD,-OBD2,-017_W0QQitemZ380282713798QQcmdZViewItem?rvr_id=159642309004&rvr_id=159642309004&cguid=63689e4912b0a0aa17251455ffd251e4

Don't get me wrong, they are woefully poor spec wise but they are rugged, they definitely bounce. I even dropped one out of a boat whilst it was switced on and it still worked.

I don't recall ever banging a nail in with one but I'm sure it would have done the job, you could even play solitaire whilst banging the nail in !!



nb. All laptops are consumable items in the Forces, it works out cheaper to replace them than having some complicated insurance/accounting procedure in place.

Good laptops the Gas Board and BT use them you can drop them and bash then nothing happens to them (within reason)

olias

Apples2 wrote: »

Why would he need a particularly strong case if it is being used indoors?

Carrying stuff in Zamibia is no different from carrying stuff through a UK City.

Have you seen the state of their roads!!!!!!

Olias