Myth of the "business class" notebook

The only drawback I see there are the absence of a modular bay. I haven't used one of these macbooks myself throughout a longer period of time. I only see it once a while at a friend. Love the looks. Plain and flat areas, simplistic design. Mmhmmm.

But I like knowing the whole story and one or the other argument against apple comes in handy sometimes for instance when one of these apple fanboys starts gettin nasty.

 

Having briefly used several Latitude E6500's, not-so-stellar build quality was the first thing that I noticed. It felt pretty much like any other consumer-grade laptop and it definitely didn't inspire the kind of throw-it-into-a-backpack-without-a-second-thought confidence that a MBP, consumer-grade Toughbook, or even just about anything from Asus would have.

To be honest, I can't believe Dell charges $1500 minimum for this thing.

 

The E6500 starts around ~$775, not $1500.

But I will agree that the Latitude E's are not as well built as the Latitude D notebooks. They are, however, comparable in build quality to the business machines from HP and Lenovo. Maybe Dell is better, maybe Dell is worse...but all three companies are fairly close to each other me thinks.

While the MBP does have a metal frame, I'm not sure if there are any notebooks from any of the companies you mentioned that use magnesium alloy chassis. I'm pretty sure the answer is 'none.'

 

Real Panasonic Toughbooks are rugged notebooks built to US military standards. It's the kind of notebook you could drive a truck over without any problem. The consumer-grade ones I mentioned aren't nearly as durable, but they still a magnesium alloy chassis and other standard things like waterproofing and accelerometers... On the other hand, I doubt you could pour a glass of water on a Latitude while it's powered on and still expect it to work.

But feel free to try?

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for what happens to your notebook should you decide to do so.

 

Not sure about the ASUS or Toughbook, but take a look at this...the MBP does not have a magnesium alloy chassis. I doubt you could pour water over the ASUS or Apple notebooks and expect them to work either.

 

I suppose I got a little off topic there. Anyways, my point is that the build quality on the E6500 umm, looks and feels like it could fall apart at any minute (and indeed, part of the chassis on one of the ones I used did wiggle a little, though I'm not sure if it was a manufacturing defect or an abuse issue). For example, you could make a laptop chassis out of titanium, but that wouldn't even matter if the titanium sheets were put together with UHU glue sticks.

This kind of thing could never happen on a Macbook Pro, and while it could potentially happen with an Asus laptop, all of the ones I've used have felt sturdy, though I'll admit that this is just personal experience.

 

Let me just throw in the thought that "fit and finish" is not the same as a robust construction. A comparison with the auto industry is in order, and I found the two following reviews of the Humvee interesting:

Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/suvs/0207_hummer_h2/index.html

and

Source: http://www.sportscarmarket.com/Profiles/2004/September/American/

I have no doubt that many consumer notebooks have excellent fit and finish--afterall, this is a selling point on the Best Buy floor. But it is not the same as long term durability, or ease of replacement of parts in the field.

 

Im with Peon, for the last few years the only machines I would call " BUSINESS" class are the toughbook 18, 19, 29, and 30. Okay theyre twice the price or more but will last 5-9 years if you dont need the speed and dedicated graphics. and hey washing them off under running water is always an eye opener for people

FF beats PPP every day

( fugly but functional beats pretty, polished and pointless )

 

Sufficiently robust to put up with everyday use and abuse and ease of service if there is a problem are key business considerations. Most business users will probably want something newer after 2 or 3 years while the IT people and the bean counters may try to stretch that another year or two. Toughbooks are overkill for most users unless they massively abuse their machines.

I'm self-employed (so I combine the roles of end user, IT manager and bean counter) and do a lot of travelling so I want something that packs a decent amount of power, is easily portable and can be easily fixed if there is a problem.

John

 

True enough John, but for myself ( Self Employed as well ) and for a bunch of the companies I manage IT for we did find that over a span of a couple years the overpriced overkill TB's we were coming out money ahead especially on critical machines where downtime is detrimental eg, had one exec have a few e-6500s go down on him the cost of shipping, downtime and parts from Dell for a few drops etc. ove the span of 18 mos would have paid for a nice new CF-30. but admittedly all situations and users are different. and some of the managierial kind are not so polite to their computers.