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[chaoticag]

Today marks the second time in two months that we've had to send in my sisters laptop to get repaired. Her last one had the motherboard exposed when it dropped on a corner, and her current one got stepped on while she was at school. At the moment, I'm pretty stressed dealing with that, a bunch of family things, my final exams, and not ripping my hair out. Which is to say I'd really appreciate some help here.

I'm looking for a laptop that:

• Is fairly durable, this is a must
• Is small and carryable
• Operates on windows
• As a bonus, has enough ram to handle image editing programs

Does anyone here have any advice for that?

[Thief^]

Dell make some fantastic rugged laptops, but price might be a problem: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/19/campaigns/dell-latitude-xfr

You might just be better off insuring it instead.

[chaoticag]

Insurance is all well and good, but things seem to break at inopportune times. My parents want to make sure she gets her school work done without losing data, so going for something extreme could work. I'll leave my parents to worry over the price.

[Phmcw]

That's not how you do it. Things break, even hardened laptop. What you need is an home nas, a decently priced laptop, and backup laptop (cheap) in case you need to return your main one for repear. But above abything else, you need an home NAS, maybe a cloud save too.


Then you need to sync your laptop to that NAS, but be carefull with the configuration : you don't want it to sync automatically without confirmation, you may end up overwriting your good backup with the corrupted one.

Lenovo make decent work laptop, but anything will do. Just don't wait too long to remplace it, and be ready to remplace your laptop once during your studies.

[Il Palazzo]

I'm currently using IBM (Lenovo) T60. It's an old beast, won't play any modern games as its graphics card is practically non-existent (there is, apparently, a slightly better-equipped model in the series - T60p). It's still quite powerful in any other typical task. You're looking at dual-core 1.8GHz with 2+ GB RAM.

The fun part, you can drop it, step on it, sit on it and generally not give a shit. You can find videos on youtube of people testing its durability. It's built to last, and it really does.

And it's cheap due to its age. Won't score many points in the classy department due to its 4:3 screen and generally a bit dated looks, unless your sis is a hipster.


This laptop here:
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t540p/#tab-features
appears to be the modern successor of the T60. Same durability, better looks and specs.

[gimlet]

I would suggest looking into moderately sturdy laptops (second the Lenovos, all the ones I've tried were decently rugged), plus a more protective case - just chucking it in a backpack isn't ideal.  Plus "learn to take care of your (her) shit" - I mean come on, stepped on and dropped in 2 months?  Is she paying for any of this or is your family just cushioning everything?  I don't think there's a laptop made that will survive being stepped on without damage, and if there is, what's next, drop kicking the screen? 

It's not the right message to send when the consequence of being careless with your possessions is getting shiny new stuff for free, just sayin...

[Il Palazzo]

I don't think there's a laptop made that will survive being stepped on without damage

You can step on thinkpads, and you can do more with those: http://rugged-laptop-review.toptenreviews.com/

[chaoticag]

I would suggest looking into moderately sturdy laptops (second the Lenovos, all the ones I've tried were decently rugged), plus a more protective case - just chucking it in a backpack isn't ideal.  Plus "learn to take care of your (her) shit" - I mean come on, stepped on and dropped in 2 months?  Is she paying for any of this or is your family just cushioning everything?  I don't think there's a laptop made that will survive being stepped on without damage, and if there is, what's next, drop kicking the screen? 

It's not the right message to send when the consequence of being careless with your possessions is getting shiny new stuff for free, just sayin...

Really not my call here. For one, it's needed for school work. My family doesn't believe in screwing over schoolwork as suitable punishment. Having a laptop is a school requirement where she goes. Not to mention a byzantine law system means if she fails at her current school, her school isn't authorized to give her a recognized within the country diploma. So yeah.

Hell, she hasn't told me what happened. She might be getting bullied here for all I know.