Hi Patrick I've never owned a Toshiba before, but all the advice I got prior to yours was that they were more reliable than others in general . Certainly I am interested to know about the heat issue, and this is also a concern with the i7 chip, but perhaps yours was a problem just affecting the particular model or machine that you had ? I'm sure we can easily come up with horror stories for every brand and model out there ;) So what is your favourite brand ?

Here is the machine that's currently top of my list: Toshiba Tecra A11-ST3500 PTSE3UTCR712 Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-620M Processor 2.66 GHz (3.33 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology), 4MB Cache Memory: 8GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM (4096MBx2) Hard Disk Drive: 128GB SSD (Solid State Disk, Serial ATA) Graphics Controller: Nvidia® NVS™ 2100M with 512MB DDR3 OS: Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 4 Year Limited Warranty Price: US$ 2295 Any comments ?

As I mentioned above - I've already upgraded it to the max. It won't take more than 4GB. - the thing is physically broken in many ways (keyboard, mousepad, screen...and today bluetooth stopped working)

Hi Patrick, I've often wondered about the problems caused by humidity and overheating, though as far as I know, none of my laptops have suffered. Maybe I've just been lucky, as I've used them in places with very high humidity including Hong Kong and Singapore, often with no aircon !

Hi Acer, will CUDA actually help me ? I'll be mainly running Maple, R and some other stats packages.

...I did a clean install of Win 7 about 4 months ago. None of the problems mentioned got any better, because they are not software problems. The keyboard problem is awkward because there are several machine specific keys, such as those to control the brightness of the screen, which don't work. You see what I mean ? I need a new laptop, and I'm not just making excuses so that I feel better about it, haha :)

I'm not experiencing software problems. Please see my earlier post above: " The speakers, keyboard, mousepad and headphone jack are now mostly unusable so I have to use external devices. The screen sometimes gives up, but miraculously works again after a reboot (but I use an external monitor a lot of the time. "

Thanks Roman, I'm slightly confused by your advice. Initially you say that i7 w/8GB could be twice as fast as what I have now (AMD with 4GB) but then you finish by advising me to stick with the older machine because it has plenty of RAM... ? In any case, I can't stick with the older machine, as so many parts of it are now broken that its becoming a liability. I'm having to do twice daily backups just in case I'm faced with the situation of it being unbootable for some reason. So if it's not worth going for the i7, do you have any alternative suggestions ? Thanks LR

I've owned 3 laptops in my life. The first bought in 1995 was a top of the range sony vaio. The second was bought in 2000 and was also a top of the range vaio. My current one is an Acer, again top of the range in 2005. I think 5 years is a good life for a laptop that gets transported around at least twice daily 6 days a week. Maybe I have been lucky, but my friends who always bought lower spec machines found themselves upgading/replacing after 2-3 years. I'd be willing to pay quite a lot just to avoid the upgrade process itself, never mind the financial element :)

Unless we talk of specifics, I don't know what you are referring to when you say "double, tripple, or quadruple price tag which we usually see for "high-end" laptops etc. "... I did say "more or less". That means I don't buy literally the best of the best. What I'm looking at now is several models from Lenovo, Dell, Sony and Acer which will cost US$2-2.5K. For me, this represents the top of the range from these manufacturers. I think that price range is reasonable. I don't think anything is available that is even close to the same performance for half the price, and I can't imagine anything costing triple or quadruple with a similar spec.

You made some interesting points, which may also apply to some software (esp some OSs)., in fact any to any business, but particularly ones that are dominated by a few players However the fact is that I've got a 5 year old laptop and I've upgraded everything on it that's upgradeable. The speakers, keyboard, mousepad and headphone jack are now mostly unusable so I have to use external devices. The screen sometimes gives up, but miraculously works again after a reboot (but I use an external monitor a lot of the time. I've taken it to work and back with me nearly every day, so I can't really complain. I just have to decide what to buy. My policy has, more or less, been to buy the best that money can buy and then make it last as long as possible.

Thanks Robert ! yes, that is very useful.

or anyone else who has suggestions... Following on from the terrific plots you showed me for the DE yesterday, is there anything I can do with a system such as this, in 3 dimensions. There doesn't seem to be any interesting possibilities with the options I looked at for DEplot3d, other than a manual animation. Also, plotting in 2D when the system is 3D presumably stops DEplot from adding the vectorfield (understandably), so I was wondering what, if anything, else I can do with this.

For me I always found it was an error in my code. Do you have an example of something that causes it every time ?

For me I always found it was an error in my code. Do you have an example of something that causes it every time ?