Is there a perfect Laptop for Lion ?

[pct]

Hi there,

I am looking to buy a new laptop to use it in dual boot Win/Lion after a relatively bad experience last year with a Dell E6400 (with Intel graphics)

Therefore, I would like your advise as to what is the best choice to have a fully functional Laptop under Lion in November 2011.

1/ by fully functional I mean:
Graphics with QE/CI and native display resolution
full power management (sleep, screen close etc),
wifi and ethernet
touch pad, audio, webcam, functions keys, SD memory card reader
Bluetooch or firewire if present would be a plus but not mandatory

2/ Characteristics: i3 or i5, 4Go ram, 320 minimum HD, 15,6 display

3/ I think a sandy bridge with HD3000 will at least allow graphics with latest Lion. But if the laptop has also a secondary card (nvidia or radeon) the only way to have the laptop to run is to disable the scond card, true ? Then the point is to find laptop with a bios allowing to disable the second CG, right ?

4/ power management is key and I have no idea on what to check before choosing to insure it will work?

5/ Wifi: if I am not wrong Atheros is a must have to work OOB?

Reading various posts, I found the HP Probook 4530s and Acer Aspire 5750G series to be quite functional but not sure as sleep still not fully solved on HP and Acer do have 2 CGs.

Any comment on these models or any other good advise on an other model to choose?

Thanks for your help.

 

[beelzebozo]

Hi there,

I am looking to buy a new laptop to use it in dual boot Win/Lion after a relatively bad experience last year with a Dell E6400 (with Intel graphics)

Therefore, I would like your advise as to what is the best choice to have a fully functional Laptop under Lion in November 2011.

1/ by fully functional I mean:
Graphics with QE/CI and native display resolution
full power management (sleep, screen close etc),
wifi and ethernet
touch pad, audio, webcam, functions keys, SD memory card reader
Bluetooch or firewire if present would be a plus but not mandatory

2/ Characteristics: i3 or i5, 4Go ram, 320 minimum HD, 15,6 display

3/ I think a sandy bridge with HD3000 will at least allow graphics with latest Lion. But if the laptop has also a secondary card (nvidia or radeon) the only way to have the laptop to run is to disable the scond card, true ? Then the point is to find laptop with a bios allowing to disable the second CG, right ?

4/ power management is key and I have no idea on what to check before choosing to insure it will work?

5/ Wifi: if I am not wrong Atheros is a must have to work OOB?

Reading various posts, I found the HP Probook 4530s and Acer Aspire 5750G series to be quite functional but not sure as sleep still not fully solved on HP and Acer do have 2 CGs.

Any comment on these models or any other good advise on an other model to choose?

Thanks for your help.

There is no perfect laptop other than a real Mac laptop.

However, there has been an ongoing discussion regarding the HP 4530s laptops which can run OS X Lion but with a few drawbacks.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=259&t=31952&hilit=4530

 

[pct]

@beelzebozo

Agree, a real Mac will be the best choice. But I also need Windows and after all, I am trying to get a lower cost Mac using a PC.

I saw HP 4530 was apparently a good choice but with some drawbacks (sleep for ex).

I also saw Acer 5750 but with other drawbacks.

that's why I am welcoming any feedback on other platforms if they could be better than those two, which seems to be some of the best laptop as of Nov 2011 for hackinstosh. Am I wrong?

thx

 

[M0KUJINKEN]

What is a best choice for me is a working gfx,
So far Intel hd 3000 does but if I knew more I could search on craigslist

 

[ninditsu]

i guess what he wants is a PC laptop that can install Mac with no drawbacks and a simple few click solution (such as the multibeast method) will install Lion on it. and everything works.

On topic: i have been eyeing the Sager laptops with the nvidia gtx series in them with sandy bridge i7's. They look really powerful and the graphics are not necessarily supported by apple but are supported by nvidia i believe. i would check out xoticpc to buy these. anyway, good luck.

 

[blueking]

The 4530s works very well. The problems it has are (sleep works fine now, by the way):

-Bluetooth only functions on cold boot, not after sleep or on a reboot
-Some graphics glitches (seem to be better with the i3 hd3000 model, I've never seen one)
-Random screen freezing (once again, not a huge problem I don't think)

Please note we also have audio (including HDMI) working with AppleHDA. We also have full resolution VGA.

 

[M0KUJINKEN]

4530s is a i3 laptop.
Newegg is selling for $485 from $550
I m considering it but fear from gfx glitch

 

[tonymacx86]

Note that no laptop besides a Mac has three and four finger trackpad gesture support.

 

[pct]

Thanks all for feedback.

Regarding the video, are we able to run AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics as on a real Mac ?

Therefore, if dual video card can't be avoided,
1/ Radeon is teh choice to be close of a real Mac config ?
2/ Nvidia can be considered as well supported by Lion but only if the BIOS can disable the HD3000 allowing to just run the Nvidia GC ?

Gesture is not realyy an issue, as for bluetooth. Video and proper power management are clearly mandory points. (as even Wifi can be solved by changing card or using a dongle)

Phil

 

[theandrewgordon]

Man, would love an i5 lion laptop. my lenovo e420 with 8gb ram would be ideal if it all worked... some major issues trying to figure out the hd3000 and some dsdt issues