Can someone elaborate on what makes this laptop so popular?

[blueking]

Price point, it works almost completely, and you can use another hard drive via the dvd drive.

No esata though.

 

[nikstar]

I think the only one that makes this laptop so popular is because it's easy and you CAN hack it. All the rest are secondary for me.
If you are interesting to run it with OsX is the best choise up to now.

 

[blueking]

Yeah, it also doesn't require much, so its a fairly vanilla install.

 

[blueking]

Thanks for the quick reply. It's good to know that you can use a second drive in the dvd drive bay.

I'm very on the fence about this.
I currently have a latitude e6520 i7-2620m and I'm really digging the screen, esata (use this a lot), and firewire (video editing). I'm kinda worried about giving those up unless I'm convinced of the benefits.

What about the elitebook series? Is it close enough that it would be similarly hackable with good results?

Also how is the 6470m? I know my 4200m kinda sucks. Notebookcheck's graphic card page doesn't look like it's any more promising.

Currently, this is a good laptop, but not a super powerful one. The i5 currently works, but to the same (ish) level as my i3. Noone has made any progress with the 6470m or 6490m, except they can boot with it. But they don't have it actually working or anything.

And I don't know. It really just depends on the hardware. Look on places like here, insanelymac, and the HCL and see what sort if success people have had.

 

[nikstar]

For the esata and the firewire there are PCMCIA adapters to use. Not together as there is only one slot.
One user I think he tried the firewire adapter and was working, I do not now about the esata adapter. But you can use them at windows if you go dual boot. The only thing that you can do much is about the processor. The i3 is not as powerful as the i7 and for video editing is a step back.