What about the Lenovo Thinkpad X220? This has a 12.5" screen and amongst the customize options is "No camera". If the quality of Thinkpads is still what it was in IBM days you won't be disappointed.

You might want to look at the whole Lenovo range as many of them can be ordered without a camera.

Thanks for the replies guys, i'm leaning towards the 13" Dell Latitude 13 which can be purchased without a webcam...it also looks stunning being very thin. However not so sure about its processer: Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500(1.4GHz,800MHz,3MB)? Would this be suitable for running programs such as Autocad? (just standard 2D drawings, not the fancy 3D visualization). I won't be using the notebook for gaming or anything, just for work.

Alternatively if i went for the Lenovo Thinkpad X220 (which has Intel i3 processor and again available without webcam), would this be as good as the old IBM notebooks in terms of quality? IMO IBM notebooks were arguably the best you could buy (they were expensive though) but not sure if Lenovo have maintained IBM's legendary quality after they bought them out. Ermmmm...decisions, decisions!

Edited by deleted (Tue 06-Sep-11 09:22:55)

There's a review here of the Lenovo, for what it's worth. They seemed to like it, the only real flaw being the "flaky webcam"!

I can't speak from recent experience about the quality of Lenovo vs Dell, but when I dealt with that sort of thing, about six years ago, there was no contest - Thinkpads oozed quality in a way that Dell could only envy. And Lenovo do consistently well in those consumer surveys that you see from time to time.

In reply to a post by AEP:

There's a review here of the Lenovo, for what it's worth. They seemed to like it, the only real flaw being the "flaky webcam"!

I can't speak from recent experience about the quality of Lenovo vs Dell, but when I dealt with that sort of thing, about six years ago, there was no contest - Thinkpads oozed quality in a way that Dell could only envy. And Lenovo do consistently well in those consumer surveys that you see from time to time.

Thinkpads and Quality that is a real Oxymoron.

The quality of Dell leaves Lenovo standing and for reliability I would choose Dell everytime.

Find the Dell you want - go for a Latitude if you can and then down specify it to remove the camera.

You will have a NBD warranty - normally three years (although mine is just coming to the end of a 5 year warranty) and you can transfer the normal location from UK to UAE quite easily. The Dell warranty is truly worldwide unlike most others.

You may be right. Although I was responsible for several hundred Thinkpads and Dells, that was a few years back now. Dell quality was terrible in those days. And current surveys do show that Lenovo owners are more satisfied than Dell ones (and even happier than Apple users). But I don't have direct experience of recent examples of either make.

I have been using Dell personally for over 20 years and have never had a significant problem except one where there was a BIOS corruption and Dell support in the USA called me on Boxing day (by agreement) to fix it. I have only ever seen one or two colleagues with major problems and they were always sorted rapidly.

The other brands, IBM, Toshiba, HP, Compaq, Acer, Lenovo &c &c all appeared to be a lot less reliable and took longer for support.

Not my experience of managing hundreds of laptops, but I'll grant that it is your personal experience.

So it does. Apologies to the OP for not reading properly

No prob. Mind you I find it incredible that the place he is going doesn't allow laptops with cameras in this day and age given that it appears to be inhabited by oil and gas industry personnel as suggested here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Island

That said, I see there are no photos logged at all for the place on Google Earth - and the dating site has only one inhabitant of DAS Island - and that has no photograph!!:-

http://www.loveawake.com/free-online-dating/United-A...

Presumably a few managed to smuggle a camera there and there are a few official photos of the sewage works :-

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&pq=sdas+island&...

What an odd place!!

Edited by Garyilka (Tue 06-Sep-11 16:43:32)