Elizle Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Hi, I have been watching since 2005 and I just now decided to join the forums. I have an HP DV9000 that I have sent in for repairs for 3 times within the 1 year warranty. All of the problems their fault because of design flaws. The first time it was the Wireless, their fix was to replace the hard drive and remove Vista. The wireless worked for two days and quit again. I sent it back in after it quit working completely. It gave me the beep code that the GPU was bad. The replaced the graphics chip in it and not the entire motherboard which would have made me more secure about the situation, but it worked and so did the wireless now. Just recently I repaired the broken hinges myself. Now the video went out again and I got temporarily fixed by overheating it. I had been using it at work every night because the computers at work are Dells that are circa 2004. Now to my question. What brands are made well? I trust Lenovo, but I hate how the Thinkpads look. Are the IdeaPads nice? Also Lenovos are kinda pricey, but maybe they are worth it. I found an MSI on Newegg that had everything I wanted for $800. Are MSI laptops good? A lot of people seem to like the Wind, but I already have a netbook and I am happy with it. Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sablefoxx Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 http://tinyurl.com/laptopsthatdontsuck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRGRIM Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 My IBM ThinkPad is going strong. All my Dell's have been ok, and when something has gone wrong the parts have always been replaced like for like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seshan Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Cheap notebooks are well... cheap. They will break easyer and will have more problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Cooper Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Cheap notebooks are well... cheap. They will break easyer and will have more problems. In my experience this isn't the case, they are usually heavier, slower, less disk space and poorer screens, but the cheap notebooks I have had in the past have survived my lugging them about and abusing them. Also the technology in them is usually older so problems in the manufacturing processes have been ironed out and the quality of the individual components is reasonable. It all depends on what you require, if you just want something to browse the web on that you can stick in a draw when not using it then a cheap notebook is more than up to the job, if you want a notebook that has a good large screen that is light to carry about then you will have to look to the more expensive notebooks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 Don't buy consumer kit, buy SME kit. Example, your Dell Inspirion breaks, back to the factory it goes. Your Dell Latitude breaks, and Dell will send someone to your house, the next day, with the replacement part, who will fit it for you and make sure it works. Latitudes are good machines and rarely have non-human caused problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I'll say Apple in a non-lame way. But to be fair, you can be unlucky with any laptop even if you paid twice as much for it, its the service that counts like Vako said. I've always found Apple service good and the fact they have retail stores with trained people in them is a big comfort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N3CR0S1S89 Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 First off dont buy an HP laptop. I work on more HP laptops than any other brand and most of the time something has went bad on the motherboard, the hard drive dies, or the power supply goes bad. If you do get a "cheap" laptop be sure to get an extended warranty because 90% of the time you will have to replace the HDD within the first 14 months of owning it and the cheap laptops tend to overheat alot quicker than a more expensive laptop. Now before saying this let me explain that I hate Dell just as much as every other tech does and will never own one but I find that the Dell laptops do well as do the Acer's and Sony's compared to most HP's, Toshiba's, and eMachine's (also would never buy an eMachine). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
still learning Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I got an e-machine for 400$ brand new, then upgraded to 2gb ram, does the job.. have not had a problem yet and had it about a year. I use my desktop for the heavy stuff like gameing, heavy processes and such.. I dont believe in useing a laptop like a desktop, they will burn out too quickly I can leave my desktop on for a month straight, cant say that about my lappy (even with a cooling fan underneath) It depends on what you want to do with your notebook, i have used very old notebooks with linux and it worked great, just make sure it does not over heat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I was looking at the new Alienware M17x's. All the upgrades are super over priced. 4GB RAM standard, upgrade to 8GB is £950 = wtf. Admittedly 4GB SODIMM DDR3 modules aren't cheap, but that's £100 short of double the cost of the part http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164772, and also the RAM I linked to 1066MHz where the stuff they fit is 1333MHz (it's getting about time to measure RAM clock speeds in GHz). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Sierakowski Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I've heard great things about Lenovo, should be worth checking out. I feel like you have to spend at least over a grand to get a good dell, we use dell for our severs and laptops and I've had nothing but trouble with the Vostros (and dell support). That said, cheap laptops handled gently will probably do just as well as an expensive laptop handled roughly, just don't expect your cheap laptop to kick ass for 8 hours a day and not have some issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRGRIM Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 Firstly Vostros? So basically you bought extremely cheap Dell kit and extremely cheap support. Dell support gets t-bagged all the time, I've never had a problem with them, as long as you stay calm and explain problems, if they want you to run a 6 hour disk diagnostic - tell them you've done it already and it failed, they'll send you a brand new disk the next day. Don’t complain because you bought cheap consumer grade systems for everyday business use. For me Latitude and Optiplex’s with 3 Year NBD warranty every time! I’ve bought a lot of “refurbished” Dell kit, which has savings of around 60% compared to Dell.co.uk, all the kit comes with a brand new Dell Warranty – I don’t know of similar sites in the US but I’d image they exist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msp301 Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 I've had a Toshiba for about 4 years now and I've used it everyday carrying the thing places, getting beaten about ... the general student life use of a notebook lol; whilst also using the machine as a test computer as well, so was almost reformatting the HDD with new OS almost every week trying out all the Linux OS's and stuff and it's still goin' as strong as it was when new :) ... it's even not a pistachio nut shell stuck somewhere under the keyboard and other crap, probably spilled loads of crap over it in it's time ... I'd definitely recommend looking at what Toshiba have to offer :) lol Note my laptop was only about £400 when new ... Toshiba Equium A100 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Sierakowski Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 Firstly Vostros? So basically you bought extremely cheap Dell kit and extremely cheap support. Dell support gets t-bagged all the time, I've never had a problem with them, as long as you stay calm and explain problems, if they want you to run a 6 hour disk diagnostic - tell them you've done it already and it failed, they'll send you a brand new disk the next day. Don’t complain because you bought cheap consumer grade systems for everyday business use. For me Latitude and Optiplex’s with 3 Year NBD warranty every time! I’ve bought a lot of “refurbished” Dell kit, which has savings of around 60% compared to Dell.co.uk, all the kit comes with a brand new Dell Warranty – I don’t know of similar sites in the US but I’d image they exist. I think this can be better said thusly: Cheap laptops handled gently will probably do just as well as an expensive laptop handled roughly, just don't expect your cheap laptop to kick ass for 8 hours a day and not have some issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pritchard9 Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 +1 for lenovo. I don't own one, but I have many friends, and friends of friends who do, and I hear nothing but good things :). Great build quality, from what I've heard. One of my friends also has a Toshiba Satellite.. or something like that. He got this awesome deal, where after 6 months or so, he got £100 back from them, and thats on top of an initial price cut. So he got a £500 laptop, for little over £350. Its a little slow, but I blame Vista Business for that, as I'm sure XP or any Linux distro would fly. Core 2 Duo, @ ~2Ghz. 3 or 4GB RAM. Looks nice too. The whole back-end is a big hinge, a little like a macbook, with all the ports and stuff on either side of the laptop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 I've always liked Sony's laptops. Never had a problem with Linux support and if you don't mind the colour, you can get some real cheap deals. The pink Vaio was 10% less than the silver one as it would not sell, same spec and everything just a different colour. I'm now carrying a pink laptop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle 2.0 Posted June 24, 2009 Share Posted June 24, 2009 I'll second that on the Sony laptops. I have a three year old Vaio and its still going strong. The battery life has diminshed, but thats more the battery than the laptop. I have put Linux, Free BSD, and XP on it and no problems yet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRGRIM Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 Humm, you guys really rate Sony's? I bought a smallish one 4-5 years ago because I loved the x-black screen, its gotten a bit clunky and the Mrs uses it now, it will be replaced with a Net Book when it dies. Before I arrived at my current work they had 3 or 4 Sony's all of which have died of something usually only being 1 or 2 months outside of warrnty. It's nice how Sony laptop motherboards are worth more than the actual laptop added to which Sony Laptop's are hella expensive imo. Dell, Lenovo and then Fujitsu-Siemens all the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elizle Posted June 25, 2009 Author Share Posted June 25, 2009 Thanks for all the replies. I couldn't find the thread last night so I figured it got deleted for some odd reason. I should have went into details about what I wanted but I see a lot of people saying Lenovo. I love the orange 17 inch IdeaPad, its about $400 more than the MSI I have been looking at on Newegg. I prefer AMD, but anymore after what I have read on forums the AMD HP Pavilions are worse than the Intel. I have always used AMD until I got my Eee. I would like something I could play games on from time to time. I am going to fix my HP because I found out that I can reflow the GPU with a heatgun, it should be a little more permanent than putting it in between two pillows for 15-25 minutes. Thanks for the help guys. I know a lot of people are saying Apple, I have never been a fan. I have a hackintosh and I just get pissed off using it because of the simple things that would work on a Windows or Linux machine. Once again thanks for the replies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h3%5kr3w Posted June 25, 2009 Share Posted June 25, 2009 First off dont buy an HP laptop. I work on more HP laptops than any other brand and most of the time something has went bad on the motherboard, the hard drive dies, or the power supply goes bad Really? I have had the exact same issues with Dell and Toshiba laptops lately... You have to remember, laptops are now much like desktops. Same hardware, different brand. It's all on support. Compaq seems to do extremely well (yes I know it's hp), as long as you immediately reload after you buy it to score off all the shovelware.. I have a compaq cq50-215nr. Super cheap laptop, AMD X2 QL-60 running @ 1.9ghz/core, 2gig's of ram upgradable to 4, and a 160gig hdd. It got SLAMMED by every review outlet out there, but seemingly NONE of them decided "hey, let's slick it off and see what happens?" Now I will give them this, with the 5 different DVD creation/playing suites that came on it, the mass memory crapper that is the HP support system, and god knows what the hell else was on it from the shelf yes, it ran like shit. It took 45 minutes on first boot out of the box, ran like crap, and you couldnt see the forest for the trees, but with a fresh install of vista? I can play Far Cry 1 @ maxed settings with a framerate of around 55fps. With the Nvidia 8200m g video card in it, it's a laptop that can beat the everloving shit out of some of the older high end video cards out there without paying $4000 for it. Here are the only downsides - Laptop get's HOT in your lap(yes I put it in my lap. Hey if I cant have kids that makes me happy..) and battery life. 2 hrs on a 6 cell isn't what I would call great for any laptop, but for about $350 for a full scale laptop.. You can use the extra money to buy the 12 cell. It has ran perfectly from day one. I have used it exclusively for running VM's (particularly for Windows Server 03 class, which also requires 2 XP vm's running with it @ once) with no noticable lag. It get's a 3.6 base score in windwos (due to the graphics subscore for Aero, which is completely misleading, since that gaming graphics subscore is 4.3, which truthfully is the smallest subscore by far with the rest of the system. Here's a breakdown of the score: Proc: 4.8 Memory: 5.5 Graphics: 3.6 Gaming Graphics: 4.3 HDD: 5.2 now would I use it for my enterprising laptop that holds the key to multiple million dollars worth of information?... no. But then I would not use a laptop at all for that. I would use a desktop. Would I trust it for extended business affairs that require stability and usability on the road and around town with the use of an open wall plug here and there. Yes I would. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 Latitudes are good machines and rarely have non-human caused problems. i don't know about that i'm a dell tech and it seems all the laptops i work on are Latitudes. and they all have the same issue. there is a flaw in the design that overheats the GPU and after a few weeks it eventually fails and at times it's worse. when it gets really bad I usually have to replace the board as well as the CPU. I say Toshiba. I've had this thing for 3 years and beat the hell out of it, i'm finnally about ready to replace the original battery. Personally from my point of view don't get any dell unless you are willing to pay for support because i promise you that you will need it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 i don't know about that i'm a dell tech and it seems all the laptops i work on are Latitudes. and they all have the same issue. there is a flaw in the design that overheats the GPU and after a few weeks it eventually fails and at times it's worse. when it gets really bad I usually have to replace the board as well as the CPU. I say Toshiba. I've had this thing for 3 years and beat the hell out of it, i'm finnally about ready to replace the original battery. Personally from my point of view don't get any dell unless you are willing to pay for support because i promise you that you will need it It wasn't a dell problem, it was an issue with nvidia and the manafacturing process for there GPU's. Pretty much most of the 8xxx series was aflicted, but laptops show more symptoms because they get hotter and are turned on/off in a regular basis. Even Apple was hit by this issue. I've seen this myself on the D630 range hundreds of times, but the replacement boards so far haven't had this issue. As for having to replace the mobo, essentially thats all the laptop is underneath the casing. I would always pay for the support because in my mind it is worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N3CR0S1S89 Posted July 1, 2009 Share Posted July 1, 2009 Compaq seems to do extremely well (yes I know it's hp), as long as you immediately reload after you buy it to score off all the shovelware.. Yea you are right about that. The Compaq's do great as far as i can tell. My brother Owns a Compaq Presario and its about 3 years old now and still running strong. The battery stopped holding charge and the power supply gave out but other than that he hasnt had any problems other than vista and I fixed that by downgrading to XP Pro. It took me a while to get the wireless and sound card installed because the drivers were hard to find but that doesnt really have anything to do with how the laptop runs and just the fact that the drivers to downgrade were available is a huge + for me because I have an Acer Aspire 4720z that I use just for everyday things like web surfing and IRC and Im forced to using vista because the drivers for XP aren't available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRGRIM Posted July 3, 2009 Share Posted July 3, 2009 Not sure about Compaq's now? I've had 3 in the past and all where very solid. I've had 2 come in to my office and they just seem to be very light weight and have a plastic feel to them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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