Another Laptop Thread!

[Khamsin]

It feels odd making another "which laptop?" thread when there's like 3 others on this page right now, but none seemed to really fit my questions.

So, I've been considering getting a new laptop to replace my old one, and probably give my old one to a family member or something since it's only worth like $300 based on comparisons to other similar laptops for sale on craigslist and such.

First, price isn't really an issue. Of course, I don't want to spend $4000 on a laptop, but this isn't going to be a budget laptop either. I expect to pay around $2000-$2500.

Second, performance isn't my only criteria. After having owned a laptop for 3 years, other things have surfaced as points to consider.

Now, there may not be the "perfect laptop" that is the best in all these categories, and some categories are in direct conflict (e.g. battery vs performance), but any suggestions on at least one of the categories would be helpful.

Here are the qualities I'm looking at:

1) Temperature (I like my balls warm, but not that warm)
2) Battery charge
3) Ease of repair/availability of parts/willingness of shops to work on it... I've found people are afraid of Sony.
4) Noise
5) Reliability (e.g. are these ones known for breaking easily, or having their hard drives die or fan go out, etc.)
6) Performance
7) Price

Plus necessities like wifi, optical drive, USB, firewire, etc. but feel free to suggest other connections or features that I haven't thought of but could be useful.

Any suggestions? At least on which manufacturers to trust/avoid, if nothing else.

[Cephius]

I've had a good experience with the Dell XPS line of laptops. We've gotten in a few at work for our employees to use as media centers to demo our equipment, and they're beasts. I'll run down how my (albeit limited) time went with them based on your criteria:

1) Temperature : It never got too hot, though I do configure laptops on my desk I can tell if one is getting overly hot from the heat on the keyboard.

2) Battery charge : Seemed to be less than other models, but high performance laptops need a lot of juice. If this is a huge issue for you, you can pay extra and get an extended battery.

3) Ease of repair/availability of parts/willingness of shops to work on it : At work we get CompleteCare with every laptop, which means that as long as you don't void the warranty Dell will replace anything that breaks for free. It adds like $400-600 to the price of the laptop, but worth it if you're prone to breaking shit

4) Noise : Nothing worse than any other laptop I've dealt with

5) Reliability : Only reliability problems come from Vista. It's standard on the laptops. I'd recommend installing XP on it if possible. For some reason, myself included, anyone who has a Dell laptop with Vista has tons of issues. Probably due to Dell's insistance on using their drivers for everything. Once XP is on it, all is fine.

6) Performance : Top of the line. The ones we get have blu-ray players, tons of RAM, great processors and handle every application with ease.

7) Price - $1000-4000 depending on what you want. You can probably spec out a great laptop for around 2000. Page is here: http://www.dell.com/content/products/ca ... l=en&s=dhs

Also should note that when you buy an XPS you automatically get their XPS support even if you don't sign up for a service plan. Get a special number that gets answered quick and you don't get routed off to India, I consider that a plus.

[Isiolia]

I generally like Dell's products. XPS isn't necessary IMO, most of what I deal with are Latitudes (we have probably around 300 D600-series in service).

They tend not to have many bells n' whistles, or be the coolest looking machines, but Dell does make some pretty solid machines overall.
That being said, I've seen common problems with certain series, and their build quality on lower end offerings lately has not been impressive.

As mentioned above, get extended warranty coverage. For the price range you're looking at, the extra $300-400 it'll likely cost is worth it. Several years of having most everything short of intentional damage covered. Dell is pretty decent about this.
For background, I'm a systems admin in a college athletics department. I supply and maintain machines to scholarship athletes, fix other athletes computers, etc, along with the normal IT routine. I see many laptops that aren't treated very well, and I get warranty repairs done on a lot of them...

Something to consider as well might be what people use at your workplace. For example, if your company uses Dells, your IT people may have their Warranty Parts Direct service. Which means that they can jump onto a Dell site and directly order parts under warranty for you. Other manufacturers may have a similar program.

Another factor can be buying one through work. If they see a serial number for a machine was purchased from a corporation that buys machines from 'em regularly, then they can be more inclined to to be generous when fixing something. Or you might just fall under corporate or academic support, which could be more like their Gold Support or whatever (IE, you talk to someone in Canada, not India).
As an example, we had one year of student athletes that we gave Gateway tablets to. Due to how things have progressed with NCAA regs, these were given to them rather than remain school property. However, in a couple cases that required sending the machines to a repair depot... Gateway told them to ship the machine at their expense, and offered to sell them a box. We call our school's support line, and we get sent a prepaid box. Same machine, same warranty.

We've had generally good luck with the D620-630 series so far. D531s we got last fall have had a pretty craptacular failure rate, but the 600s are solid. It's the general workhorse Latitude model, so has a lot of options. The current design is exceptionally rigid. Most laptops I've seen have an internal frame of sorts with top and bottom plastics bolted on. The D series have a bottom made of a solid piece of metal, which is nice since the D600 frames particularly were prone to cracking.


My boss is partial to Fujitsus, which are very nice machines overall as well. However, they have a lot of little things built in, and, while generally very light, seem a bit on the fragile n' warm side. Still, very nice Japanese feeling product if that's what you like.

Lenovo is also worth a look, as are the better Toshibas. My parents have owned a number of Tecras that have been reliable.

Apple makes a nice laptop. My G4 400 is still running strong after years n years. My new Macbook is nice as well. Depends on what you want to run. The downside is that Apple's extended support options are limited. While the relatively narrow product lineup does mean spare parts and upgrades are generally easier to find, they're not necessarily cheap.


Gateway, in my experience, is pretty crappy. The company has been bought out and split anyway, so I'd be cautious with them. Acers I've seen have been shit. Just offhand anyway.

[Elipse]

Any opinion on LG while you're at it?

[Isiolia]

Haven't dealt with any of those.

[Osede]

1) Temperature (I like my balls warm, but not that warm)

For this one I think the only suggestion is try to avoid any ultra/extreme high performance laptop.

2) Battery charge

this will heavily depends on the program you running. Usually something like FF11/wow runnning out your battery very quickly. Or you can buy the high volume battery, which usually will be offered when you buying the laptop.

3) Ease of repair/availability of parts/willingness of shops to work on it... I've found people are afraid of Sony.

I only got a dell laptop and I'm very satisfied with their customer service. Automatically sending a new replacement battery when they found the older version of battery are mostly defective, and also offer extra warranty for lcd screen when they found there is the design problem on it.

4) Noise

hm....

5) Reliability (e.g. are these ones known for breaking easily, or having their hard drives die or fan go out, etc.)

usually branded laptop won't break easily... unless you keep dropping it, or using it in extreme weather (i.e. using at outdoor when it is 0~20F )

6) Performance
7) Price

I would tie this 2 together. Higher price with Higher performance and vise versa. The only thing i found that most of the time hp and fujitsu will offer a little higher price than dell, but I don't know why >.>

still depends on personal experience and preference lol


Not sure when Acer become so bad. my mom's first acer laptop that is P133mhz just only retired during last year, which bought for about 5-6years ago >.>

[Shuemue]

My dad has a fairly high end Dell XPS laptop, I'd often been scornful of Dell builds in the past but I was genuinely impressed with this. It's needed very little CS, but when required they've been snappy.

[Khamsin]

I've been considering another way to go with this... a hybrid tablet PC! I can totally pimp one out because they're cheaper than conventional laptops (mostly due to screen size, I suspect) and still keep up on performance. Then I can get verizon wireless broadband for when I'm not at home and use it for what laptops were meant to be used for: mobility.

I already have a desktop, and getting a pimped out performance laptop would basically just be me being lazy and wanting to use my computer from the couch rather than my desk... which has it's merits, but I could do it with a hybrid tablet, too. The only downside is that tablets are 12" versus a 15" or 17" that I might get on a conventional laptop. However, I can just use my desktop when I care about big screens and sound, and use the tablet when I'm lounging around and just want easy access to the internet or casually working on something while watching TV or doing something else.

Although I wouldn't want a tablet because I have any reason to write or draw anything, it's just because it's nice and compact and the screen swivels around. It'd be easy to take on the road and Google Earth something if I get lost, or keep busy on a road trip, or whatever.

Here's a couple additional questions:

What are transfer rates like with something like verizon wireless broadband? Will it be painfully slow, and useless for anything but checking email on the go, or is it decent enough to stream video or play FFXI from?

I'll check the Tablet PC thread, but are there any issues with my idea that someone can poke a hole in? Say, regarding reliability, compatibility of hardware/software, prone to breaking or expensive to repair, etc.

[Cephius]

Dunno where you got the idea that tablet laptops are less expensive, as every one I've seen is usually more than a laptop of similar specs. Check out the Tablet PC section of Newegg and most of them are 1000-1500 in price. Tablet PCs should be able to run most of your software but I wouldn't recommend one if you want to play games. They're great for video though and most come with media center applications and DVD playback capability.

Verizon Wireless Broadband (or Sprint, I've used both) are incredibly slow. I've rarely seen them get higher than 10-15kb/s transfer rate. You won't be able to game online with speeds like that, it's hardly better than dialup, but great for casual web browsing or checking e-mails. Unfortunatly I don't see many slots for the PCMCIA on tablet laptops as space is usually at a premium. You could get a USB broadband adapter.. but I've heard those are even worse.

[Isiolia]

Tablet PCs, whether swivel screen convertible ones or solid units, don't tend to be cheaper than conventional laptops.

The screen isn't necessarily much smaller than others. Generally speaking, ones I've dealt with have a lower quality display though. Not that the LCD itself is crummy per se, but more that the combination of pen-resistant surface and potentially other concessions towards using the thing in direct light or not interfering with the tablet electronics can lead towards slightly inhibited viewing.

Even the better ones I've seen have tended to be on the dim side.

Most would probably be a little more prone to breakage as well, since the screen is generally on one pivot point in the center. Ones I've seen have been pretty heavy duty, but they're certainly not invincible. That being said, of the 60-70 convertible tablets we have in service, I've only seen one come in with a busted hinge maybe a couple times, another couple with broken/missing latches.

IMO, if you don't need the tablet feature, then there's little reason to pay for it and live with the downsides of it. Personally, I love using them to draw n' such, but a Cintiq would probably suit me better overall.