Laptop Experiences

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randyc

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Highest quality laptops...

What's everyones opinions on quality laptops?


My personal experience has shown that
VAIO's are mediocre, usually the power supply in them dies fast (three in a row).

Gateway laptops last forever, and they are easy ot reformat/install with your own fresh OS (Easily accessible drivers). Sturdy.

Dell's are fine, though they are usually ugly and don't feel solid.

I'd love to hear other's experiences, just don't flame brand names.

-randyc
 
I have owned nothing but VAIOs since a PIII 550 was the top end and have never had a problem with any of them. All of them still in service and going strong.
 
IBM laptops are strong and reliable. That's all I can tell you about them. High quality stuff there.

-J.
 
I have an older Compaq Presario 2800 - it's the workhorse laptop for me, going 4 years strong.

I also like Asus notebooks, I own an M6Ne. Very durable notebook, has survived several transatlantic flights and use by several others.

Dells - a ton of people at my college use one. Some are nice, my friend bought a 700m after I gave him an $750 off coupon. I don't like how they build them mostly out of plastic though, seems flimsy to me. Some of them are nice though (like the 700m)

Have not used a Sony, they are a little pricey.

Would love to own an IBM for an extended period of time, but they're also a premium.

So Asus for me. :D
 
randyc said:
VAIO's are mediocre, usually the power supply in them dies fast (three in a row).
Click to expand...

Im currently using a VAIO and yes...it sucks -_- :eek:

I am looking into buying a new one, so hopefully this thread will help :cool:
 
IBMS - reliable and sturdy, never had any problems with an IBM

I currently own a Dell 9300 though, you just can't get turn that type of performance for such a low price. The build quality is average, and the casing itself is decent. But the screen and performance along with the cost is exceptional.

Toshbia tablet PC was ok, definetly not worth the money. Luckily work paid for that one.
 
I've got an AMD-based HP. Only problem I've had in 2+ years is the optical drive going out and they replaced it stat.
 
I've been a notebook tech for a number of years. I can tell you that, in order of quality I'd put it like this.

Apple/Toshiba (Tops and on par with each other. Although Toshiba is better to deal with as a company than Apple)
HP/Compaq (Not the best, but better than most every other choice)
Dell (They're fine, but oh so fragile. Newer units seem to be better, but I haven't had to take one apart or service one yet)
IBM (An old name, generally excellent quality, had to get serviced at times and a pain in the ass for technicians to work on. Overall a solid choice for the consumer.)
Fujitsu (seems better than ever, but I don't have enough experience with them yet.)
Acer (Has just come back to the retail market. I have no opinion on them yet.)
Sony (I service alot of these. The cases are cheap as hell and the units fragile. With the exception of the really small ones. These units have mobos and screen issues like mad, plus Sony's have shitty software and alot of BIOS/Firmware issues.)
Averatec (Absolute junk. No redeeming qualities at all. They are cheaply priced. That's the only good thing you can say. Averatec as a company is about as bad as you can get.)

Those are the units I typically deal with. I've serviced more brands than that. The above are probably the most common ones you'll find retail and out of the larger mail orders. Gateway isn't listed, because for some reason I rarely ever deal with them. My average impression is that they are roughly equivalent to Dell.
 
I owned an Acer Laptop for a while, it was nice for just basic computing and playing Counter-Strike. But lately I've been building Laptops for other people using ASUS's barebones and they're really enjoying them, so whenever I get the $ to do it I'll build my own ASUS Computer.
 
From personal use:

Toughest: Panasonic (used them as field units......god I did so many wrong things to the toughbook and it just went right along...)

Most Reliable: IBM (love the boot around windows into it's own diagnostic mode)

Lightest: Sharp (2lbs of sheer excellence)

Price/Performance King: Sager (I have had a ton of these for this very reason....all in all they were good units)

Favorite: Sharp 2lbs......'nough said.
 
I've owned 3 different brand laptops in my life

Toshiba - Feels flimsy, could never get the modem or wireless to work right. Fast, stable, no problems aside from the one listed.

Dell - Bought an inspirion 6000. It's nice, but my god is it ugly. Also, it feels a bit "cheap".

IBM - After I bought this one, I will NEVER AGAIN buy ANY OTHER laptop. It's IBM for life for me. It feels solid, it's very stable, no problems installing anything, drivers easily availible. The first thing I did when I got this laptop in the mail was drop it. Yes, I felt like a total fool and damned near cried until I actually turned it on, and there was no problems. After a 5 foot drop onto concrete, it still worked. Not only that, but the plastic SCRATCHED, and didn't break. Of course, this could still be accounted as luck. The main reason for me turning into an IBM zealot (F an bo y is censored?) is the fact that EVERYTHING works under linux. This laptop is 100% compatible with everything I use.

And did I mention how incredibly solid it feels?
 
Quality varies a LOT withing a manuf. from business/home lines, even within those lines, and of course over time.

A question such as this will recieive a lot of "<insert vendor> is good" and "<same vendor> is bad" replies.

IBM T Series PCs are very nice, have been for a while.
 
My personal experiences:

Dell Inspiron 4000 - sucked. Graphics were 8mb max, non-upgradable. Plastic felt cheap, lots of flex.

Dell Inspiron 8000 - like the 4000, but heavier.

Dell Latitude C400 - very lightweight @ 3.5 lbs. Battery life was a little low (1:30 at full speed, monitor on full). It felt much nicer than the Inspirons though. Built-in wireless was nice, but no WAP that I could get to work, but it still had WEP. It ended up having a strange keyboard problem where the control key would stick. Overall, a nice machine for word processing and net surfing.

Averatec 3150 (3 of them) - impressive specs, but not ready for the big leagues. Keyboards were awkward, and the backspace key was horribly small. I can't recommend this one.

Averatec 3200 - An improved keyboard over the 3150, but still not as nice-feeling as the Dell C400.

Dell x300 - the next-gen C400. Pentium M, etc. It's a very nice, lightweight machine. Still suffers from short battery, though there is a bigger battery available (for added weight and thickness).

IBM X30 - good quality, extremely lightweight, good battery life, but the lack of a touchpad killed it for me. If you like using pointing sticks or external mice (keep in mind, it's something extra to carry and use) and still need a lightweight computer, this is a good choice for you.

KDS - I don't even know the model, though it was probably at least 3-years old. Sucky like the Inspiron 4000's - stay away from the older model KDS's.

-------

My best advice - buy used. The warranties aren't worth the extra money if you know your way around a computer, and there are often great deals on eBay. Check for Dell coupons before buying a Dell - they often have big discounts. I really wanted to try the 2lbs Sharp laptop, but alas that never passed my way. Those are my personal experiences - take them for what they are worth. Also, just as a precaution, spend $10 and get a 2.5 inch external USB hard drive enclosure - should your drive fail, system crash, etc, you'll have an easy way to recover your data.

-SEAL
 
From my personal experience using and fixing

Dell latops are not too bad, they are definitly fragile, they usually run pretty good after you have donwloaded all updates available through their web site.

HP/Compaq have been ok to me, but a main issue I have had is updating through their website some updates especially video drivers are not the right ones that is listed for their models

Gateway laptops seemed pretty solid, never really had any issues besides a lack of software/driver updates for their models

Toshiba laptops I have had great experiences with except on one that I recently fixed a couple weeks ago, laptop would not turn with battery or ac, but lights would show up, so I thought BIOS was fried, so I disassembled the whole laptop, looked at the motherboard trying to locate it, found it, nothing seemed wrong with it or anything else, I decided to wait to call the customer until I had it assembled again,(took me a couple hours to tear it apart and put it back together again).I had it all put back together, no screws left over,getting ready to call to tell of the bad news,and my boss, who tore it apart with me pressed the power button one last time and it turned on, went through boot, windows started up and everything was fine and dandy, so we figured that unplugging and plugging back in the power cable that goes from the battery to the motherboard must have reset the bios.

Sager, I like their laptops and never have had any issues with

Alienware, I had a customer bring in one of the earleir Area 51 series I beleive, that he just received in the mail and when he took it out of the box, hooked everything up, turned it on, it would post then BSOD reboot and do the same thing over and over, BSOD flashed so fast I could not read anything and could not manage to use the pause button to see what it said, so I just went ahead and used the XP cd that it came with wiped it and reinstalled, that went ok and so I went to install drivers and software that came from Alienware's cds and their driver cd was garbage, it had so many sub directories within sub directories it seemed impossible to find anything, and when I found a driver, XP did not like it, so I had to go online to track down drivers and I found them elseware and not on their site, when I mangaged to get all the drivers and all the updates it was running like a champ, was definitly impressed with it's performance, but it being messed up right out of the box, horrible resource cd's and not finding all of the drivers and updates through their website makes it tough for me to recommend buying one of newest available laptops.
 
randyc said:
Highest quality laptops...

Gateway laptops last forever, and they are easy ot reformat/install with your own fresh OS (Easily accessible drivers). Sturdy.
Click to expand...
I agree with that, i got a P2 266 still chugging along running Windows XP, for basic office use :)
 
Newer Gateway laptops kinds stink. They break down alot and Gateway tends to not fix them when you send them back.
 
I don't know about the other previous Dell models, but my Latitude D810 feels solid and sturdy. My friend has the highest end model of a couple years ago, the Precision M60. He DROPPED IT, from a top of a shelf, hit an edge of the table. The aluminum has a dent in it, and it goes from the frame to the CDR/DVD drive. It still works!!! The bottom of my Latitude has to be aluminum at least. I've worked with IBM thinkpads (Intel Centrino types) and while they're nice and light, I actually like having a laptop with a little weight at the bottom, so when I flip the screen up, I don't have to push the bottom part down. I also hate IBM's locking mechanism when you close the lid. I think Dell has done it better.

Also, I haven't looked into other manufacture's warranties. I got my Dell 3 year business warranty for mine, with on-site repairs and accidental drop protection.
 
Oh, and avoid consumer line laptops, the warrenty will suck (read: india supports your ass, and RMA is a PIA because of it), and their build quality is going to suffer as well.
 
I have an inspiron 8500 which has been chugging along for almost 2 years now. I use it as a DTR, so I leave it on A LOT of the time, which I didn't think would be good for it, but the thing is still working just fine.

HOWEVER!! My laptop has a series of annoying quirks and intermittent problems. First off it refuses to work at all with the dell port replicator, even the 3 new ones dell sent me would not work, nor would newer bios/drivers. Secondly I get intermittent sound problems where the sound simply cuts out, if you turn the volume up all the way you can hear some slight static. Usually after about the third reboot the sound will come back on, one time I had to reinstall the audio drivers to get sound back. I also had the HD start making very weird noises on me about 3 months ago, I called dell and they sent me a new HD.

Basically, I feel like my dell is a great laptop when it works, the screen is marvelous and it performs well, however it seems the build quality is a bit subpar as exhibited by the numerous problems I keep having with it.
 
I work for a retailer as a repair tech and we sell nothing but Acer and Toshiba. VERY LOW failure rate, great RA service on each. Even had an Acer that was blatently yanked from the table, blowing the barrell out of the back, couldnt plug in the ac pack at all. Acer took it back, fixed it under war, even tho it was obvious physical damage, and got it back to us in about a week. I also personally have an Acer, its my fiancees machine primarily, and she loves it. Of the hundreds upon hundreds that we've sold, time and time again when we did get a failure, both companies were there to take care of it.
 
My sister had a compaq, it died in a month. The warranty from best buy got her an hp, and that one died a year and a half later. Best buy warranty replaced that 1 as well, the screen died on this one, and HP replaced the screen. Now, another year or 2 later, it's completely dead after replacing the hard drive. I hate HP/Compaq, worst companies ever..
I'd reccomend a toshiba.. a few of my friends have them. Really nice laptops.
 
I personally can't stand my Toshiba Laptop. The screen has been somewhat flimsy and you know those little nubs on the "F" and "J" keys? Well the screen overtime has pressed up against them leaving permanent marks on the screen. Awful design, I am a student and it could not hold it's own. Slow, awful. There's also a big problem with my drive which is occassionally detected, but most of the time, I get the dreaded IDE ERROR #1.

I'd stay away from Toshiba, I've had nothing but trouble. I doubt I will buy a Toshiba laptop ever again.
 
theHeat said:
I personally can't stand my Toshiba Laptop. The screen has been somewhat flimsy and you know those little nubs on the "F" and "J" keys? Well the screen overtime has pressed up against them leaving permanent marks on the screen.
Click to expand...

Key rub on screens is actually pretty common. About 60 percent of the laptops I do have some key rub somewhere on the screen. Thats why most laptops now ship with a piece of material in between the keys and screen.
 
my current gateway laptop was purchased two years ago and is holding up extremely well. before that i had another gateway laptop which is still up and running. i've rarely had problems with them and when i did i was able to bring it to a gateway country store (back when they had them) when i could not fix the problem myself. anyways from my experience my gateways where well built, offered very competitive prices, and the bundled software was useful unlike what you see with other oem's.
 
My sis has a gateway desktop, very nice system for what it is. Didn't come preloaded with any spam or anything, just windows, some gateway support stuff, and office xp.
 
I love my dell 9300 to death. Geforce 6800 with Doom3 at 70fps on 17inch widescreen on the go is just pure fun. I threw a 100gb hd and 2 gb of ram with the 2ghz PM and this thing screams. All for under $2000 too!
 
Korialstrasza said:
I love my dell 9300 to death. Geforce 6800 with Doom3 at 70fps on 17inch widescreen on the go is just pure fun. I threw a 100gb hd and 2 gb of ram with the 2ghz PM and this thing screams. All for under $2000 too!
Click to expand...

But how much does it weigh?
 
i _LOVE_ my Thinkpad T23. I shall never again use another brand, unless the quality of IBM's machines start going downhill. unfortunatly, i have a few things on the "to buy" list before a new laptop, and one includes a new car.. so no new laptop for me for a while... :(
 
HP/Compaq: Avoid. I worked for them, and one of their laptop manufacturers is pretty shady and was allowed to get away with some pretty cruddy stuff. After being very vocal about the problems our office was downsized. Every HP/Compaq laptop I've had or supported in and outside of HP has been a pile of garbage.

Dell: You can get these next to nothing and while not the best, are not a bad option.

IBM: You mean Lenovo now. Right now the current models are same as the old ones. But, I wonder if they will keep using the same manufacturer in the future (BTW, who actually made the Thinkpads? My guess would be Compal, but I don't know for sure)

Toshiba: I've recommended a few and they see to be holding up pretty well. I like their keyboard, though the layout can be a little odd.

Gateway/Emachines: No experiance with laptos, but after a run in with them in the mid 1990's I vowed to never buy their products again.

Acer: Pretty good products. Wide range available, good features for price, though the pastic is kinda cheap feeling and "creaks" a bit.

Asus: I love these, but the actual "Asus" branded notebooks are a little behind on feature/cost. Though they are awesome looking and IMO the closest "touch and feel" windows laptop next to the Powerbook (note Asus build a lot of Apple products and lost Powerbook construction to Compal, so they have a good feel for how to make solid laptops, they lost since they don't have as much manufacturing capacity).

Apple: Looks nice, lightweight, I hate the touchpad, and my boss has had bad luck with the wireless card in it going out, memory failure, and a harddrive failure. Then one got stolen and got a new one and the wireless just went out on it. Mostly bad luck, but sometimes they dont "just work"

Others: No clue, ymmv.
 
I like my inspiron 4100's performance, but it does feel like it's lacking in build quality. Good thing I've never dropped it before.
 
Personal experiance, may not be true in all instances.


Compaq laptops = Overheat, lots of dead pixels, hd bad. Overall BAD

HP laptops = Overall BAD. Overheat problems.


IBM Laptops (currently own R32) = OVERALL BAD. EXTREME STABILITY PROBLEMS. BSOD all over the place. And windows errors on clean install. Replaced memory, HD, System board. Still BSOD all over the place.

I have never had much luck with any laptops at all. I will soon get a Tablet PC in a year. See if that will bring my bad luck with mobile computing to a halt.
 
Sager - Good build quality. Looks good. Fast.

IBM - Built to last. Dropped an old laptop of IBM's 3 times-- didn't break. Not the best performance but certainly can withstand being on forever. I have ran Folding@Home on the laptop for one month straight-- never crashes. Hot, yes but still never crashes. Good stuff.

Toshiba - Overheats too easily, crashes/corrupts happens. Build quality is flimsy. Crappy speakers. However good performance.

-J.
 
Dells - are fine, but ugly. the speakers suck, and the medium price laptops are crap - except the XPS or whatever.

HP - my experience with the DV1000 is AWESOME. a friend of mine has the ZX5000 and its another great HP laptop.

i want to get a sager for myself in the near future or maybe a uniwill.
 
I work will Dell’s mostly, D4/6/800's and M60's and haven’t had too many problems with them, DELL service is not too bad either.
Personally I have an Emachine M5100 2+ years now and have had no problems with it. About the only down side would be the battery life. :cool:
 
MooCow said:
I don't know about the other previous Dell models, but my Latitude D810 feels solid and sturdy. My friend has the highest end model of a couple years ago, the Precision M60. He DROPPED IT, from a top of a shelf, hit an edge of the table. The aluminum has a dent in it, and it goes from the frame to the CDR/DVD drive. It still works!!! The bottom of my Latitude has to be aluminum at least. I've worked with IBM thinkpads (Intel Centrino types) and while they're nice and light, I actually like having a laptop with a little weight at the bottom, so when I flip the screen up, I don't have to push the bottom part down. I also hate IBM's locking mechanism when you close the lid. I think Dell has done it better.

Also, I haven't looked into other manufacture's warranties. I got my Dell 3 year business warranty for mine, with on-site repairs and accidental drop protection.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately there is no Aluminium whatsoever in the base of the M60 nor the D810. It's plastic. However, Dell puts a pretty stout Magnesium frame around the motherboard for reinforcement. They really help keep the Laptop from flexing as bad as the older models. Nearly all of their newest notebooks have that reinforcement in the base.
 
For reliability, I can definitely recommend Toshiba. My boss has had two (first one got stolen in Taiwan! :eek:) and has never, ever had a problem with them. I had my Toshiba A10 for over a year and, honestly, never had a BSOD. I had it freeze once (I was programming and put it into an "infinite loop o' death", but upon restart, it was just fine! Speakers are actually really good for a laptop, the screen was great, the keyboard was great, everything was great! I just recently sold it to upgrade to a nice Sager, as my needs have changed, but I can't say enough good things about Toshiba.
 
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