laptop brands

[Schadenfroh]

Greetings,

My old Toshiba notebook is going out. I have RMAed it five times over the period of the warranty. Once for heating, four times to replace a defective screen. Now, 6-months after my three-year extended warranty has expired, it has developed a more serious condition as of last night. Checkerboard artifacts appearing, even in the bios setup screen, is never a good sign. Random blue-screen-of-death memory dumps do not help either, so my mobile geforce 7900gs is failing and I do not even know where to start replacing it.

So, I am now in the market for a new laptop. But, I have not been in the scene since my last purchase back in 2006. I realize that the majority of notebooks are manufactured by a handful of OEMs overseas and that Toshiba, HP, Dell, etc. do not ever touch them. But, I imagine that they dictate to the manufacturers what goes into them and that has an impact on quality.

Traditionally, IBM and Toshiba have been of the highest quality. My father still has an IBM ThinkPad with a Pentium 90mhz in it that works as good as the day it was bought. After the horrible quality control issues that I have experienced with my 2006 Toshiba notebook, I realize that Toshiba is garbage these days. IBM has sold their notebook division to Lenovo. So, I have a few questions.


1. Any major notebook vendor these days actually manufacture their own notebooks (like ASUS)?

2. Any notebooks still assembled in Japan? IIRC, Fujitsu was the last hold out, but I doubt they are still made in Japan.

3. Which vendor is generally regarded as being of the highest quality (ie lasts the longest, chassis is not flimsy, etc.).

4. Which vendor offers the best software support (ie provides driver and bios updates for several years after the product is discontinued)? I really hate that I am dependent on Toshiba for sound drivers since Conexant does not provide drivers directly to consumers (Atheros is the same way).

5. Any significant difference between the IdeaPad and Thinkpad Lenovo lines? The Ideapad seems to have many more configuration options over the Thinkpad (ie i7 and geforce video cards).

6. The heat issues with laptop GPUs were isolated to the nVidia Geforce 8xxx line, right?

Thanks

 

[Decembermouse]

3. In terms of the stuff you'll find at Best Buy, the guts are all identical; it's just different plastic casings slapped on it and different model numbers. With my budget I'm fine going with HP or Toshiba ($450-500). Lenovo, the ones we carried at Circuit City, felt cheaper than identically-specced competition. The casings are bendy. And the Lenovos with Pentium Dual Cores cost as much as other brands' Core 2 Duo laptops. Nothing spectacular about them... same RAM, motherboards, HDD's, what-have-you. The "good stuff" generally comes from MSI and ASUS right now. I believe MSI does their own motherboards, and ASUS probably too. I've read about some models having features unique to those brands, like built-in turbo modes. You don't find that on generic motherboards.

6. Nope, it affects all G84, G86, and G92 parts:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1004378/why-nvidia-chips-defective (also read Parts 2 and 3)
G92: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1045751/nvidia-55nm-parts-bad

 

[Rottie]

all i can say forget about compaq notebook even thought they repaired my compaq notebook very well so far but the quality is poor.

 

[WackyDan]

Greetings,

My old Toshiba notebook is going out. I have RMAed it five times over the period of the warranty. Once for heating, four times to replace a defective screen. Now, 6-months after my three-year extended warranty has expired, it has developed a more serious condition as of last night. Checkerboard artifacts appearing, even in the bios setup screen, is never a good sign. Random blue-screen-of-death memory dumps do not help either, so my mobile geforce 7900gs is failing and I do not even know where to start replacing it.

So, I am now in the market for a new laptop. But, I have not been in the scene since my last purchase back in 2006. I realize that the majority of notebooks are manufactured by a handful of OEMs overseas and that Toshiba, HP, Dell, etc. do not ever touch them. But, I imagine that they dictate to the manufacturers what goes into them and that has an impact on quality.

Traditionally, IBM and Toshiba have been of the highest quality. My father still has an IBM ThinkPad with a Pentium 90mhz in it that works as good as the day it was bought. After the horrible quality control issues that I have experienced with my 2006 Toshiba notebook, I realize that Toshiba is garbage these days. IBM has sold their notebook division to Lenovo. So, I have a few questions.


1. Any major notebook vendor these days actually manufacture their own notebooks (like ASUS)?

2. Any notebooks still assembled in Japan? IIRC, Fujitsu was the last hold out, but I doubt they are still made in Japan.

3. Which vendor is generally regarded as being of the highest quality (ie lasts the longest, chassis is not flimsy, etc.).

4. Which vendor offers the best software support (ie provides driver and bios updates for several years after the product is discontinued)? I really hate that I am dependent on Toshiba for sound drivers since Conexant does not provide drivers directly to consumers (Atheros is the same way).

5. Any significant difference between the IdeaPad and Thinkpad Lenovo lines? The Ideapad seems to have many more configuration options over the Thinkpad (ie i7 and geforce video cards).

6. The heat issues with laptop GPUs were isolated to the nVidia Geforce 8xxx line, right?

Thanks

1 & 2 . Lenovo still does manufacture some of their product in house. They actually at times manufactured ThinkPads for IBM before IBM sold out to them. Not sure if Fujitsu does anything in house anymore. I don't think it matters as much today though as it did several years ago.

3. ThinkPads are all rated/certified MilSpec semi-rugged. The T60's were a bit buggy, but my 61 and 400 are back to the ThinkPad standard in my opinion. Keep in mind that any consumer oriented laptop is pretty much crappy... ThinkPads are business centric, but can still pack some power. I would buy a "business" brand laptop from any of the big players before I'd buy any consumer targeted system.

4. Most OEMs provide driver support well after the last ship date of the product series, and well after the last support dates. The difference is whether you find updated drivers or not. The OEM's are just a dependent on the various chipset/sub-component suppliers as you would be. + you are better off using the Laptop Manufacturers drivers, as sometimes they "wrap" them a bit differently. IE; Video drivers tweaked to work better with Dell's power management, wireless drivers to work better with Lenovo's Access Connections, etc... You also get some combined bios updates. Saw that with the Lenovo T400 and the ATI video cards....So sometimes using the drivers direct from the suppliers can have more issues than from the laptop maker. Just my 2 cents.

5. IdeaPad is the Lenovo Consumer focused lines... so the chassis are not as rigid and they are just not as tough as a ThinkPad. They offer more consume oriented options, and more enthusiast features like Core i5, etc... In January(gee almost here!), Dell, HP, and Lenovo will all be launching their business lines with the latest mobile Core i5 and i7 to go with the latest Intel mobile platform.

6. Mostly... Though I've seen issues with ATI on some systems...ATI cards seemed really sensitive to any deviation in cooling... IE; minor dust buildup in fan/heatsink. Clean fan, and clean off heatsink/apply new paste and never had issues again... so could have also been manufacturing issue I was seeing... beats me.

Hope that helps. I admit most of my experience over the years has been ThinkPad, but I've spent enough time with Powerbooks, Latitudes, etc to see and "feel" the differences... ThinkPads are still top notch in my book if you don't care that you only have one color option...That trademark black.