Looking for a 14" or 15" notebook

[podspi]

Hey all, I'm helping my girlfriend pick out a new laptop, and we've narrowed it down to three models:

HP dm4-2180us

HP ProBook 4530s

and

Thinkpad Edge E520 (low-end config).

She has a hard budget of $500. Right now, I think she is favoring the dm4-2180us, as she really likes my dm1z (but wants something bigger and faster). That having been said, I'm hesitant to give the go ahead because:

1) I can't find any decent in-depth reviews (most are just fillers that restate specs)

2) A lot of user reviews (Staples, Amazon) complain about hardware issues.

Still, the 2180us looks to be the best deal, quality issues notwithstanding. She would like to keep it a while (her last machine lasted 5 years), and I think the 2180us with the i5 would age a bit better than the other two i3 models.

Unlike most people, I've had really great luck with all of my HPs (I've had 3), but I don't want to advise her to get up what ends up on being a lemon if there are specific issues with this model.

Any thoughts on this model, and is there anything in this price range that might be better? Thanks all!

 

[fralexandr]

hp consumer notebooks have one of the worst failure rates supposedly, based on a somewhat outdated squaretrade warranty chart of failure after 2-3 years (hp had something like 27%, whereas the other major brands were at 12-18% for the most part, with ASUS doing well, but consumer lenovo doing poor, and dell somewhere in the middle)

that said, they're pretty cheap and i'm guessing most issues are HDD based (usually dependant on how much the notebook is babied, as well as the generic 3 year failure point; if it lasts past 3 years, it's likely to last a lot longer)
here's a 15.6" HP to also consider
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2227669

just an fyi
my sister had a hp and she hated it (was old turion single-core technology) it's hdd gave up after 3 years (she's currently using a macbook 2007)

 

[podspi]

Thanks!

I've always been cautious in drawing conclusions from that Squaretrade data (it doesn't control for buyer characteristics), but it is something I've kept in mind.

She decided to buy the dm4 yesterday, we'll see how it goes! My sister also had an HP whose HDD died, but I wonder how much OEMs can affect that anyway. Can they select cheaper hard drives whose QA is worse?

Going to be putting an SSD in it anyway So hopefully HDD failure won't be an issue.