What would be a good laptop to get?

[LW07]

Alright, i'm going to need a laptop to help take notes in college, and so i need a good, reliable laptop that isn't too expensive, and preferably has a dual-core CPU, at least something other than a celeron or sempron.

 

[FleshLight]

Thinkpad or Latitude

 

[LOUISSSSS]

if u want quality, go for Thinkpad

if u want best performance/$$, go for hp or dell (usually)

hard to get both...

 

[Inspector Jihad]

what about toshibas?

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
what about toshibas?

The Toshibas that I have seen 'in the wild' so to speak have all had poor battery life, less than stellar build quality and have been no cheaper or better specced than anyone else's system.

Also, quite a few of them are gaudy. Though so are some of HPs.

 

[herm0016]

from what i have seen from HP i would stay away. friends have been sending in there hp's for work very regularly. I am still loving my 5 year old dell.

 

[holden j caufield]

Originally posted by: herm0016
from what i have seen from HP i would stay away. friends have been sending in there hp's for work very regularly. I am still loving my 5 year old dell.

At work we've sent in a number of HPs for repair though we do have more of them. Dells have been pretty good. Hp business support is really good though.

 

[996GT2]

Thinkpads ftw

Good quality, and if something does break the service is top-notch (at least in my experience)

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: 996GT2
Thinkpads ftw

Good quality, and if something does break the service is top-notch (at least in my experience)

I don't have any experience with their customer service, but I wouldn't trade my T61 for anything.

 

[996GT2]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew

Originally posted by: 996GT2
Thinkpads ftw

Good quality, and if something does break the service is top-notch (at least in my experience)

I don't have any experience with their customer service, but I wouldn't trade my T61 for anything.

Well...I would trade it for a T400 with hybrid graphics, SSD, and LED backlit screen 😉

 

[gus6464]

Fedex just delivered a Dell Precision M2400 refurb I ordered from the Dell outlet for $760 about an hour ago. I must say I am very impressed with this machine. Feels extremely sturdy unlike most of the crap you find at best buy and runs great. Best part of all was that it came with absolutely zero crapware installed. This was one of the things that amazed me the most when I booted it up. Also even though the machine is a refurb I found absolutely nothing wrong with it and it looks brand new. Also came with 3 year warranty included in the price so I guess you really can't go wrong with it. If you want I can post some pics of it.

 

[DarkRogue]

I am biased, but my vote is firmly with Thinkpads.
If I had to give a reason, besides the great build quality, it's the stellar warranty and customer service. Twice I've had to send my laptops in, and twice they came back to me in a matter of DAYS, fixed. They overnight everything, every way.

I wish I could say the same for Dell, but I can't. In fact, what pisses me fof the most about Dell is how they refused to take back THEIR OWN LAPTOPS due to some fruad thing going on. Was on the phone with 9 different departments for over 3 hours and no one would do anything. They finally "transferred" me to a number who according to the guy that picked up, was in no way affiliated with Dell whatsoever. After that, I decided we had 2 new free laptops (Dell reversed/nulled the charges because the purchase of the 2 laptops were made fraudulently.)

 

[imported_Graphite]

I like the HP Compaq's for something no-fuss and reliable, my HP Compaq nx6325 is 2 years and still going strong 🙂 HP support has been surprisingly helpful more than once too.

That, and the battery life (when new - old battery needs replacing 😛) was pretty damn good for a 15" laptop with a Turion X2 - nearly 3 hours originally, which I needed for my lectures...

That said, I would take a Thinkpad any day over an HP Compaq, for the quality and battery life are legendary, if you can afford a good one. And Dell Vostro's are apparently pretty good if you know what you want.

You may have noticed my favourites are all business laptops... Sometimes they ask higher prices, or can be harder to get dependant on location... They're worth it for the quality most of the time, but name a price range, and we can give a more accurate assessment 😛 Some consumer laptops (like ASUS and HP) can be quite good for the money...

 

[recoil80]

I'd stay away from Acer, the aspire series sucks while the TM is ok, but not extraordinary.
So far I had 4 Toshiba laptops. I quite like the brand, but TheStu is right about the battery life, I remember that a couple of them had problems with it. I really like their display though 🙂

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

I bought a Thinkpad T60 a couple of years ago. It arrived defective (there was some weird issue where it couldn't simultaneously produce sound and be wirelessly connected to the Internet), and the customer service I received was shockingly bad, to the point that I returned the machine and would never deal with Lenovo again. Lenovo's pride in their all-American call centers is unjustified IMO when Dell can hire Indians who are smarter, far more courteous, and 100 times more knowledgeable about the machines they sell. The Lenovo support people were stupid, rude (one operator actually accused me of lying about the problem), and appeared to know nothing at all about their own computers.

FWIW, I bought a MacBook after ditching the Thinkpad and haven't looked back. IMO the new aluminum MacBook is the best laptop on the market in many respects (I actually prefer it to the Pro because the 13.3" form factor is just perfect), and offers the best overall ratio of price to performance and build quality. It also makes an excellent Windows laptop if that's your thing.

 

[DarkRogue]

That's pretty odd.

The last time I contacted Lenovo support, it was because my screen brightness was measuring really low. I even mentioned that I had swapped out the original LCD for a higher resolution one (although I didn't do it, I had bought it used and the previous owner did it) and they still accepted my warranty service request and had it fixed up and returned to me in 3 days. Curious though, I do recall reading stories of bad support after Lenovo took over from IBM. I have since avoided calling them during normal business hours, as the recommendation now is to call on off-hours and weekends so you hit support in Atlanta instead of India, and those are the nice guys. But I guess there will be a bad support person everywhere.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
what about toshibas?

The Toshibas that I have seen 'in the wild' so to speak have all had poor battery life, less than stellar build quality and have been no cheaper or better specced than anyone else's system.

Also, quite a few of them are gaudy. Though so are some of HPs.

I love my toshiba. It's only a t2030 with 15GB a ram, but it is a trooper and doesn't everything I throw at it. It's going on 2 years old now and the battery still lasts over 2 hours with watching movies.

 

[phantom404]

I just picked up the gateway fx p-7805u from best buy and wow...love this beast.

 

[SammyJr]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
what about toshibas?

The Toshibas that I have seen 'in the wild' so to speak have all had poor battery life, less than stellar build quality and have been no cheaper or better specced than anyone else's system.

Also, quite a few of them are gaudy. Though so are some of HPs.

I'm happy with my Toshiba Qosmio x305. Its a little cheaper feeling than my wife's HP, but it has a Geforce 9700gts, 4gb RAM, and was on clearance at Best Buy. Can't complain!

 

[Aeridyne]

I've done a whole lot of research lately and I'm find it hard to resist the sexiness of the Dell Studio line, particularly the 17" models as you can add a second hard drive, come with good options if you want more power in them, and I have never seen any other laptop with the entire bottom plate being easily removable to work on or add/remove components. Plus you can put custom designs on the back lid in various colors and patterns if that is your thing. A friend on mine just got one and she's ecstatic about it, loves it.

It all depends on what you like though, if you want something functional that doesn't need to look that great, everything changes, what more are you looking for in the machine specifically? What about price?

If all you REALLY want to do is take notes, write papers and such, get an MSI Wind and fire up Vista on it. I'm guessing you want to do a little more with it though...

 

[DarkRogue]

Well, I've already voiced my opinion on Dell support, so I won't repeat that.
Anyway, I've noticed in various threads you're looking for a dual hard-drive laptop for some reason.

I just want to point out that the Dells aren't the only ones with this capability.
The Thinkpads also have an Ultrabay adapter for use with a second hard drive. This adapter goes in place of the ejectable/optional optical drive. The bay is also capable of housing a secondary Ultrabay battery to back up the main battery for an extra ~2-3 hours of uptime depending on use (For my model anyway.)

You may want to look into that.