Advice on buying a laptop

[cable]

I am going to buy a new laptop in a few days, and I want to buy a brand from a company that has good customer support and their products are efficient. I heard good things about Dell. Any companies to avoid? Thanks.

[confus-ed]

All of them ?

The magic word with laptops is warranty.

If you give a budget & brief idea of what you expect I'm sure folks can advise more specifically than just brand, ALL manufacturers make "wrong uns" from time to time

[silencio]

I've had good luck with all the business class machines, Dells, Compaqs, Toshibas, and IBMs. On the flipside I've seen countless consumer class products goto hell if you blow on them. I think they build laptops the way they make processors. The ones that don't pass the higher tolerances get sold cheaper.

Other advice, don't buy one of those radio shack car chargers. It fried mine. The box said it worked with an M700 BUT, it didn't do half increment voltages so it said to use the next lowest. It worked. The laptop ran fine on it for hours but when I switched back to battery it wouldn't work. Whatever does the switching was fried.

Ed is right (WOW!), get a good warranty.

[ADS_Tech]

Sony, without question.
Build quality is everything if its used out and about a lot, and after all, thats what you buy a laptop for. I see all too many budget lappies that are falling apart just at the end of the warranty. Usually the screen hinges that break, or ill thought out case design leading to weak spots where the casing splits.
I fix all manner of laptops, but very rarely see a Sony unless its a software issue. And regardless of brand, get a three year warranty with it.
What do I use? - Sony.

[TechZ]

What about Toshiba, a bit expensive comapred to the rest but u get 3 yr int'l warranty. And if u play games, please go for discrete(dedicated) graphics rather than th Integrated crap they put in it.

[ADS_Tech]

Yeah. Toshiba next down from Sony!
But not all models 3 yr warranty, only some.

[Damned Angel]

all models are upgradable to a 3 year warranty though. For as bit extra, you can get the 3 year warranty with free data recovery incase your drive ever fails and you don't have a backup.

[FatalException0E]

Sony, without question.
Build quality is everything if its used out and about a lot, and after all, thats what you buy a laptop for. I see all too many budget lappies that are falling apart just at the end of the warranty. Usually the screen hinges that break, or ill thought out case design leading to weak spots where the casing splits.
I fix all manner of laptops, but very rarely see a Sony unless its a software issue. And regardless of brand, get a three year warranty with it.
What do I use? - Sony.

If you're really that worried about it falling apart when you lug it around, just get a toughbook. I think they're only about double the cost of a normal laptop.


Believe it or not, I'm quite happy with my little AMD-based Compaq notebook. I wanted something that had legacy ports built in. That's getting harder to find on laptops.

[Baron_Osiris]

Definitely make sure you take into consideration the legacy products. Serial, parallel ports and a floppy drive. Some laptops are missing all three, which is great if your never going to use them. Most of the time you can get an external floppy drive if you only need one on occasion.

I strongly recommend getting an internal wireless card. Even if your not planning on going wireless, there will probably be a time when it will come in handy. The price of an internal card is way worth the convenience of not having a wireless card hanging out of your laptop.

A few words on research. You can do a google search on any brand name and the word problem and you will find countless people griping about each brand. You could probably find a hate site for every brand too. Don't let peoples complaints be a deciding factor on what you purchase. The bigger the company the more the complaints (the more product, the more chance for failure). The larger companies I've worked for have mainly purchased IBM and Dell for laptops (hard to know if that's because of quality or great deals, I like to think it's a combination of both)

Screens are about a 3rd of the cost of the laptop. So make sure if you get a warranty it covers your screen, some of the warranties don't cover the screen. I strongly recommend a warranty. I have one for my laptop. I've been working on computers for years and seen only one or two people actually pay for the repairs on a broken laptop. They are incredibly expensive to fix.

Also important is the look and feel. Visit a few computer stores and figure out what keyboard and mouse layout you find most comfortable. Now the look. This isn't like a desktop computer which can easily be hidden and doesn't have to be seen to operate. You will always be looking at the laptop you purchase when you use it. Don't get something that doesn't look the way you want it too. You won't be able to change your mind once you have it.

Go with your gut feeling. If it doesn't feel right then look some more. Pick out some key features you know you want and find the company that has exactly what you want for the best deal.

Also if you want a compaq or HP Best Buy has a really nice configure to order service that can be quite a good deal. It can also help you pick out the individual components you know you want.

Personally I have a Dell 5150 and I am quite happy with it. My 15 inch screen is Beautiful. No floppy drive, but haven't needed it yet. I've called their customer service twice and I am very happy with their service, so far. Also their website rocks when you have one of their products.

[Vip2]

I am going to buy a new laptop in a few days, and I want to buy a brand from a company that has good customer support and their products are efficient. I heard good things about Dell. Any companies to avoid? Thanks.

Having supported Dells laptops and dealing with their tech support on a daily bases for over 3 years I'd say stay away... We had over 30 Dell laptops and all of which had reoccurring problems during this time frame. Also, the batteries used in the newer Dells seem to be limited to a 1 year lifespan. Our old XPi CD 166MMXs have batteries that work to this day.

We replaced all the Dells with Compaqs a year and a half ago. So far, Compaqs Tech support is much more responsive the Dells ever was, unfortunately, they do not come out and fix it on-site, the unit has to be sent to them (they do provide the packing materials and pay for the shipping both ways). Batteries at least last longer than a year.

Sony sucks... My opinion. Luckly for my aunt she had a Circuit City warranty since Sony wouldn't honor theirs. The Main Borad died in the laptop and they wanted $500 for labor. Go figure. She took it to Circuit City, complained a lot, and got a new Compaq for free.

I myself bought an eMachine M6805 which is a relabeled Arima W730-K8 DTR which is also known as a Voodoo Envy m:860 and a Medion Ram-2010. I haven't had to call eMachines tech support yet so I don't know how it works. I did buy the Best Buy extended warranty for my laptop since I have dealt with them before (Best Buy does not have great support but with some coaxing you can usually get them to do what you want).

If you want great support but for a premium price check out Voodoo PC, Alienware, or Hypersonic. They stand behind their products much more than any big company like HP or Dell.

[TechZ]

I would definately go with HP again, my Centrino is doing great and excellent battery life, actually a centrino nowadays is not a bad choice, great graphics, battery life, and wireless

[Quattro]

Try these guys www.jncs.com, I bought an ASUS M5N...great machine and light.

[WebHead]

It just sucks when you need technical support from Dell. Like for an RMA or like some kind of warranty thing through them, you have to go through all these different east indian tech support people. It's like playing a video game.

First you get Kumar (lvl 1-5). He will speak to you of things like "Did you try plugging in the cable?". Then there's Sandeep (lvl 6-11). He will have you take things apart, unplug stuff, leave things unplugged, and then plug things back in while its all powered up. Be sure to have lots of health influence peices. And finally, if you can get through Deepak (lvl 12-20), with the 1/2 hour long question/answer session where you attempt to get him to understand what your address is so you can be billed, shipped something, or whatever,.. then you'll be all set.

When you buy a notebook, one of the sales guys might ask you if you want to purchase that "extended warranty" for a few hundy extra. I'm thinking thats prolly the way to go because now that tech support has mostly been outsourced,.. it's a pain in the rear to deal with it imo.

-2 cents

[confus-ed]

So I think by now the original poster has maybe toddled off & gone & bought his laptop anyway ..

However for anyone later cruising on by wondering if any other sage advice is relevant & having the same 'dilema' I'd like to add the following stuff, which other folks don't seem to have touched on

The 'effective life' of any pc type unit is 5 years max (certainly in a business environment), most places its considered 3, laptops are all but 'un-upgradeable' (except usually memory or if you are good with dis-assembling maybe hard disk & maybe cd type unit too).

So if your lappie comes with a 3 year warranty & if you can upgrade that to 4 or 5 years & are using it at home, I'd say thats money well spent (obviously depends on the numbers, but 'usually') ..

Many laptops are just other makers stuff in a different case anyway & that applies just as much to the big boys as the 'no-namers', once you've got a suitable set of 'features' in your laptop, the only things that do matter are warranty & original support (meaning if it don't work 'good' in the first place, then it probably never will) - so methinks 'buying source' is yet another consideration, possibly more important than anything else, as they'll be honouring any warranty & providing support - choose carefully, pc builders come & go & get taken over & transfer warranty support left right & centre (Fujitsu being a perfect example of 'ducking' warranty clauses), you can spend a lot of money 'extra' getting a 'branded' unit & being no better off whatsoever, promises come cheap !