Laptop Experiences

[randyc]

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

[Kyle_Bennett]

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.

[GeForceX]

IBM laptops are strong and reliable. That's all I can tell you about them. High quality stuff there.

-J.

[CompuDrew]

I love my VAIO (VGN-S260). I'd definitly recommend Sony.

[BillLeeLee]

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

[cybunny]

VAIO's are mediocre, usually the power supply in them dies fast (three in a row).



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

I am looking into buying a new one, so hopefully this thread will help :cool:

[UltimaParadox]

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.

[icthus13]

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.

[Dan_D]

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.

[Leon2ky]

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.

[Paul_Johnson]

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.

[TeeJayHoward]

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?

[Nasty_Savage]

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.

Hehe, when I interviewed for Sony as their Novell Administrator in NJ they had all the Vaio desktops stacked up against the wall. I asked them about it and they said they didn't make good workstations. They used HP's, lol....my brother has had problems with them but not serious, dead hd here, screwey driver problem there, etc.

Edit - suppose I should add that my first experience with a vaio lappy came from hooking it up to a Sony docking station. Apparently, if you didn't set it up just right you would short out the whole damned thing, so I did and got canned (not that I cared, I was just doing it for giggles at the time)

My own personal experiences I like Apple Powerbooks. My 15" is a joy. I bought the Inspiron 9300 as a portable game rig for drinking and gaming on the porch this summer. Its nice and fast, but yeah...a bit ugly. And Apple does all these neat little things you might not think you need but afterwards can't live without, like the lighted keyboard is great and the thin sleek design makes it easy to move around.

[Phoenix86]

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.

[Phoenix86]

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.
This is exactlly what I'm talking about. I have prematurely "retired" a quite a few VAIOs because they were junk (bad boards, low quality build, dead screens, etc). That doesn't mean all VAIOs are. I can say the same thing about my IBM A series machines, I hate them, and love the T series...

[SEALTeamSix]

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

[tazzmissionx]

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.

[hity645]

Highest quality laptops...

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

I agree with that, i got a P2 266 still chugging along running Windows XP, for basic office use :)

[BinaryCleric]

Newer Gateway laptops kinds stink. They break down alot and Gateway tends to not fix them when you send them back.

[MooCow]

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.

[Phoenix86]

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.

[Erasmus354]

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.

[Rich Tate]

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.

[elite.mafia]

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.

[theHeat]

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 (http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread1615.html).

I'd stay away from Toshiba, I've had nothing but trouble. I doubt I will buy a Toshiba laptop ever again.

[Rich Tate]

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.

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.

[o0akoni0o]

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.

[elite.mafia]

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.

[Korialstrasza]

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!

[Paul_Johnson]

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!

But how much does it weigh?

[Rtstrider]

Dell Latitudes are workhorses

[lithium726]

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... :(

[-Sean Casey]

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.

[digiram]

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.

[MTXR]

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.

[GeForceX]

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.

[icthus13]

HP laptops = Overall BAD. Overheat problems.



Not a problem in mine, but mine's an AMD base. None of that p4 "mobile" for me.

[MTXR]

Not a problem in mine, but mine's an AMD base. None of that p4 "mobile" for me.


The HP was a AMD based laptop :-/

[chronic9]

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.

[Boomer67]

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:

[Mr_Evil]

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.
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.

[insanarchist]

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.

[jellyhead]

IBM. Tough as hell & does what it says on the tin. Still got a 600e that's going strong. As for the 'X' series - sex :D

[RaphaelVinceti]

Anyone have any experiences with Voodoo PC, or Falcon-Northwest laptops?

[Canon]

IBM makes very nice laptops. As others have mentioned their features/price is not good, performance sometimes lacking (especially for games since the laptops rarely come with any kind of high end graphics chip). I used one for a few weeks and it was very sturdy and felt great. It was stable too of course.

I have a Toshiba laptop which since I got it in 2003 has been sent away 2x. First time because of a headphone jack problem (later i've learned that this was a common problem because it was cheaply made and was just simply soddered onto the mobo with nothing else to hold it). I sent it away last year because when I turned it on it would sit there like a bump on a log. Turned out to be the mobo. Also it had a dead pixel from the day I purchased it. The second time I sent the laptop away it took over a month to get it back. When I did I found out they replaced the screen which was awesome at first because it had no dead pixel but this screen has a redish hugh on the left side of the screen. Oh yea and the HDD activity light no longer works...

I have talked to nearly a dozen people with Toshiba laptops and only one person had no problems with their laptop. I have handled a few different models of Toshiba laptops and some feel sturdy, (mine doesn't). But it appears that the quality is not where it used to be a few years ago when Toshiba was a big name in laptops.

[Digger]

My wife has a compac presario x1000 going on 2 yrs. now still going strong never any problems

[Woofer00]

3/4 of the machines I see at work are laptops I need of various fixes (virus/spyware/adware/general os issues), so here's what I've seen in terms of survivability of laptops.

Apples - Aesthetically pleasing, and generally very hard to corrupt/damage the OS. Stable. Body is very strong and light. Overall a very reliable. However, there's a small caveat: if you are unlucky enough to drop a Powerbook, you can dent the metal casing, rendering the optical drive inaccessible. If you're skilled with a Dremel, it's possible to work around it, but it looks like crap. Cheap alternative to a ~$700 Apple casing repair. It's a problem that's pretty unique to Powerbooks, since most other laptops are primarily made of plastic. Some might call the material cheap, but it's easier to cracks than dents. Repairs are expensive, you typically have to ship the machine out to a repair center. Some of the simplest network configuration utilities you'll ever see. Recommend for someone who hates Windows, or doesn't play games.

IBM - You could probably throw one in an oven and bake it, and it would power on without a problem. I've yet to see an IBM laptop in bad shape, even some that are running the original Windows 98 installation. Extremely sturdy. Very few hardware problems. Very conservative styling, perfect for a business environment. Hard-drive protection kicks in more often than you think, and is probably one of the best laptop features ever conceived. Highly recommend the brand.

Sony - Aesthetically pleasing and generally feature loaded. Cases are pretty fragile until you get to the mid and high price range - they get fairly solid once you get to the thin and lights. Hardware failures are pretty rare.

Dell - Hardware is getting more reliable, but still see total hard drive failures every so often that raise an eyebrow. Generally good bang for the buck. College workhorse brand, I see tons of em. Tend to have more OEM crap software loaded than other manufacturers, so a clean install might be recommended(Dell Access Direct is factory installed a useless piece of software). Easiest website hardware configuration by far. Fugly cases until you get to the m series, and even then it's an acquired taste. (They need to learn about colors other than blue and grey).

HP/Compaq - Crap. Their laptops are similar to their desktops. Underpowered, overpriced, fugly, etc. Working on them is like getting a root canal. Ultimately you can do some good, but it's a painful process. Horrible warranty services, I've heard. Overheat straight out of the box. Booting from a CD can be a pain. You don't get your money's worth.

Fujitsu - Haven't seen too many, but they seem decent.

Toshiba - Older models seem more durable, but I can't say I've seen any in any real state of failure. Feels very solid, looks pretty nice. Can be pricey, but you get what you pay for.

Averatec - I own one, and haven't had any serious issues with it. I wouldn't recommend one for someone who's clueless about computers though. It's a really good power/price ratio, not to mention the weight. Case is probably the cheapest of all brands I've seen. You'll never use a hotter computer, but the slightest bit of ventilation helps. Seems like fan power was traded for size and weight. Heat comes from the AMD cpu, which is one of the main factors in keeping price down. Performs great. Touchpad is a little finicky.

Sager - A friend has one. Built like a tank, weighs as much as one, and packs just as much power.

Panasonic - You won't see many of these, but they seem decent. I've mostly seen Japanese OSes installed on them, so good luck finding one stateside.


Laptop speakers in general suck. Apple and Sony win on that count.
Screen resolutions are best at 12 inches and widescreen 17. Everything else has annoyingly large pixels. It's a problem with almost all manufacturers.
Keyboard screen rubs are pretty common. Only brands I've seen it -not- happen on: Apple, IBM, Sony, Panasonic.

*edit*
forgot Alienware. Too many features. Weigh the most of all brands. Great hardware, pathetic case. Great gaming laptop if you don't have space for an actual desktop. You'll pay the most for it though. Generally not worth it.

[Paul_Johnson]

Guess i am the only Sharp user?

[elite.mafia]

Guess i am the only Sharp user?
sharp makes laptops??? :eek:

[Paul_Johnson]

sharp makes laptops??? :eek:

Yeah. The Actius Line. I have the MM20P.....

http://www.sharpsystems.com/products/pc_notebooks/actius/mm/20p/

[jojor512]

love my dell d800, the dvd/rw is starting to go, but i have a faster external one now so it isn't a huge deal. For tossing the thing in my backpack weekly, it has held up very well. I think I'm going to splurge on a voodoo laptop soon, it will be a "business" purchase, so hopefully I can write a lot of it off.

[drizzt81]

My brother used to own an old Dell inspiron (P2-233 or so) and one of his friends is still using it, though the HDD is dieing and the battery has been dead for years.

I got myself a D600 in the summer of 2003, the battery lastet till december 04 :( not cool! but apart from that it runs like a champ. Got my brother a D610 earlier this year and it is great!

[tdg]

As a laptop refurbishing tech I can offer the follow opinions based on thousands of units:

IBM: Bar none the cream of the crop overall, dead reliable, fairly easy to work on. Never seen very many that needed work after years of use.
Dell: Decent for the price, but tend to be very flimsy and not very well engineered, especially the lower priced Inspirons. Tend to have frequent screen pitting and pressure marks on the screen after a while from the LCD rubbing on the keys. Also see many that don't live very long. Cheap parts make for frequent floppy/CD/DVD drive and battery and LCD replacements.
Fujitsu: Haven't seen many of these, but overall decent and usually working.
Sony: Mediocre, see about half and half that are in good working order, and the other half barely usable for parts.
Panasonic Toughbooks: Best ever for heavy field use and clumbsy people. Very well engineered and long lasting.
Compaq: Older units like the M700 are very good, would be my 2nd choice after an IBM. Newer models built by HP not so great.
HP: Decent units, frequently last a long time, kind of middle of the road like Dells.

All other brands I haven't done enough to form a valid opinion.

[drkavnger99]

IBM - Own a T21 and actually worked for the company very rock solid computers with the exception of the a series. Screen/Key rub happens with my model.
Toshiba - Older models are rock solid but their new line of inexpensive notebooks break down if breathed on wrong.
Sony - Yes software sux but to be honest I've not seen many die of hardware failure.
HP/Compaq - The new lines seem to hold up much better than previous models specifically the DV1000 and 6000 series. Not flimsy at all and casing although plastic can take a beating.
Dell - I can't stand em personally. For a dirt cheap notebook they can't be beaten but for anything similarly configured they are more expensive and a bigger pain to deal with their tech support (Dells support is never wrong or so Dell tells me) working for a company with over 10k users and 10% of the laptops (D600's) fail with the same problem (ethernet failure) I think the product is defective.
Avertech - Dont get me started LOL worst of all the manufactures flimsy and run very warm.

ahhh forgot the panasonic toughbook never seen a computer take such a beating. Dropped from a ladder 6 ft up in a construction site and it kept chugging along like nothing happen and it was powered on when it happen.

PS I know all Dells aren't bad but the ones it seems everyone talks about is their cheap ones (ie students, inexperienced users, and cheap ppl). They always come whining to me when it fails (especially the drives) and then tell me I must recover thier data.

[iSteez]

I have a Dell 9300 as well for my personal laptop... Little heavy :rolleyes:

The screen is top notch...crisp/clear etc... The 6800Go will lay pretty much any game out there...

I have gone through several Toshiba's in the past at work and have never been anything but disappointed... Sucky driver support and hardware...

Since my company has moved to the newer Dell machines and many issues have been resolved...

Of course my only real gripe is slow HDD's... Upgraded to a 60gb 7200RPM but oh how I would love a larger capacity HDD w/ the fast spindle speed... :D

[obviouslytom]

My wife has a dell, and when i get my hands on it, the "feel" of the laptop just seems weird, and I usually have a hard time with it, however it has been very stable and a long battery life.

My Alienware however is a dream. The desktops that I usually am on are rock solid and very stable, yet my Alienware laptop kicks all their asses. However its is back in the shop because I fried the video card. oops. I gues doing too many 3D renders on it finally took it out. However their tech support is usually pretty awesome. When I bought it the HT options on motherboards were just comming around so Alienware thought that it was a bois update, but when it wasnt, they upgraded the motherboard and video card for FREE.

Althought it is only an ATI 9000 128mb video card, it was still nice of them to bump me to that from 64. I am praying that when I get it back in a few weeks, that it will have something like an ATI 9700 in it.

[stonedwaldo420]

I have had some great luck with my Dell Inspiron 5150.
One day i left the window in my dorm room open and my laptop turned on and open. While i was out it rained heavily and my laptop ended up completely full of water. After pouring the water out of it i left it in a warm place with a fan going on it and after a week i turned it on and it worked perfectly. Since that point it has worked just fine.
It has a 3.06P4 with HT in it, so it has nice office productivity performance. The 5200 go leaves a little bit to be desired, but i was able to play far cry and HL2, so that's all that really matters (much happier now that i have a desktop and 6800GT though).

I currently work at a dell service center, and one thing to keep in mind about the Dells with P4s in them is that their heatsinks have to be air dusted pretty frequently. I have seen units with celerons shutting down because of overheating, and my unit kept engaging thermal protection while i was gaming. Now that i keep the heatsink dust free, i haven't had any problems. This applies to all laptops, because manufacturers usually design them pretty close to their thermal limits. This means that even a little bit of dust and a warm room can put them over the top.

[bent991]

I just bought an IBM T43--love it.
Reasonably light, fast, and sturdy.

[Nembot]

I've used a couple of IBM models from the T20 then late last year the T41, pretty solid laptops to be honest. However, compared to my personal NC8000 the T41 just felt slow, battery life was worse even tho it only had a 9200 ATI gfx and the NC8000 a 9600 Pro (on high power mode I might add) both models were the same spec, gig of mem and 1.6ghz Pentium M

The screen on the T41 seemed to have a very small viewing angle compared to the NC8000 and soundwise... well laptops aren't known for being bass boxes, but I've never heard sound like the 8000 can produce. I remember decorating and using the laptop to play some tunes to ease the pain hidden under a cloth sheet, when a friend lifted the cloth to see what was playing the music he was pretty shocked!

The T41 maybe able to stop the disk to avoid data loss, but it sure as hell looks like it could be damaged with a minor fall. Another friend of mine who also has a NC8000 has dropped his from about 4 feet, which resulted in nothing more than a slight whitening on the plastic due to the impact. (fixed with nothin more than a black marker pen :))

The advantages of the T41 are its alot lighter and much slimmer, which would be an advantage for corporate users, but I'll stick with my beloved lump of NC8000 thx ;)

[gibhunter]

I've had experience with IBM, Dell, Compaq, HP, Toshiba, Emachines and Gateway.

Build quality would be: Compaq because of aluminum/steel? some kind of alloy casing. They absolutely feel solid and expensive.
HP, Toshiba, Gateway follow the Compaq. IBM, Dell and Emachines bring up the end.

Reliability: IBM hands down is the best. They release the latest models later than the competition, but it's due to the extra testing and care that goes into each laptop. They have quirky design and feel cheap, but if you want a reliable laptop that will keep on going, the IBM is it. I still have an old Pentium 150 based IBM. The battery lasts about an hour and it will get wirelessly on the internet. With NT4 the performance is not that bad. Now that my friends is quality.

Problems: Dell and Emachines have flimsy hinges that break easily. At least they used to have them. I see that they've been redesigned on newer models.

Dell also suffers from a badly designed video cable that makes your screen shimmer. The only fix is to open up the laptop and reseat the cable. It's been a problem with everything from the Lattitude CPi (233mhz P2) to Inspiron 8200 (2GHz P4). Can't speak for the new models as they have been redesigned.


My favorite laptop BY FAR is the HP DV1000 series. I personally own the DV1049cl and I couldn't be happier. The new DVs also come with the Sonoma platform with DX9 graphics. No, this is not a gamer's notebook, but the screen is beautiful, build quality although plasticky is top notch, battery lasts forever and it's a looker. Easily the best looking notebook that I have ever seen. It's only about 5 pounds or about half the weight of the bulky Inspirons and other desktop replacements and only gets half as hot.

[Tech^Cellfish]

Here is my experiences with laptop support (from Norway):

NEC (Versanote's) : Lousy support. Has to send the laptops abroad to France for like 6 months just to change the cable from the gfx card to the lcd screen. And often each computer has to go to France 2 or 3 times.

HO / Compaq :Incredible fast service and support. Picks up the laptop within 4 hours even for regular warranty cases. Lets customer do much repair onsite. Has a qualified support personell that understands when the caller is a computer professional. GREAT DRIVER DOWNLOAD PAGE, only negative thing here is FTP downloads instead of HTTP.

HP Omnibook 500 & 510 are my worst enemy. Good thing both the laptop and docking has RESET buttons.. just remember too keep a pencil nearby to reset it. And do firmware upgrades regulary. There have been two times where HP has been unable to repair the unit after three tries and have given us new unit.

DELL: Their onsite support is great. Only tested next day support. Fixes even small things like missing letters on keyboard onsite :P Must have a lot of workforce with nothing to do.

Fujitsu - Siemens : Incredible hard to get the right phone number. Expensive phone support. Lousy help.. Often just patches me through to their center in Germany that says "Can't help you" to almost all questions. Have to email and phone to get firmware updates for their hardware.. driver page almost nonexistant.

Thosiba : Often some strange things wrong. But no problem getting the unit repaired. Driver pages is OK. Phone support nonexistant, but you do get help to return the unit for repair.

ACER : Did suggest that I sent my laptop and power adapter to Denmark for repair when my battery died. But I looked up their phone number to their Norwegian office and got a replacement battery few days later. Driver downloads are not good. They think they're done when they get release drivers out (non-beta). Sometimes asian driver sites are better..

Apple : English speaking support (no Norwegian here, though it's a free norwegian phone number). Lots of replacement needs to be done.. Like replace battery due to fire hazard.. replace motherboard etc.. But good looking and very sturdy laptops. Everything is thought very through on the design.

EDIT: IBM : No idea about support here. But their laptops can handle unbelivable amounts of water and really though handling. Just love their "industrial look" and their 12" models..

----------------------------------------------------[ My laptop ]---------------------------

Personally I have a Acer Travelmate 803Lci upgraded with a 7200rpm 60gb disk. 8mb cache and 768 MB ram total. The screen frame has cracked in three corners, but the laptop is still my favorite. And it should be because it was a 6/6 top rated laptop when I bought it. I have only upgraded it to make it run WoW. (Next upgrade, 108mbit Wi-Fi miniPCI.

Work Laptop is a HP / Compaq N610C with 512 MB ram and stock everything else. The Compaq 600 / 6000 series is our standard at work so I have dealt a lot with those.

So... Hope this will help someone!