Talk to me about laptops

TheDustyZebra

TheDustyZebra

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At the risk of starting a war, I need opinions on the current laptop market. What's good, what's not, what do I need to know?

I write, I edit, I hang out here and on Facebook, and I watch movies from Amazon and Netflix. That's about it. I do occasionally play a game such as Civilization, which would be on Steam these days since that's where I bought several of them recently.

I have an iPad and there is a Mac desktop in my house, so I probably don't need a Mac. I'd like to be able to run Windows 7 instead of one of the nightmarish newer ones, but I realize that may not be possible.
 
TheDustyZebra said:
At the risk of starting a war, I need opinions on the current laptop market. What's good, what's not, what do I need to know?

I write, I edit, I hang out here and on Facebook, and I watch movies from Amazon and Netflix. That's about it. I do occasionally play a game such as Civilization, which would be on Steam these days since that's where I bought several of them recently.

I have an iPad and there is a Mac desktop in my house, so I probably don't need a Mac. I'd like to be able to run Windows 7 instead of one of the nightmarish newer ones, but I realize that may not be possible.
Click to expand...

I've always used Toshibas and Fujitsus because they are tough workhorses. The after-sales services is solid as well (at least, it is over here in Southeast Asia).

My laptop is my desktop replacement and I do EVERYTHING on it - non-stop online work (I work from home), streaming shows to watch, heavy social media usage (part of work), writing, editing pictures and videos, streaming music etc.

What I do is select a gaming laptop model, then add in as much extra RAM as I can afford (usually the maximum allowed by the laptop) and then go to town with it.

Hope this helps.
 
Ahh, yes, I should have added that my laptop IS my computer. We have desktop computers, but I only use a laptop.

I have a Toshiba now, and have no complaints other than it's old and getting progressively slower, but I don't quite trust Toshiba not to go bankrupt this year, so I'm not sure I want another one. Not that I ever hit the company up for anything to do with my old one, so it wouldn't make a lot of difference.

I have advice from another quarter that suggests Lenovo and Dell would be good options.

Oh, and I do want a CD/DVD drive.
 
TheDustyZebra said:
Ahh, yes, I should have added that my laptop IS my computer. We have desktop computers, but I only use a laptop.

I have a Toshiba now, and have no complaints other than it's old and getting progressively slower, but I don't quite trust Toshiba not to go bankrupt this year, so I'm not sure I want another one. Not that I ever hit the company up for anything to do with my old one, so it wouldn't make a lot of difference.

I have advice from another quarter that suggests Lenovo and Dell would be good options.

Oh, and I do want a CD/DVD drive.
Click to expand...

Dells tend to get slower and slower for some reason. My previous job had Dells and we had a ton of trouble with them even with repeated repairs by Dell.

Not sure about Lenovo but do avoid Sony Vaio laptops - every single person I know who has bought one has constantly had trouble with them.

Didn't know Toshiba might be going bankrupt - try Fujitsu. Don't think they are going bankrupt and they make really good laptops (my last two laptops were Fujitsu because they were at the price point that suited my pocket at the time). They tend to be slightly more expensive though.
 
How fortuitous! I've been in the laptop market for quite a little while now (I'm really bad at making commitments when there is a large sum of money attached). I will watch this thread with interest.

For what it's worth - we've had Toshibas and never had a problem, although their troubles this year concern me as well. I've been looking at ASUS and MSI laptops, as I'm keen to get a gaming model, and have heard both good and bad things about both. Same with Dell - it seems some people swear by them, and some people loath them. The more research I do, the more confused I get!
 
Culhwch said:
I've been looking at ASUS and MSI laptops, as I'm keen to get a gaming model, and have heard both good and bad things about both.
Click to expand...

ASUS is a bit of a gamble - I've had two laptops from them before and both ended "flaming out" due to motherboard issues. There was no warning - one moment you're typing away, the next moment BLACKOUT GOODBYE POOF GONE! (Thank goodness I'd backed up my things).

And for the love of gawd do NOT get Acer, not matter how attractive the price. Every single person I know who got Acer had to replace the laptop within a year of getting it due to having so many issues.
 
Hey Dusty. About Asus - my wife and I both bought Asus laptops 4 years ago...I bought a cheap one, she uses the computer more so she bought an expensive one. The battery on mine failed after 1.5 years, and I had to pay to replace it, and hers failed a few months later. The port for plugging in the charger also broke on mine, so getting the charger plug seated correctly was a nightmare. Finally, two of her USB ports failed after two years. It was very disappointing all around.
We had moved countries after buying them, and we didn't bother trying to see if the laptops were under warranty; we wanted to go another direction. We use Toshiba Chromebooks now, which we mostly love...but I suspect they might not be right for you, from what you said about your needs. Hope this helped a little, CC
 
Don't bother with Asus, Acer, or hp. With a bargepole. Just, don't do it ;)

I've never had a big problem with viaos (currently use one) but they are expensive (I get a big discount from a family member working for them - staff discount yay!)

Usually the OH recommends Dell and Lenovo as they are always good quality. He also stipulates minimum ram and hdd space, but I tend to go for gaming setups anyway myself and don't have problems. Just find a model you like and cram in as much hdd and ram space as you can affors/can fit and you'll be fine. You also want to get ssd instead of hdd now if you can as much better.

Oh always suggests having a look and narrowing it down to a few models then going to places like techradar and pctablet review etc etc and reading all the reviews on the models you've chosen, weeds out the dodgy ones. He's an electronics engineer and very up to date with system requirements etc. He made his work give him a £2k dell laptop for work, and now 2 years later keeps telling them it's 'rubbish' purely because he is trying to get them to give him the newer version ;) he's pretty good at working out what you need in a laptop for what you want, but not necessarily up to date on models. And if you want to game on it you'll want to cram as much processing power as possible into it and get a good quality screen.
 
I'd say that your best bet is to snoop around some of the forums like 'overclockers' which may help with the basics (actually a LOT more than the basics as it really is a putergeek's site)...

The below has/had a good rep a couple of years ago
Buy Business, Home and Gaming Laptops from Novatech

If you're not going to be playing games (or at least just 'simple' games) there's no need to go overboard with everything (some of the higher end features such as bluray will come with other high end components you'll not need) so think about what you really need and what would be 'nice'....

bluray player - handy to watch those discs on/rip to watch when away on business
HDMI - handy to attach to the TV
1 TB hard-drive - handy for storage... but do you really need it? Could an externl HD or 2 be more useful?
11",13", 15" or 17" ( I am aware that there are other sizes in-between these but...) - what size works best for you? Personally I love the 17" as it just gives me a nicer experience
glossy screen (looks lovely, but horrendous for reflections), matt screen (no reflections but may not look as pretty)
do you need a web-cam?
back-lit keyboard?
good battery life (or does it spend 90% of its life plugged in)?
I'd assume for most on here MS word would be a minimum requirement (get MS office so that you've got access to everything, if you have a student in the house it can be quite cheap)
if you're only writing on it do you need that super-wizzy graphics card - or indeed the latest 20 core i79 unobtainium processor?

have fun ;)
 
All laptops are great when they work, but a b*tch when something goes wrong.

The biggest problem is often the mains lead - people push it in too hard, and rip it out of the motherboard, and this needs specialist (and expensive) repair - that's why Apple have used a magnetic system for years.

Anything you'll see in the shops is much of a muchness (unless you're thick enough to take an offer from the likes of Aldi/Lidl, of unknown provenance), and opinion is sharply divided on Dell - some like them, some wouldn't touch them.

In five years of repair, the brand that stood out to me was Acer - we only saw those when someone had logged into a dodgy site and virussed it up, but that was years ago and things may've changed.
 
I'm happy with my Samsung laptop. After several years of use, it could probably use a new battery, but it has otherwise been pretty reliable.
We got a Toshiba laptop a few years ago, but ended up taking it back to Best Buy. I don't know if the computer was faulty, or it was all the fault of the pre-service pack Windows Vista OS. More likely the latter.
I don't think you'll have much luck getting a new laptop with any OS other that Windows 10, at least through conventional retailers. Optical drives are also disappearing as original equipment. External options remain available.
 
I just bought a new basic Lenovo Windows 10 laptop. Like the OP I only need it for basic word processing and internet so my requirements were few. Was very cheap (£150 on sale reduced from £199) and does have a plasticky feel to the casing but it does everything I need just fine. Seems like your choices would be a bit more limited if you need a CD/DVD drive as you say, I'm not sure many laptops still have them any more.
 
I've bought 2 lap tops within the last year, one an HP and one an Acer. I also have an HP that is about 6 years old, Windows 7. (Windows 8.1 on the others) The Acer, although it is the newest has a lot of "gag me ware" on it from the manufacturer. Things that I'd never use, and which there are far better alternatives to without cost. I thought my old HP was finally giving up the ghost. I had replaced the battery on it and bought an 8 hour battery (Is that nice! Yes!). I was having some problems with my new Acer and I brought my old HP in as well. (I may have more money than brains and since I'm pretty poor that doesn't bode well!) The HP came back running like a top, the Acer we cannot fix. It has something sending me odd places when I click through on a link following a link. (I suppose its a weird malware, but wonder if it could be on there from the manufacturer, it happened that soon after I had bought it.) My tech says he's never seen the like. (Sounds typical. I don't get the normal stuff). --- Moral: I'd go HP.
 
I'm actually looking right now, with the idea of buying in the next couple of months.

I've had several Toshiba laptops. They've been bulletproof, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one. (The same cannot be said for anything else made by Toshiba). My only complaint is that their left shift key tends to be small and hard to find with my pinky.

I wouldn't touch Acer if you gave it to me free. I owned one Acer. 'Nuff said.

I've been told on another forum that Asus is high quality, but I've been researching lately and I've seen a lot of complaints. I can't reconcile that.

I currently own a Lenovo T500. I don't think I'd buy their consumer-level stuff, but the business-level stuff is truly bulletproof. However, the T500 has some minor graphics incompatibilities. Hopefully the newer machines don't suffer from that.

I've owned several Dells, and they were pretty good. But I've heard that Dell went downhill when they started offshoring all their labour and going with commodity components. Not sure if I'd buy an expensive Dell, now.

I've looked at Alienware. Nice, but tends to run hot according to all the commentary.

About the only real advice that I can give would be -- don't buy something sight unseen. If I can't put my hands on it to demo it, it's not an option. Unless there's a good return policy.
 
Overclockers is a great place to look once narrowed down your choice (but be aware they are super into their stuff, so some of it may go over heads). I bought nearly all my components from them last computer build and the only problem I had was when the mobo had a fault (bios fault would you believe) and they didn't believe me - I rang them and told them what was wrong and got through to a very patronising guy a few times before they would take it back and test it themselves before replace/refund option given. Which was fine, but he kept telling me it was "user error" even though I knew it wasn't and my OH took one look at it and said faulty component. The third time I rang them I told them that I (hah-hah!) was the electronic engineer and didn't appreciate the attitude he was giving me. The final time I gave up and got my OH to talk to them and instantly said, 'oh, yes totally understand, yes, we'll get our engineer to look for that in the bios' rang him back two hours later with a, 'sorry, yes completely faulty we'll send a new one out asap'. We concluded sexist moron ;) but other than that they are great and have a wealth of info.

PCs are annoying in the fact that you can't really build them yourself (something I do like about vaios is how you can spec it out pretty much how you want) but should be able to tailor it to what you want. Make a list of must haves, nice to haves, and can live without and start from there.

Lenovo have really upped their game with consumer level stuff. I have their original business tablet and it is still going strong. Alienware are ok, but do run very hot from what I've seen.

OH also says at LEAST intel 5 chip and at LEAST 8GB as that is what you need to run stuff decently without it slowing to a crawl - no matter what the shop drones tell you. Do not get anything with less than 8GB. A friend got duped recently and my OH tried to fix it but it was so rubbish that there was just about enough power and space to run Win8. No wonder it wouldn't internet or word process! Complete load of rubbish. Gave friend list of minimums to take to shop and the drones were all - don't need that! Way too much! but ognored them and got a decent deal that suits requirements.

All I can add is research research research.
 
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