Favorite laptop brand (pc only)

ASUS. Got five in the family, that are all more than a few years old. All are going strong, stronger than the couple of HPs that only lasted a couple years, that they replaced, with the exception of my wife's Netbook, explained below. The first ASUS I had was a few years old, but it couldn't catch a hammer, so the screen blew up.

93EXCivic wrote: My Asus netbook has been good until the power port came unsoldered from the motherboard.

My wife's had that problem, too. Found the part on Amazon.com, along with a new power cord (the peg in the port that broke was stuck in the charge plug). Followed a video on youtube to disassemble it, and resoldered it, myself. Cost less than twenny bucks to fix.

I like my Acer. Lenovo is good. I really don't like HP/Compaq. Toshiba is supposed to be good, but I've never seen one I wanted to own.

Apple makes a really solid machine these days. I have one for work, and it's almost four years old, but still looks pretty fresh.

This is the third Acer I've had in my household, and it's as solid as the other two. One issue all 3 of them have had has been the fan vents getting clogged, and you have to disassemble the whole laptop to access the ports to properly clean it out. Their mid-level and upmarket units are much nicer than their cheap stuff, but I've never had a problem that kept any of them from working, other than the hard drive I killed in this laptop due to an impact. My brother managed to kill one, but it took 6 or 7 4-5 foot falls to a hard surface before finally letting out the magic smoke.

When I worked for the computer shop, all of the laptops we sold were Acers. We sold a couple a month, but never had any come back under warranty. Lots of repeat customers, but this was before everyone was interwebs shopping savvy.

Lenovo x230 you will thank me.

Toshiba

My Samsung has survived for two years, so far, one of which was in Iraq.

Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote: Whatever brand you go with buy one of the business machines. They tend to be better buillt and should last longer than ones from the consumer line. I have both an HP and a Dell and I perfer the Dell machine.

^This.

Build quality is worlds different. Hunt around and you can get a decent deal.

I've got a business class HP. Had it for about a year now relatively trouble free. I wouldn't say that's really long enough for a longevity test though.

ASUS, though be warned, the power jack on the G series is made of the finest hopes, dreams, and unicorn farts. Mine broke in under a year of ownership, it spent most of its time on a desk.

EricM wrote: Lenovo x230 you will thank me.

did another look at the x230... nice

but anyway did some research and think the t420 is what i'm looking for... found the student/staff/teacher price has a nice bonus...

slickdeals also had a sweet little discount bonus option which is even better than the student price... just have to wait for it to pop up again CLICK ME

with the i5 processor, discreet vid, higher resolution screen, back-lit keyboard, upgraded wifi card, and 9 cell battery its still under $800... dump all those things (drop to an i3 processor) and you can do it for under $500... thats getting freaking close to entry lvl crap that comes out from the consumer laptops...

I'm still debating on a new laptop with school just having started... my old toshiba has been around the world (literally), broken hinge, battery life sucks etc... would be perfect to retire it to HTPC status

I'm kind of looking for a new one myself, so this thread is timely. The $400 home-user Dell my wife got me for father's day two years ago has been wrecked by my kids (but I blame myself because I left it where they could get to it)- it doesn't charge any more, it only boots if you leave out one of the sticks of RAM, it's on its second keyboard, etc.

My wife is irritated because she thinks anything that costs $400 should last longer than 2 years- I tend to agree, but then again I figure that's the low, low end of laptops anyway.

Am I right that a couple years is all you can really expect out of a low-end consumer machine? e.g., is a $400 laptop a disposable laptop now?

I seem to recall my current Toshiba cost about $600 when I bought it at Circuit City. That right there gives a bit of a hint as to when I bought it As I said, I think it's lasted something like 5-6 years now. It's lasted longer than the print run of one of the books I wrote on it...

But I don't have kids. I suspect that's a bigger factor than how much you paid for the laptop.

My Hp Probook gets bounced around on my motorcycle daily.

This has me thinking, I'm on a year old $400 refurbed toshiba. How long till I'm on borrowed time

Our Compaq has been around for.... 5 years now? $400 laptop when bought.

Grtechguy wrote: My Hp Probook gets bounced around on my motorcycle daily.

Is it running at the time? Because that can make a difference, especially to the hard drive.

Our shop laptops tend to see pretty hard use, stuffed in race cars for datalogging, left in extremely dirty envionments (metal dust isn't good for laptops) and treated as if nobody owns them. For some reason the boss keeps buying and trashing Dells, while the Lenova Jeremy specified keeps truckin' along.

I always liked Toshiba but My current laptop is a refurb HP. Still works great after a year. Also, with it being Win7 I don't have to re-install the operating system every two weeks like my old XP E36 M3.

My cousin's husband has a Asus and he does a lot of work involving computers (can't afford down time). He convinced my sister to get one and she likes it (though she is by no stretch a computer geek, so that's not a strong recommedation). I've seen businesses that use a lot of Acer's...and I've always wondered if that was a choice that was money / price of purchase driven. I just bought an Acer monitor, and doubt I will ever buy another one of their products. The build quality is decent, but the controls are difficult to figure and their is almost no help with the software provided.

when it comes to monitors there are few I've used with decent controls... thankfully once they are set you rarely ever touch em again...