rabidbunny :
What are some good laptop brands?
Well of the big boys I like HP and Gateway for their Chassis, and both have been stellar for me and my friends for quality and support. I find Dell hit and miss, but good overall and usually wicked cheap after rebates (especially coupon codes), but I don't like their Chassis at all (although the new 17s are better than their old 17s IMO) and had personal bad experience with their customer service, but the very same laptop I resold to a friend, he got it fixed no problem under the 3 year warranty I had for it, and it was UPS that hasled him, not Dell, he loved DELL. Go figure.
I don't like Toshiba, but they review well. I love IBM/Lenovo, but they don't make laptops in the sizes/features I consider, but I do recommend them to friends; speaking of which a friend just bought a 61 and the thing I love most about Thinkpads, the keyboard, is what died on him, and the tech support guys kept telling him to put in the factory install disk when it was a situation where 2-3 adjacent characters would appear from a single key stroke, it toook for ever for them to agree to fix it. Also he had an ethernet card issue at the very beginning that they kep telling him to re-install the factory install (turned out to be an M$ issue). So in 3 weeks those two isues appeared and what I used to love IBM Thinkpads for, customer service and keyboards, seems to be two things that Lenovo has let slip.
I would like an HP, since I have not had one of their computers. I have a dell dimension and it isn't bad being 4 years old and upgraded/modded, but I'd like to stay away from dell just because....it's a dell.
I understand, and that's the usual experience of many people. Almost everybody has bought a DELL at some point because they're quite often just wicked deals. And of those you get the 50/50 crowd, and usually little else. Now 50% love DELL and wouldn't buy anything else, and the other 50 hate DELL and won't be tempted by the deals. I'm in the later half because customer support dorked me around (and when I worked some relay relief shift jerked a deaf customer around so much it just reinforced my bad experience), but like I said a friend had the total opposite experience. So IMO it's very hit and miss with them.
I do not mind their new inspiron notebooks, but I'd rather go HP. Plus, my dad gets a discount through his workplace with HP and Dell. I think my university will also have deals through dell and hp, but I have to wait on that until I actually go to college.
Yeah we get DELL discounts at work, and they're ok for work (I think busines support is much better than consumer support IMO), but I would prefer HP or Gateway.
I have looked at ASUS laptops, they aren't bad at all. I've heard that Sony laptops are horrible, but what about toshiba?
I'm looking at an ASUS for myself just due to features, but if HP and the new Gateways (still no reply from them yet as to whether there will be a 17" refresh) bring some of the features of the G2S to me, I'll go with them in a heartbeat.
I have heard the two extremes about Sony with one friend having owned 6 (including their ultra thin and his recent Blurray 17" model) and loving them all and finding them rock solid, to another friend having owned one and having nothing but issues with it, and very poor build quality (key broke off under warranty, power connector point snapped off internally under warranty). So while I like Sony's styling, I'm not convinced they are worth the often quite large price premium to me, nor would I recommend people pay the extra.
I like LG, and found them very reliable, but found them scarce in N.America, also Fujitsu has been wicked for 2 friends of mine who now swear by them, but they are ultra-portable fans, not gamers.
It also worth looking at smaller builders, but it depends on your comfort level and your need for support.
The main thing is balancing features with the other benefits of builders, right now no one is meeting all my needs, which is why I still wait, but there's alot of solutions there that are getting 7 out of 10 or even 8 out of 10 but with one major drawback (like lack of numpad). My personal preferences for companies goes HP>LG>Gateway>IBM/Lenovo(used to be #1 when just IBM)>Eurocom>Fujitsu>ASUS>Toshiba>ACER>small brand known company>DELL>small brand no-name company. And DELL being towards the bottom is a personal and easily admitted BIAS. But I freely admit when they have absolutely WICKED deals, and they're also one of the few companies that lived by the large UXGA screens so they always had that advantage until Gateway announced a UXGA scren on their 15" (oie the pixel pitch must be insane, but I'd love it if I didn't want a numpad).
Anywhoo, hope that sheds some insight on whom I would recommend.
But most of all get input from alot of people and check out the midsized and smaller vendors too, there's alot of gems out there, but they are harder to find.
I'll post that story if you want it)
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