smart51
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 08:42 PM |
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what laptop?
I'm thinking of buying a laptop but have never looked at them before. what's good and what's not?
I dont intend to play games. It will be used for office, internet DVDs and MP3s.
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britishtrident
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 08:54 PM |
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In order of pref
Toshiba
Fujitsu
Compaq
Dell
All above are very very good --
or if you want to spend money for the name Sony
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Macca
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 09:05 PM |
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I can't speak to highly of
www.rockdirect.com
Great units, aftersales backup second to none.
They even host a forum on the website which allows poeple to tell all, warts and all.
Did I mention the 3 year collect and return warranty.
Not the cheapest but possibly the best!!
Col
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SeaBass
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 09:13 PM |
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The GF has just purchased an Acer 3003LM from ebuyer @ 400 notes it seems cheap to me... Unknown as to what it'll be like in the long run but no
doubt fine for her MS word and web based email.
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Mr G
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 09:20 PM |
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Just missed free shipping and a good discount on a Dell Laptop at £349. The offer has finished now 
Bottom of the line from a high street retailer your looking at £349 from PCWORLD
http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=35197
[Edited on 20/1/06 by Mr G]
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a
car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes
and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
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CommanderAce
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 09:33 PM |
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Whatever you get get one with a Pentium M not a Celeron M.
Other things on your checklist should include:
512MB RAM
Wifi
>=60GB Hard Drive
etc
Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads!
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iank
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 09:33 PM |
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IBM Thinkpad often expensive but I've never come across a badly made one (metal hinges for example).
I've been told to avoid Acer by people who've had problems.
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mookaloid
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 09:55 PM |
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I have an IBM T40, which is really very neat slim and light. It has titanium in the covers for strength. I have also had HP, Dell, compaq and toshiba
laptops.
The IBM is just great, absolutely nothing has gone wrong with it after 18 months of hard use. with all the others stuff went wrong on a regular basis.
but Dell had the best aftercare. Don't know about IBM after care as never had to use it
Not exactly lowcost though
HTH
Mark
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SeaBass
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 10:29 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by iank
I've been told to avoid Acer by people who've had problems.
Oh well, she can deal with fixing it... I already look after her cars...
In fact thinking about your statement, you wouldn't have been told to avoid Acer by people who've had good experiences with them would
you??
ie Bad reports are always recalled first. Just like locost parts suppliers I guess.
Cheers
[Edited on 20/1/06 by SeaBass]
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ecosse
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 10:31 PM |
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Speaking from the point of view of supporting most of these, I rate them as follows.
Dell = cheap, poor quality control, but a lot of kit for the money (if you get a bad one it could be in for repair a lot though!) good phone
support.(If you go for Dell make sure you get the onsite support, just in case)
IBM = well made, more expensive, pretty reliable, generally poor(er) overall performance though IMHO. (Solid choice, had a few myself, and still got
one thats 6yrs old and works fine)
Tosh = good kit, can be expensive, well built and performs (in general) well (few people complain about buying a tosh laptop, I rarely see them for
repair)
Compaq = okay, reasonably reliable, can be expensive, don't buy a cheap one though (cause they are not cheap enough!) (not the most impressive
but will do the job)
Acer/Sony/fujitsu= don't have much to do with them so can't comment
Don't know if that will help or confuse but in reality there is little to choose between any of the top makes, allways buy on spec and warranty
every time and you won't go far wrong.
Cheers
Alex
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iank
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| posted on 20/1/06 at 10:44 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by SeaBass
quote:
Originally posted by iank
I've been told to avoid Acer by people who've had problems.
Oh well, she can deal with fixing it... I already look after her cars...
In fact thinking about your statement, you wouldn't have been told to avoid Acer by people who've had good experiences with them would
you??
ie Bad reports are always recalled first. Just like locost parts suppliers I guess.
Cheers
[Edited on 20/1/06 by SeaBass]
She might not be too happy with having to fix the Acer. I believe it's the apalling aftersales service that caused the whinging - just like
some of the locost suppliers 
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SixedUp
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| posted on 21/1/06 at 12:08 AM |
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I've now had 3 IBM Thinkpads. All are still working perfectly, though obviously I've had to replace the batteries. The oldest is now
nearly 9 years old. I've only had one problem (a motherboard failure, on the newest machine) and that was fixed under warranty in under a week.
My original (a 600) has been to every continent on the planet, several times, and now runs Windows XP, albeit slowly, for my wife in our lounge. Not
cheap, but simply staggering build quality.
[edit]I should have mentioned, IBM has recently sold off its PC business, including the Thinkpads, to a company called Lenovo. Seems to be a merger of
a Chinese company and the original IBM PC people. No idea what that's done to the quality of their most recent machines though...[/edit]
Cheers
Richard
[Edited on 21/1/06 by SixedUp]
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britishtrident
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| posted on 21/1/06 at 11:13 AM |
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Acer desk tops are one of the PC brands I tell customers to avoid ---
IBM sold thier PC business off -- seen a lot of older Thinkpads with iffy hinges.
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