Need models to buy, and to avoid for laptop computer

[hrhofmann@att.net]

My wife's Dell computer has died, according to our son who is a
computer expert. I am looking for suggestions on brands to buy and to
avoid, when we go out looking tomorrow. She is looking at PC World
and Consumer's Reports for info, but I thought some opinions from the
trenches was also important. Suggestions to buy and/or to avoid.

Thanks

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:01:45 -0800 (PST), "hrhofmann@att.net"
<hrhofmann@att.net> wrote:

My wife's Dell computer has died, according to our son who is a
computer expert.

You might consider getting a 2nd opinion. Your son probably doesn't
want to fix it for free. Also, if the unspecified model Dell is
fairly current, it might be possible to get Nvidia to fix it for free:
<http://www.nvidiasettlement.com>

I am looking for suggestions on brands to buy and to
avoid, when we go out looking tomorrow.

It doesn't work like that. Every brand of laptops has their winner
and losers. Often, if a manufacturer has a winning line of machines,
they will recycle the name and model number series on their latest
models in the vain hope that maybe some of the good karma will rub off
on the new models, or that the customers won't notice that they're
totally different models. In other words, it's really difficult to
shop by brand name or even product line.

Most laptops are made by a collection of Chinese and Korean OEM
manufacturers. Just about all the brands have at least one product
line made by Quanta, Compal, or Wistron/Acer:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manufacturers#ODM_Laptop_Units_sold_and_Market_Shares>
I've gone down this list and attempted to correlate the OEM
manufacturer with my observed failure rate, and failed. They all seem
to have similar problems.

If you as a repairman what should your buy, you'll get a list of
machines with which they have had experience. That's fine if you want
to know which machines break and need repair. However, a better
question would be which machine do they *NOT* see coming in for
repair. As a hint, I see large numbers of HP, Compaq, Dell, and Asus
late model laptops. I see a few Toshibas. I rarely see Lenovo,
Panasonic, or Acer.

She is looking at PC World
and Consumer's Reports for info, but I thought some opinions from the
trenches was also important. Suggestions to buy and/or to avoid.

Avoid generalizations, Consumer Report, and PC World reviews. One
size/type laptop does not fit all applications and budgets. If you
must read reviews, I suggest CNET.
<http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/>

First, some questions:
1. How much does she want to spend? If your budget is unlimited, I
have some nice $3,000+ W701ds Lenovo or Toughbook CF-31 machines for
her. If she doesn't want to spend that much, she can do quite will
with referbished and last years models.
2. How paranoid is she? 1 year warranty, or extend it to 3 years. 3
years is all most of the manufacturers will offer. That also doesn't
include breakage warranty, which is covered seperately.
3. What is she going to do with it? If it's just general purpose web
crawling, email, and some productivity apps, almost anything will
work. However, if she's doing video, YouTube, Netflix, CAD, number
crunching, simulations, Photoshop, or high end games, it's going to
take some real horsepower.
4. Of course, some techy details like size of screen, max weight,
necessary options, BlueGoof, Blue-ray, etc?


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[hrhofmann@att.net]

On Jan 30, 8:05 pm, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com> wrote:

On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:01:45 -0800 (PST), "hrhofm...@att.net"

hrhofm...@att.net> wrote:
My wife's Dell computer has died, according to our son who is a
computer expert.  

You might consider getting a 2nd opinion.  Your son probably doesn't
want to fix it for free.  Also, if the unspecified model Dell is
fairly current, it might be possible to get Nvidia to fix it for free:
http://www.nvidiasettlement.com

I am looking for suggestions on brands to buy and to
avoid, when we go out looking tomorrow.

It doesn't work like that.  Every brand of laptops has their winner
and losers.  Often, if a manufacturer has a winning line of machines,
they will recycle the name and model number series on their latest
models in the vain hope that maybe some of the good karma will rub off
on the new models, or that the customers won't notice that they're
totally different models.  In other words, it's really difficult to
shop by brand name or even product line.

Most laptops are made by a collection of Chinese and Korean OEM
manufacturers.  Just about all the brands have at least one product
line made by Quanta, Compal, or Wistron/Acer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manufacturers#...
I've gone down this list and attempted to correlate the OEM
manufacturer with my observed failure rate, and failed.  They all seem
to have similar problems.

If you as a repairman what should your buy, you'll get a list of
machines with which they have had experience.  That's fine if you want
to know which machines break and need repair.  However, a better
question would be which machine do they *NOT* see coming in for
repair.  As a hint, I see large numbers of HP, Compaq, Dell, and Asus
late model laptops.  I see a few Toshibas.  I rarely see Lenovo,
Panasonic, or Acer.

She is looking at PC World
and Consumer's Reports for info, but I thought some opinions from the
trenches was also important.  Suggestions to buy and/or to avoid.

Avoid generalizations, Consumer Report, and PC World reviews.  One
size/type laptop does not fit all applications and budgets.  If you
must read reviews, I suggest CNET.
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/

First, some questions:
1.  How much does she want to spend?  If your budget is unlimited, I
have some nice $3,000+ W701ds Lenovo or Toughbook CF-31 machines for
her.  If she doesn't want to spend that much, she can do quite will
with referbished and last years models.
2.  How paranoid is she?  1 year warranty, or extend it to 3 years.  3
years is all most of the manufacturers will offer.  That also doesn't
include breakage warranty, which is covered seperately.
3.  What is she going to do with it?  If it's just general purpose web
crawling, email, and some productivity apps, almost anything will
work.  However, if she's doing video, YouTube, Netflix, CAD, number
crunching, simulations, Photoshop, or high end games, it's going to
take some real horsepower.
4.  Of course, some techy details like size of screen, max weight,
necessary options, BlueGoof, Blue-ray, etc?

--
Jeff Liebermann     je...@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

All good comments, Jeff, I have seen most of your posts and you are
almost always right on. My wife will use the laptop for general
purpose stuff, no high-speed or great memory requirements, just a
basic wireless internet connection. She had a older Dell Inspiron
1000 which was pretty much bottom of the line when she got it at least
5 years ago. Right now she is leaning toward a Toshiba.

Our son gets paid for his work, he has solved many problems for us
over the years, and has built complete laptops using parts cobbled
from other machines. So, when he says it is final, I totally believe
him. In fact, my wife is using my rebuilt machine from our son right
now, and I am using my desktop machine while my wife has my laptop.
I'll post whatever we buy tomorrow, as a blizzard is forecast for Tue
and Wed and I leave Thursday for a skiing vacation and I will need my
laptop to use while away from home.

 

[WW]

<hrhofmann@att.net> wrote in message
news:dae9a047-e8dc-4578-a710-bcb016f23b70@a5g2000vbs.googlegroups.com...

My wife's Dell computer has died, according to our son who is a
computer expert. I am looking for suggestions on brands to buy and to
avoid, when we go out looking tomorrow. She is looking at PC World
and Consumer's Reports for info, but I thought some opinions from the
trenches was also important. Suggestions to buy and/or to avoid.

Thanks

Our extended family has 6 Dell's. No problems. So we will continue with Dell
if we purchase any more. WW

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:48:48 -0800 (PST), "hrhofmann@att.net"
<hrhofmann@att.net> wrote:

She had a older Dell Inspiron
1000 which was pretty much bottom of the line when she got it at least
5 years ago.

Piece of junk. I've inherited a few from customers that have had
them blow up on them. Typically, a 2GHz P4 Celeron CPU with no
internal Wi-Fi. Slower than a snail, even fully loaded with RAM.
Probably a good excuse or time to replace it.

Right now she is leaning toward a Toshiba.

Two of my customers/friends (the customers pay me, the friends do not)
have purchased various Toshiblah laptops recently. No problems. Get
one with an Intel i5 processor. The i3 is too slow, and the i7 is too
expensive. 4GB RAM is about right for Windoze 7.

Some Toshiblah deals at Best Buy:
<http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olstemplatemapper.jsp?id=pcat17080&type=page&qp=crootcategoryid%23%23-1%23%23-1~~q70726f63657373696e6774696d653a3e313930302d30312d3031~~cabcat0500000%23%230%23%2311a~~cabcat0502000%23%230%23%23o~~f510||546f7368696261~~f551||496e74656c26233137343b~~nf546||496e74656c26233137343b20436f726526233135333b206935&list=y&nrp=15&sc=abComputerSP&ks=960&usc=abcat0500000&sp=%2Bcurrentprice+skuid&list=y&iht=n&st=processingtime%3A%3E1900-01-01>
Amazon has them cheaper, but you'll have to wait for the sales and
closeouts.

Our son gets paid for his work, he has solved many problems for us
over the years, and has built complete laptops using parts cobbled
from other machines.

Ok, he seems to know what he's doing. If he can't fix it, it's not
going to happen.

I'll post whatever we buy tomorrow, as a blizzard is forecast for Tue
and Wed and I leave Thursday for a skiing vacation and I will need my
laptop to use while away from home.

Fairly good weather here in California. Warmer than usual, light
rain, a bit of fog.... my kind of weather.

It takes me about 6 hours to setup a typical "ready to run" Windoze 7"
machine. 2 hrs to get Windoze 7 up to date. One hour to remove the
junkware. One hour to load it with my favorite collection of
utilities.
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/favorite-utils.html>
(a bit out of date and XP specific, but close enough). Another hour
to load Office 2003 and updates. One hours to show the customer (your
wife) how to use it. Probably a good thing to do while it's snowing.

Have fun skiing.



--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Meat Plow]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:01:45 -0800, hrhofmann@att.net wrote:

My wife's Dell computer has died, according to our son who is a computer
expert. I am looking for suggestions on brands to buy and to avoid,
when we go out looking tomorrow. She is looking at PC World and
Consumer's Reports for info, but I thought some opinions from the
trenches was also important. Suggestions to buy and/or to avoid.

Thanks

Avoid Dell, HP, Acer.

Look into IBM, Asus, Toshiba, Panasonic.



--
Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:45:27 -0800, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>
wrote:
(blah...blah...blah)

....and just when you thought it was safe to buy a new laptop:
"Intel hit with chipset design flaw in Sandy Bridge rollout"
<http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/intel-hit-with-chipset-design-flaw-in-sandy-bridge-rollout/44257?tag=nl.e539>

"The faulty support chip has only been shipping since Jan. 9.
Customers impacted will be those that bought second-generation
Core i5 and Core i7 systems."

Swell.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[JeffM]

hrhofmann@ att.net wrote:

My wife's Dell computer has died

Several of us are assuming you keep a boot-to-a-desktop

Linux CD on hand for first-eschelon tests of hardware vs OS.
This one works on just about anything.
http://google.com/search?q=MEPIS+antiX+64MB+128MB
Some folks pronounce antiX as "antiques".

I am looking for suggestions on brands to buy and to avoid

A company I avoid in all matters is Sony.

http://google.com/search?q=cache:NFEfVX2OV6oJ:boingboing.net/2006/10/24/sony-assassinates-am.html+does.not.conform+selling-*-PSP-consoles-from-Asia+carry-CE-*-*-*-marks+rootkits+*-lock-out-homebrew-software+*-*-crippling-*-PSP+*-*-teaching-*-dances-to-*-Aibos+war-against-its-*-customers+*-European-customers+compromised.*.computer.networks&strip=1
http://tinyurl.com/Sony-s-War-On-Its-Customers
http://boingboing.net/2006/10/24/sony-assassinates-am.html

They've screwed up way too many times for me to trust them.
http://google.com/search?q=Sony+laptop-batteries+fires
http://google.com/search?q=Sony+rootkit
http://google.com/search?q=Sony+OtherOS+%2BOtherOS
http://google.com/search?q=Sony+George-Hotz

As the other Jeff has said,
most of the stuff comes from just a few factories these days;
what matters most is how you are treated AFTER the sale.
Sony FAILS.