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Jul - Computers and Technology - Looking to buy a new laptop... New poll - New thread - New reply
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Peardian

  
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Posted on 11-30-11 12:34:21 AM Link | Quote
I graduate in a couple of weeks, and I still have money saved up for educational purposes, so I'm hoping to get a new laptop while I'm still considered a student. The problem is I don't know much about buying computers. My brother has a Dell Latitude [some number] and it's pretty nice, so I might get something like that, but I want to hear suggestions from you guys first.

What I'm looking for:

-Windows. I already have a Mac and don't want another one.
-Decent power/graphics. My brother's Dell can play TF2 at decent settings with no loss of performance or overheating. I'm not going for a "Gaming Laptop" though.
-Decent battery life. My brother's Dell can play TF2 for at least 3-4 hours unplugged.
-Not tiny, not absurdly high-res. I like being able to count pixels on a 14-15 inch screen.
-Decently priced. Anything around $1500 is fine with me. I just don't want to spend another $2300 like I did for this Mac.


So, what do you recommend? Remember, I have to choose soon!


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Post 9731/11363

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Posted on 11-30-11 12:49:36 AM Link | Quote
Have you looked at the Lenovo Thinkpad W series? It seems like the W520 with an i7-2760QM might be good for you, considering some of what you do.

Either that or some of the T series laptops, which also seem nice.

I've heard some decent things about the HP Elitebooks and the Envy, too... I'd avoid their lower end offerings, though, as speaking from experience working on the things it's not very pleasant.

Although, I'll admit, after some less-than-stellar experiences (namely Gateway, Toshiba, and Acer... well, the Toshiba was okayish I guess) I'm pretty much only ever going to consider Lenovo or Apple (which you already said you did not want, so I'm not suggesting them) machines, and I don't really know their battery life. Of course, I'm also warming up to HP a bit again, but I'm still pretty cautious suggesting them since the laptop I've been having nice luck with is from 2003. I hear Vaios aren't bad machines, but I wouldn't trust anything from Sony if my life depended on it.

Of course, one man's experiences are not the be-all end-all...

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Peardian

  
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Posted on 11-30-11 01:49:59 AM Link | Quote
The Lenovo Thinkpad sounds pretty promising. I'll have to look up reviews for it and compare it against my brother's laptop. Anybody here with a Lenovo laptop that can testify as to its quality?

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Posted on 11-30-11 02:59:53 AM Link | Quote
I actually got this Samsung laptop recently about a month ago. 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320 GB hard drive, Intel card, etc. The grand total price? About $375.

I'm not sure if that's something you'd be interested in or need, but I manage to run it just fine. I grabbed it at Best Buy. However, make sure that if you do buy it from there, to try to avoid getting one that has their bullshit installed on it. I had to fight with them some to not have a pre-installed one with their $100 protection add on crap and what-not. Windows 7 isn't all that bad either, IMO.

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Post 9737/11363

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Posted on 11-30-11 03:49:58 AM Link | Quote
Also, keep in mind - if you don't wish to keep your current MBP, Apple computers have a really high resale value and they tend to at least retain a decent one for quite a while. (An iBook G4 is about $150-200 nowadays.) I'm guessing you could get $600-800 for your current one, but I'd personally keep it just in case you need an OS X machine for anything in the future.

The choice is yours, though.

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Peardian

  
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Posted on 11-30-11 11:59:42 AM Link | Quote
Yeah, I plan on keeping my Mac. With the dinged up corner, half-broken camera, and four years worth of wear, it wouldn't be worth it to sell it anyway. May as well keep it in case I need a backup or need a Mac for something.

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Posted on 11-30-11 04:11:29 PM Link | Quote
I would avoid Toshiba, Sony, and Acer if possible, unless you enjoy having severely outdated drivers. None of those companies allow AMD's official driver packages to install on their laptops, instead preferring to provide their own "approved" drivers, which can go for months (or years) without critical updates. There's a good chance this restriction applies to other types of drivers as well.

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Posted on 11-30-11 05:10:41 PM Link | Quote
I have an older Dell Latitude D630 (which I think is now two generations behind or something)... in terms of performance it's done pretty well, battery life is right now still around two hours, which isn't bad for a nearly four-year-old computer- I will, however, say that the warranty has been a necessity... I've never had issues getting things fixed at all, but well, there have been issues that needed to be fixed too. (though usually not major internal stuff (the graphics card failed early on, but that was nVidia's fault I think) but stuff like hinges, the bezel around the screen, etc.) I'm not sure if they've improved their build quality with the newer models...

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Post 9760/11363

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Posted on 11-30-11 10:29:51 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Peardian
With the dinged up corner, half-broken camera, and four years worth of wear, it wouldn't be worth it to sell it anyway. May as well keep it in case I need a backup or need a Mac for something.


Even in that condition, people might still pay a fair amount for it. I've heard about broken machines fetching a good price!

I think it's a good call keeping it, though - having something to fall back on never hurts.

...And I didn't know Sony was dumb about drivers, too. I'm not shocked. (Although I advised against Acer because my biggest worry is poor build quality, I can also second that their drivers are awful...)

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Sponty
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Posted on 12-01-11 01:40:20 AM (last edited by Sponty at 11-30-11 10:41 PM) Link | Quote
I'd personally avoid Acer and (by extension) Gateway, because my family's had far too much experience with their shitty build quality to recommend either.

EDIT: Lenovo might be worth looking into, my mom's laptop is going on 10 years old, and aside from the hard drive dying about a year ago, it's working great.

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Post 9788/11363

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Posted on 12-01-11 02:35:30 AM Link | Quote
Gateway wasn't even really that great before being acquired by Acer - my laptop practically cooked itself to death.

Well, I actually ended up killing it by bending processor pins... but that can be fixed. Not that keen on doing so, though, since... as fondly as I look back on it, being my first laptop and all, I really wish I'd gotten something else instead.

My Aspire One actually has a separated hinge (the plastic is split apart), too - this worries me.

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Sukasa

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Posted on 12-01-11 08:08:10 PM Link | Quote
Oof, bent pins are never fun. I actually bent a bunch on an old pentium and managed to fix the proc, but you can't really manage that nowadays.

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paulguy

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Posted on 12-01-11 11:36:59 PM Link | Quote
Paulguy's Post configuration
Luckily the pins are usually on the motherboard, but some motherboards can be quite pricy, so if you bend the pins on that, it still sucks.

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Posted on 12-01-11 11:50:30 PM Link | Quote
Nope, in this case they were on the processor - a Pentium 4. Not quite sure which P4, but it was a 2.6.

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Posted on 12-02-11 04:12:28 PM Link | Quote
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Metal_Man88's Post
Originally posted by BMF54123
I would avoid Toshiba, Sony, and Acer if possible, unless you enjoy having severely outdated drivers. None of those companies allow AMD's official driver packages to install on their laptops, instead preferring to provide their own "approved" drivers, which can go for months (or years) without critical updates. There's a good chance this restriction applies to other types of drivers as well.


Or in the case of my Toshiba laptop, discontinue driver support such that games it is in the minimum requirements for cannot be run by it because they only gave it two years of driver support.

Also my Toshiba was poorly designed so that the vent gets jammed with fuzz and overheats the laptop, melting the hard drive.

Don't do Toshiba. It'll eat your wallet.

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paulguy

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Posted on 12-02-11 05:03:51 PM Link | Quote
Paulguy's Post configuration
I have a samsung laptop (it's one of those red ones) that is pretty good. I don't use it heavily, though, but so far it's alright, except I burned out the usb ports due to a faulty external hard drive. They kind of work but they're very unreliable. Another complaint is that the screen sucks. I'd say the build quality is reasonably exceptional compared to other lapptops.

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Peardian

  
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Posted on 12-09-11 03:15:19 PM Link | Quote
Well, I decided that today I would make the purchase, as this is the last day of the semester, meaning I could still get student discounts. I checked the university's computer store site. They only have three non-Mac computers, and one of them is a Mac.


So much for getting a student discount.

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Posted on 12-09-11 03:18:45 PM Link | Quote
Wait, one of the non-Macs is a Mac? How does that work, exactly?

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Peardian

  
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Posted on 12-09-11 03:22:36 PM Link | Quote
I guess they decided to put a MacBook Pro in the non-Mac section so that it wouldn't look like they only had two non-Macs. And one of those non-Macs was Dell's response to the MacBook, so it's really only 1.5 non-Macs.

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Post 10155/11363

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Posted on 12-10-11 06:40:40 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Peardian
Well, I decided that today I would make the purchase, as this is the last day of the semester, meaning I could still get student discounts. I checked the university's computer store site. They only have three non-Mac computers, and one of them is a Mac.


So much for getting a student discount.


Well, what were the other two (well, okay, I'm curious about the Mac too) computers?

In a worst case scenario, if you end up having to get another Mac for some reason (though I highly doubt it, and since you don't like them I'd even suggest a few other okayish PC manufacturers first), it will likely end up being tons more stable and usable than your current one. The 8600 ones... well, that's Nvidia's fault. Apple wasn't the only one hit by those cards - the whole line of cards is horribly fucked up in any laptop, I believe. (At least Apple seems to have done a good job of handling the problem somewhat... could be better, but they at least fix the things for free. I'll change subject here, though.)

And what are those computers like, anyway, spec-wise? If that's your biggest concern, you could get one cheap there... though if I were in your position I'd still look at Lenovo for something reliable. Still, though, if money's tight and those aren't bad machines I'd give a Dell or ASUS machine a shot. (Or if I felt brave at the time, an Intel-based HP.)

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Jul - Computers and Technology - Looking to buy a new laptop... New poll - New thread - New reply


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