Which laptop?

[niknak]

I'm looking to replace our 10 year old Dell laptop, which has done sterling service but on the verge of conking out but I don't really know what brand or operating system I should be looking for.

The budget is in the region of £800 and I'll be using it for a lot of internet work and associated downloading, sending and recieving large files, good quality sound and vision for leisure use, robust and with an easy to use operating system.
It's been suggested to me that Mac systems are as good as anything that other operating systems around but I've never used one so I would have a scooby on that.

Simplicity and mega power is the order of the day, any ideas folks?

Ta,
NN.

[Urshtnme]

Stay away from Sony VAIO's. Mine's been in the shop for 2 months now. This is the 8th time it's had to be repaired.

[rubik101]

If your Dell lasted 10 years I would go for another one. I just bought a 1352-Red, with 2gb and 200gb with built in camera and wife etc all for less than £450.

[frostbite]

"built in camera and wife"

Wow !

[obgraham]

No wife is worth 450 quid.

[PPRuNe Dispatcher]

My wife is definitely worth more than 450 quid - she's a manager in her organization and I run her at a profit :cool:

800 quid will buy a very well spec'd laptop. I use an HP laptop ('cause I work for HP), and the company procedure is they get replaced every 3-4 years or when they break beyond repair. Despite taking a bit of a battering and being used for 10+ hours every day, mine will almost certainly reach the 4-year mark.

[Farmer 1]

If you like mending it yourself, and enjoy sending emails that are not answered, then go for Toshiba.

[The late XV105]

If I were buying, I would be looking at Compaq, Dell, and IBM/Lenovo on the basis of experience.

My wife still uses the eight years old Compaq Armada E500 that is my old company laptop, purchased for a forty quid donation to charity five years ago and still in daily use. Its life is drawing to a close though as one bank of memory (it has 2x256MB) dropped off line a few weeks ago so the disk is currently constantly thrashing away as the remaining bank aint enough to load even the XP operating system ;-) The laptop will be replaced with a new one for my wife and then refurbished and rebuilt as a Linux single user FTP server simply for the fun of it and to serve a casual need.

By pure coincidence, I am today disposing of an eleven year old Dell Inspiron! Still in perfect working order we simply have no need for it any more and it's just not worth upgrading. It spent four of the past five years running 24x7 as a printer server on the home wireless network until I purchased a Canon MP800R WiFi printer.

From the build and features point of view though, by far the two most impressive laptops I have owned have been an IBM T42 and its replacement Lenovo T61. Superbly well made, they have both proven to have top drawer reliability and to be functionally impressive.

So, what will I replace my wife's Compaq Armada with, then?

On the basis of the above experience and what I have found on the web, it will be a Dell Vostro (http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/vostronb?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd). Remarkably low priced, I can get one that meets my wife's needs (e-mail, web browsing, photo and video handling) without needing a load of spec she'll never need and probably with usual Dell reliability. Oh, it can come with XP loaded, too. :-)

[michael95u]

How about a used MacBook Pro or a MacBook? I just went for the Apple's this year and there is no going back!

Michael

[niknak]

Thanks to everyone for the advice.:ok:

[RSFTO]

do not buy hp, I did that mistake, laptop went to warrenty service to change the heatsink fan after 10 monthes of life and came back worst then send out and now is still on service since april and hp does not want to cover on warrenty.

I recomend Apple

[michael95u]

You would need to buy MS Office (unless you buy a used Mac, and then it probably has it installed already). All Word and Excel documents would work flawlessly. Trust me, once you go Mac, you never go back!

[Overdrive]

Dell or Compaq for me all day. Had no trouble at all with either over the years.

I've seen people driven bananas by VAIO (one of my mates eventually shot his!), and heard many complaints re. HP.

[Keef]

You've probably bought your new one by now, but I'm on my umpteenth IBM Thinkpad (Lenovo these days). They've been the only brand of laptop I've used for something like20 years, and I've not had a bad one. I upgrade when the "current" one gets to be seriously slower than my desktop. This one is a T43, and I'm very happy with it.

I have spent too much time trying to sort out non-functioning laptops for friends with various brands. I'm sure there are reliable non-Thinkpad laptops out there, but I'm not going to take the risk.

What I particularly like is having a docking station at each house, with keyboard, mouse, and LAN connection. I just drop it onto the dock, switch on, and everything is connected. When out and about, it talks to my mobile phone and uses the GPRS on that for web access. It really couldn't be simpler.

It also knows (all by itself) how to connect to the VPN at the main house, so I can check mail on there.

[Shunter]

Can I just say...

You would need to buy MS OfficeWhy do people keep coming out with this bollocks? Unless you have a specific need for Exchange connectivity and Access databases, forget MS Office. NeoOffice, (OpenOffice with mac-specific tweaks) is perfectly capable of managing MS office document formats. And it costs nothing. Yes, it's free.

I've had Toshibas, Sonys etc. for years. Then bought a MacBook Pro last year. You can still use Windows on it, and the thought and functionality they've put into it is simply superb. I won't be going back to a 'conventional' laptop any time soon.

[Tigger4Me]

Thanks to a change in life’s (mis)fortunes, that left me without a permanent base, I needed a desktop replacement. As this was probably going to be my last ever PC purchase I went for a top of the range Acer Aspire, with bells and whistles (no wife though!), and bought it from Laptops Direct.

I can’t comment on how much life I might have got out of it as it packed up the second day. That was 6 months ago and neither manufacturer nor vendor could give a d*mn. After 5 months I did manage to get my money back from the credit card company though. So, if anyone knows how to bring an Acer out of “hibernation lockup” I’d be interested to hear from them. No, I can’t use the recovery discs as they are loaded onto the hard drive... probably along with the manual but I never got that far. Depending on who (eventually) answers the email, Acer can either supply or not supply the discs. Probably the latter as they have my order... I think! I’ve no acknowledgement or discs but at least the money hasn’t been taken from my card either.

And the moral of the story? Any machine is only as good as the customer service and in the case of Acer and Laptops Direct it’s non-existent.

[BEagle]

I've had a Dell Latitude x200 for 5 years and it has been extremely reliable. It has survived well over 100 business trips and about 500 passages through airport scanners and has been in daily use....

I upgraded the memory as it was struggling a bit with some recent applications, but now its fine.

Dell Customer Service were pretty good - they had it repaired within a couple of days after I managed to drive over my briefcase and broke the screen....:hmm: They also sent me a replacement keypad under warranty a couple of years later as some of the keys had stopped working - probably a legacy of the earlier event.

When I told them how happy I was, and that it was a shame that they hadn't given me as good service with my earlier Latitude LT (far too fragile), they tried to repair it, but killed it....:{ After 'robust debate' and a personal letter by recorded delivery to their head office, they then gave me a new Latitude X400 with Office 2003 included!

[Wodrick]

Tigger4me my Acer Aspire 5630 sometimes goes into hibernation lock, usually when trying to recover from a software crash, screen goes blank and there is no recovery.

It, so far, has always responded to a complete power down, by that I mean removal from the power supply and removal of the battery. after about 20 minutes refit battery and turn on - ops normal till the next time.

It's other party piece is complete loss of time and date but that is easier to sort out.

[seacue]

People (above) are complaining about HP but recommending Compaq. Aren't they made by the same company?

[planecrazy.eu]

Compaq are owned by HP i think???

When i worked selling these machines, i noticed that HP could be made in any number of a few factories... And compaq made in some of the same and different, i noticed this with Acer Machines too...

In 2 years i worked for the company, i never seen or dealt with a Compaq return, but had plent of HP's, even though we did sell about 5 times more HP machines...

Acer i have found to be the worse in my personal experience. They offer bang for buck, but very very poor build quality...

From friends and family, i would stear clear of HP, Medion, Toshiba, and Acer...

I have had a T43 for a few months now, and can says its excellent... (LENOVO/IBM)... Dropped it endless times, left if on for stupid durations, my partner uses it all the time, and i use it for both work and study when i can get it...

My partner has a Dell one, which i hate, and by the use shes gives my T43, i am guessing shes isnt to keen on it either...

I am eyeing up a MacBook Pro right now, and even though i hate DELLS, i am thinking of one of their XPS laptops too... Will consider a Lenovo too...

[niknak]

Once again, thanks for all the advice.
I haven't actually taken the plunge yet, but everyone's comments are very gratefully recieved and have enabled me to narrow the field considerably.

A few friends and colleagues have Mac's of various varieties and they all rave about their simplicity and reliability etc, although looking at various comparison/recommendation sites, very few of them feature any Mac's.
Is that just industry pressure or simply "that those in the know" don't rate them for genuine reasons?

[Saab Dastard]

Toshiba were one of the best laptop makers in the '90s, but then their build quality and customer service went down the pan around the turn of the century.

I believe they have improved the former at least, but a bad reputation takes far longer to lose than to gain.

SD

[HuntandFish]

Just bought an HP from ebuyer £238 + vat .
Reasonable spec Vista , 2gb ram 15.4 screen etc

[13thDuke]

Try www.dell.co.uk/outlet (http://www.dell.co.uk/outlet) (there are other non-UK versions)

These are returned laptops which are then rebuilt and properly tested but then sold as second-hand. I used to be a bit dubious as to why they were returned but found out that the vast majority are returns by shops such as Tesco who ordered 100,000 but only sold 70,000.

If you're wondering how I found out - I used to work for them.