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.

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

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

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.

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]

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

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.

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

quote:

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Originally posted by iank
I've been told to avoid Acer by people who've had problems.

---

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

quote:

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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]

---

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]

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.