New laptop, will end up in Asia for an extended period: Which manufacturer?

[TallTravel]

I will end up purchasing a new laptop in the next few months. It will be a Windows 7, likely priced between $700-$1000 USD.

I have two questions:

Which laptop manufacturers are making the most reliable machines? Boy, am I opening up a can of worms with this question!

Which laptop manufacturers are most likely to have real tech support in Asia--many countries, including China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Thailand, Nepal, Cambodia, etc,etc. Too many to mention.

Thus far I have been paying attention to:

Dell
Sony
HP (My current HP has been to over 20 countries, so I have different opinions than some others about their reliablility:-)

In that order.

Who wants to weigh in on this choice?

P.S. I don't want to purchase one over there, because I am sure I'll end up paying a lot more for an English version.

Here is what I am going to get, if it matters:

Windows 7
500 MB Plus
Bluetooth
BlueRay
WiFi N
HDMI
WebCam

[glc]

Dell or Lenovo. Buy a business class model, not a cheap consumer grade model.

[TallTravel]

Originally Posted by glc Dell or Lenovo. Buy a business class model, not a cheap consumer grade model.

Thanks. I have heard and seen very little of Lenovo, but I'll locate some retailers soon to get a better sense of what they offer. I have owned more than a few Dells over the years, so that is an easy choice for me.

[glc]

Lenovo took over IBM's personal computing products. Not only can you buy preconfigured models at retail, you can buy them direct to order the same way as Dell.

The current Dell road warriors are the Latitude E series.

[brizey]

Dell has a huge presence in SE asia. My sister in law used to work for them in Malaysia.

I think you may want "fixibility" instead of reliability.

The only impartial source of reliability data I have seen is Consumer Reports. Toshiba is #1 IIRC.

[glc]

Toshiba is #1 IIRC.

You can't prove that by me. Years ago, that may have been true but I've been very unimpressed with their offerings in the past few years.

[TallTravel]

No, glc is right, I'm really looking for reliability, not fixibility. I want something that does what it is supposed to do, time and time again, without my having to baby sit or fix things.

I have a fair bit of personal faith in Dell, that is most likely the direction I will go. I appreciate the input from everyone.

[quartet-man]

My church got a Lenovo laptop some years back and save for a battery issue, it has been reliable. I got a Lenovo netbook and like it. The only problem in both cases is delays. The first took sometime to get. Mine took I think around 3 weeks and was shipped from China. However, the accessories (case, extra battery and adaptor, sleeve and mouse) are still not shipped. The case had a later estimate but the others have changed for several weeks a week at a time. I don't see how that can happen except maybe both were due to being towards the end of the year (Christmas). I can't recall how long the church laptop took, but it seems like some weeks. It is a shame because they have great products. I would hope though that maybe they do better normally.

I have mixed feelings about Dell. My Dell (desktop) was decent for a while except they had to replace a DVD drive while under warranty. (I did it.) But, some capacitors blew on the motherboard which was common for that model. That makes me wonder and I hate that they use Proprietary parts. So, my intention is to build or have built my next desktop.