Want to buy a laptop ..

[kemroon]

Hello friends,

I would like to buy a new laptop for my sister because he joined engg in computer science field, so i m searching over net best laptop model for my sister.

Actually i m not professional in this field so i think i get good suggestion here, today i came across from a site in which i seen a laptop model - HP Mini 5101 , which include many latest features but did not mentioned the configuration of that model.

So Give me the best advice which should i buy for my sister ?

Regards
kemroon

[glc]

That is not a full laptop, that's a netbook. It's only a 10 inch screen, it has a low power Atom processor, it maxes out at 2gb ram, and it doesn't have an optical drive.

[mknabster]

If you want to get a netbook, buy Acer. I don't like HPs at all, but if your sister is going into computers and IST, she porbably would want a computer that could keep up with her work, the netbooks are very limited to their uses, yes they are nice and portable, but they don't pack much power at all. But I guess it does all come down to your budget; look into other options with real laptops and not netbooks.

[glc]

If you want to get a netbook, buy Acer.

I disagree - I prefer Asus netbooks.

[mknabster]

Really, why? I was thinking that since they came out with the first netbook, they would be good, unless Staples told me wrong when I worked there. I never had any experience with Asus before, how are they compared to lenovo?

[glc]

As far as I'm concerned, the Asus EeePC is the netbook that everybody else wants to be. To me, they are the clear leader. I've never played with an Acer netbook, but my experience with Acer standard laptops hasn't been very good. The only Lenovos that I am totally comfortable with are the Thinkpad business notebooks.

EDIT: Here's my feeling about Dell - it's generally positive. I have 4 Dell portables in the family right now. One stepdaughter has an Inspiron 1520 that's about 2.5 years old and she uses it daily. It's been a workhorse, the keyboard crapped out a couple months ago. $20 on Ebay and 10 minutes to change it, good as new. The other stepdaughter has a 1.5 year old Vostro, the hard drive crapped out when it was 3 weeks old. Dell overnighted a preloaded drive no charge. Other than that, no issues. Her hubby has a low end Vostro with an AMD processor and Vista, that one is a POS. Her daughter has a 1 year old Inspiron Mini, no complaints.

[Nuclear Krusader]

So, in a nutshell, what is the best laptop brand/type?

I've been seeing lots of problems with HP laptops lately, mainly they are very slow and get slower with use. I've seen HP loads lots of bloatware with them -bloatware that is sometimes needed to use their fancy buttons (Quickplay)-. I'm ambivalent about Acer, my Acer laptop is nothing like my first Acer desktop.

A frustrated customer just asked which kind of laptop she could replace her POS HP with. I'd like to know what to recommend, even if it's a brand we don't carry.

TIA

[glc]

Asus, Dell, or Lenovo - in no particular order.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Are Macs loaded with bloatware too? She asked about Apple as well.

[DOS_equis]

Originally Posted by glc Asus, Dell, or Lenovo - in no particular order.

+1 on the Lenovo.

I mainly like the Thinkpads because they have a sleek, no frills look to them. They look all business (no chromed plastic or extra eyecandy) and can handle almost everything you can throw at them. Plus they come in the best (IMO) color, black.

I have an older T60 (8741-W3Y) that is really nice. I recently bought it used (3 years old) from someone on Craigslist. Not sure if it was stolen or not. I have my suspicions since it came with a pirated copy of Win7 Ult and Office '07 in it though. To get it legal the cheap way, I've ordered some factory Lenovo recovery discs for Win7 Pro 64bit for around $50 from here --> http://www.thinkpadrecoverycds.com/.

Anyways, I like the Thinkpads because you can repair/ upgrade them very easily. Lenovo even has the repair book .pdf (hardware maintenance manual) available for free on their site along with all of the necessary drivers. This site is great resource for thinkpad stuff --> http://forum.thinkpads.com.

One word of caution though. If you need/ want to upgrade the HDD, you most likely will need to get a "lenovo" branded drive (some are available at Newegg). This was the case for the older models because it would throw up a BIOS error code during POST. Also the Disk Airbag Protection app won't work either since the "head parking function" firmware code isn't in a non-Lenovo HDD. The BIOS error might be a non-issue now but I thought I would mention it.

Sometimes you can find good deals in the Lenovo Outlet --> http://outlet.lenovo.com/. Some are off lease and some are new, cancelled orders, refurbished etc. FWIW, I would suggest looking at a T or X61p. T series is their business class machine and the X series are the ultraportables. Look at the Wiki on the different types of Thinkpad machines to see what will work for you --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad.

HTH
DOS_equis

[Nuclear Krusader]

We carry Lenovo. My gripe, if calling it that is not too extreme as the vexation is not really that great to take me to the point of total dislike of the brand, is the new stupid system they designed for restoring back to factory defaults: sure, having a OneKey Recovery, erm, key, that takes you back in time to factory defaults is handy; problem is, you cannot mess with the partitions of the HDD. If you repartition your HDD, the hidden partition becomes inaccessible and the OneKey forever useless. Even though the hidden partition is still there and all the data inside undamaged, you just can't use it to recover the system; have to do it manually.

[glc]

I have a 10 year old T20 that still works fine. I've replaced the hard drive and the backlight inverter, that's the only repairs. Battery is shot, but I don't care. I only use it in the truck with a GPS puck and power cable now. It was my primary laptop up till about a year ago when I bought a netbook.

[David M]

Want a good idea of which is better? Call their customer support and see how you are treated. HP consistently rates at the bottom.