What laptop brands are best?

[Polaris]

I was happiest with my Gateway from 2003, but their years are long past. My Macbook did well, but was underpowered even two years later (bought the least expensive model) but it did its job well for its time even after I dropped it more than a few times, and my Toshiba was by the far the worst....never buy Toshiba anything.

[Hovik]

Don't get Dell. I previously owned a Dell laptop (much to my shame) and it was a nightmare to own. My battery had died after one year in, I had to buy 2 chargers for the damn thing because they broke down so easily and it could barely handle running Minecraft (although I'll admit to that being some ignorance as to how judge good computer specs at the time).

Sadly, I'm not as well informed about good laptop brands.

I concur, Dell sucks massive donkey cock. Made from sub-standard parts crudely put together. Pretty much designed to break and degrade quickly.

And then they get the last laugh when you're forced to purchase proprietary replacements which happen to be far overpriced.

As far as my opinion on laptop brands go, I'd say Gateway is great. Asus has some nice netbooks if you want something really small and affordable. Granted, my Eee PC ran Windows 7 horribly, so I ended up installing a Linux distro, but that works amazingly well to its credit.

[Jackalope]

I concur, Dell sucks massive donkey cock. Made from sub-standard parts crudely put together. Pretty much designed to break and degrade quickly.

My experience with Dell - the cheap consumer stuff sucks donkey balls, absolutely. The high end stuff is decent, some of the really high end stuff is very good.

My employer bought me a workstation-replacement laptop from Dell a couple of years ago, that thing is built like a fucking tank. Yeah, it cost four grand.

I own an Inspiron 17R and an XPS 17. Huge difference in build quality (and price). However, I will say that the only reason I even bought them is because I get a substantial discount and zero-interest financing through work. Otherwise, I'd buy something else.

I know two people who own inexpensive Lenovo laptops that like them, for what it's worth.

[Shell B]

Don't get Dell. I previously owned a Dell laptop (much to my shame) and it was a nightmare to own. My battery had died after one year in, I had to buy 2 chargers for the damn thing because they broke down so easily and it could barely handle running Minecraft (although I'll admit to that being some ignorance as to how judge good computer specs at the time).

Sadly, I'm not as well informed about good laptop brands.

My Dell has lasted more than two years without a single problem. I'm not a gamer or anything, though, and I don't leave it unplugged for long periods of time.

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I concur, Dell sucks massive donkey cock. Made from sub-standard parts crudely put together. Pretty much designed to break and degrade quickly.

My experience with Dell - the cheap consumer stuff sucks donkey balls, absolutely. The high end stuff is decent, some of the really high end stuff is very good.

My employer bought me a workstation-replacement laptop from Dell a couple of years ago, that thing is built like a fucking tank. Yeah, it cost four grand.

I own an Inspiron 17R and an XPS 17. Huge difference in build quality (and price). However, I will say that the only reason I even bought them is because I get a substantial discount and zero-interest financing through work. Otherwise, I'd buy something else.

I know two people who own inexpensive Lenovo laptops that like them, for what it's worth.

Yeah, I remember signing up for extra goodies that I was not sure did when I had them put mine together.

[TaraJo]

Just a thought, are you sure you need a laptop vs. a tablet? If you haven't tried a tablet, you might want to and see if it meets your needs.

For what I want, I can't imagine a tablet really working for me. I want to use it for 'work' (which means hooking up a decent webcam and getting guys to pay me to take my clothes off for them), typing notes in class and some gaming (still undecided whether or not I want to get back into WoW, or when). At very least I'd need a keyboard and, well, I'd probably need to fight my boyfriend away from it since he's lusted after a tablet computer for a while now.

Don't get Dell.

Heh. My current laptop is a Dell. The only long term problem it's had is with the touchpad, but since that always kept jumping around while I'm typing, I keep it turned off almost all the time anyway, so it hasn't been a big deal.

Then things changed about a month or so ago. Little things started going wrong here and there. Nothing I could get signs that I'm going to have problems soon. And since my warranty is up as of...... here pretty soon, I won't be able to cover it. I got it for cheap, so I guess I got my money's worth.

Are you determined it be a laptop? Desktops don't really need replacing if you have a big case with alot of airflow.

Yeah, but it's hard to take my desktop to class to take notes. Honestly, I'd probably go with a desktop otherwise. I don't know how to put new parts in but I can probably figure it out without much trouble.

Have you considered Apple?

I have and I may go that way. It's more expensive, but I'm a little worried about issues with software compatibility, especially with work. Plus, they're a little pricier than what I'm looking at. I may have to find out just how well they really hold up. As much as it may cost more up front, if I had gotten it 2 years ago instead of this Dell, I would have saved money.

[Red Celt]

Have you considered Apple?

I have and I may go that way. It's more expensive, but I'm a little worried about issues with software compatibility, especially with work. Plus, they're a little pricier than what I'm looking at. I may have to find out just how well they really hold up. As much as it may cost more up front, if I had gotten it 2 years ago instead of this Dell, I would have saved money.

Which software are you concerned about? Office applications can save in cross-platform formats, so transferring documents between a PC and an Apple is a piece of piss.

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My Macbook did well, but was underpowered even two years later (bought the least expensive model)

That is only true for gaming. The required specs keep increasing as higher-spec PC components are released. If you're using Word or Excel, there's no need to keep upgrading your hardware.

[Reforged]

Are you determined it be a laptop? Desktops don't really need replacing if you have a big case with alot of airflow.

Yeah, but it's hard to take my desktop to class to take notes.

Laziness.

[Red Celt]

I gave my input on MacBooks because it's the only laptop/notebook I've ever owned. I have no knowledge on PC builds because every PC I've ever owned (since my 1st 486) has been a self-build... and you can't complain about cheapo components when you've picked them out, yourself.

[TaraJo]

Which software are you concerned about? Office applications can save in cross-platform formats, so transferring documents between a PC and an Apple is a piece of piss.

The main software concerns are as follows:

Word processing and school computers. As of now, when I need to print something at school (and that happens a lot) the computer system only seems to read Microsoft Word documents. If Mac uses a different word processor, that could be a very big problem for me.

Also, work. The website I work with, I don't really know how compatible they are with Mac's browser. I already know I've had issues trying to use Chrome with them so, I dunno. If the problem is just the browser I could solve it by downloading firefox. If the entire OS doesn't work on imlive, I could be kinda screwed. Plus, related, I need to get a decent webcam; the one built into the laptop doesn't work quite so well, but I don't figure that will be too big a big problem. There could also be issues when/if I use a different site if the new site has compatibility problems.

Yeah, but it's hard to take my desktop to class to take notes.

Laziness.

What can I say? Not only do I not write fast enough to keep up with my teacher, my handwriting looks like it was written by a drunk, blind guy with advanced Parkinsons.

[Red Celt]

The main software concerns are as follows:

Word processing and school computers. As of now, when I need to print something at school (and that happens a lot) the computer system only seems to read Microsoft Word documents. If Mac uses a different word processor, that could be a very big problem for me.

This confuses me slightly. The computer system only reads MS Word documents? You need to copy the files to a different computer for printing, rather than printing them directly from your laptop? As I said, I have MS Office on my MacBook, so that isn't an issue. Also, other Office suites (including a free one called OpenOffice) saves files in .DOC or .DOCX format. So, again, not a problem.

As for web browsers, the ones you're familiar with also have Mac installations. I use Chrome and Firefox on my MacBook. The Apple one (Safari) is rarely used.

And the MacBook has an inbuilt webcam that works very well.