Laptop recommendations.

[stevo1210]

My aunty asked me today about buying a new laptop for my 14 year old cousin. She isn't sure what to buy for her daughter. She needs a laptop for school work that's reliable and future upgradable.

I have had a lot of experiences with laptops. My aunty wanted to buy a Toshiba laptop for her daughter. I think she wanted to buy something like the P300 which I think is overkill because it has options she won't need and it costs $1700AU. I personally suggest she get a Toshiba A200 if she was to buy a Toshiba because they are value for money and it's perfect for her needs. But I'm not that fond of Toshiba laptops considering the nonsense I've had to put up with my Toshiba P25. So I recommended her to buy a Dell laptop. To be specific the Dell Inspiron 1525. The 1525 has a Core 2 Duo CPU, 1GB RAM, 120GB SATA HDD, 2.0 megapixel webcam and a dvd burner. I see nothing wrong with it and it's reasonably priced at $699AU delivered. I am typing this out on my Dell Inspiron 6400, I think Dell makes reasonable laptops, never had a problem with this one and I'm happy with it. I know Dell had problems with the Inspiron 5150 a while ago, but I think the Inspiron 1525 would be OK right?

When I said I recommended a Dell. My cousin said that some of her mums friends said that Dell was utter shit and always froze and broke down often. I think this is utter garbage. I have 3 Dells here and they are rock solid laptops. My Toshiba on the other hand is what I would describe as nonsense, always has issues etc.

I'll put this into some decent context. In terms of spare parts and repairs, Dell is cheaper to maintain and run. For example my Toshiba laptop requires a DVD drive replaced and also a screen cable replaced and the shop is charging me $350, and I was told that this was because Toshiba parts are expensive. If this were a Dell, I think it would cost me less and as a bonus, Dell laptops are easier to fix, they are easier to open and come with service manuals.

I dunno if I am talking crap above or what, but it's 2AM here and I'm tired so I'm sorry if whatever i've said above is nonsense. To get to the point, I need some advice in terms of laptops for my aunty.

Thanks.

[arneson]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

Either way, I like my Dell inspirons, they are easy to fix, I'm on one now.
There are also three satelites here, one stays in the car,
and they were inexpensive and powerful.

[Wizard]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

Make sure the Dell you are consider have Intel or ATi video chipset. Currently the chips that Dell uses nvidia is defective for time being. That will take at least 6 to a year to filter out these defective nvidia chipsets and get reliable chipset in.

Cheers, Wizard

[370forlife]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

HP, Dell, Sony, or Lenovo. All good laptops, could go a little better and get something like a Asus or Alienware lappy.

Still have a 1998 Dell Inspiron 3500 with a p2/333 and 256 ram, 4gb hard drive with windows xp pro on it. Works good for internet/IM/email, and its the only xp machine that I consistantly use so it also runs sim tower (i love that game.) My new 5000+ with 4 gigs of ram and a 8600 can't run sim tower because of Vista.

[willawake]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

if it was anything i might be expected to support i would go for whatever has service manuals, good driver availability and parts readily available on ebay,

i like business laptops though. especially something with alloy armor.

i played a bit with current hp and a toshiba u300 cheapies. didnt find anything bad. specs are so nice these days except for the glossy screens and poor viewing angles on some models

most of the laptop problems can be attributed to :

- user problems, adware etc
- user abuse to hardware
- poor drivers, unnecessary drivers (when default quite acceptable)
- solder joints cracking - poor manufacture, case flexing, heat?
- temperature problems, inadequate cooling because users prefer less noise, fan grilles etc clogged with dust, suction via underneath port while users use laptop on bed rather than on flat surface
- poor components to keep price down as users want
- limitations of psu due to size?

depends really on the service agreement and quality of service provided. sony laptops here are now sent to germany for fixing.......

[zandrax]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

As a rule of thumb, professional/businnes line of products should be more robust than consumer one and costs a few bucks more (usually $50) with same specs. Unless he cares more about design than sturdiness, I don't think he would be disappointed from, e.g., a Dell Vostro 1510 or an HP NX63xx.
BTW if you can afford the additional expense, choose a notebook with a discrete graphics, even a low level one such as Ati 3400 and nForce 8400.

Zandrax

[stevo1210]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

My aunty bought the Dell Inspiron 1520 today from an officeworks store for $1000. It comes with a Core 2 Duo 2GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, 250GB hard drive and also an nvidia 8400GS graphics card.

Make sure the Dell you are consider have Intel or ATi video chipset. Currently the chips that Dell uses nvidia is defective for time being.

Can you emphasise on what is exactly wrong with thenvidia chips? Unfortunately my wunty bought the Dell with an Nvidia 8 series chip so I dunno what will happen. My Inspiron 6400 has an ATi X1400 chip so I am OK for now I guess.

Thanks.

[linuxguru]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

All NVidia discrete graphics chipsets for notebooks produced over the last 2-3 years until August 2008 are defective, including the 8400 series. The issue is an engineering issue related to the solder bump material as well as underfill, and they will fail prematurely - usually within the warranty period, but sometimes after. The replacement board will also fail prematurely if it has the same batch of bad chipsets, and there's no guarantee that you will get a better replacement chip than the one that failed.

Your best bet is a stock Intel Santa Rosa platform with Northbridge (integrated) graphics, even if it doesn't play some games well. The Dell Vostro 1510 is good value, but I found the Acer Travelmate 5720 series to be exceptionally engineered - Magnesium frame and lid, passive conductive cooling, built like a tank (like the old die-cast metal Gridcase and Tadpole machines, but much sleeker and faster). Acer Travelmate != Acer Aspire; the latter tend to be lower-end consumer-grade plastic-case machines with lower durability. Travelmates are from the old defunct TI notebook unit, which engineered some very good notebooks in their heyday in the early 90s.

I got my folks a fully-loaded Travelmate 5720 with Merom Core 2 Duo T7500, Santa Rosa platform, 2 GB DDR2, DVD+/-RW, 320 GB SATA, Broadcom GigE, Intel 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth, Card Reader, etc. for well under the equivalent of US $800 (US retail prices are likely to be higher because of the M$ tax and freight from Taiwan; out here we get bare-metal notebooks with a Linux CD bundled for less money, and they travel a shorter distance from the Singapore hub).

[370forlife]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

My sister just got a Gateway laptop, has a 2ghz centrino 2 duo, 1gb ram, 160gb hard drive, intel graphics media acclerator, it got a better gaming and aero score in vista than her boyfriend's hp with 3 gigs of ram, Turion 64x2 2ghz and a 7800M.

[willawake]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

Your best bet is a stock Intel Santa Rosa platform with Northbridge (integrated) graphics

i wish they would improve the driver. not enough parameters to compensate for poor screen.

[linuxguru]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

> i wish they would improve the driver. not enough parameters to compensate for poor screen.

Hmm - must be an M$ issue. It runs fine with the stock X/Linux drivers for i965GM, though of course it's not a 3D/gaming accelerated driver. The Xv driver in Xorg probably needs some work (for motion compensation, etc.) to improve the movie playback, but it's otherwise flawless.

[willawake]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

i did not comment on performance which is fine. i commented on available settings

[Wizard]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

Your lady did bad choice of getting it from big box. She should had ordered directly from the Dell under buisness computer section and is CHEAPER by about 200 bucks.

And That's correct that model using 8400 chipset is a stink, and a liablity.

Can't you EXPLAIN THAT to your people for christ's sake!?

Cheers, Wizard

[stevo1210]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

Your lady did bad choice of getting it from big box. She should had ordered directly from the Dell under buisness computer section and is CHEAPER by about 200 bucks.

And That's correct that model using 8400 chipset is a stink, and a liablity.

Can't you EXPLAIN THAT to your people for christ's sake!?

Cheers, Wizard

As I said before I tried my best to convince my aunty not to buy the 1520 from Officeworks and instead buy the Inspiron 1525 directly online. And I agree it was cheaper by $200, plus it's a newer model compared to the 1520 and doesn't have the problem prone nVidia 8400GS graphics card.

But she didn't give a stuff for what I had to say (well at least she bought a Dell and not a Toshiba so she did listen to what I said in some respects) and she went to Officeworks to buy it because my 14 year old cousin couldn't wait and she was getting really pissed off because she wanted a laptop immediately and not 3 days after when it would have been delivered if it was purchased online. Reason she wanted the laptop was because of the webcam, she originally wanted a webcam but her parents wouldnt get it for her so she told them to get her a laptop (with a webcam inbuilt) instead.

Thanks.

[Wizard]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

Thanks for the replies and keep us updated and if the notebook dies, told her so!

Sigh.

Cheers, Wizard

[bgavin]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

No Lenovo, support hassles
No Sony, support hassles
No HP, over heats
No Compaq, owned by HP

Yes Dell+Intel, no AMD, no nVidia due to driver hassles and chipset bugs

The above opinions are based on my hands-on experiences as a servicer. YMMV.

[linuxguru]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

NVidia Solder-bump issues:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39506/135/

The article claims that Eutetic solder bumps (used by AMD/ATI and many others) could be over 100 times as durable as the high-Pb solder bumps used by NVidia which led to the failures of their mobile graphics chipsets.

(For mobiles, I agree that the Intel Core 2 platform has an edge; but for desktops, AMD/ATI represents better value for now.)

[bgavin]

Re: Laptop recommendations.

I've found that better value is soon forgotten, where bugs and performance problems are remembered forever.

I was an AMD guy for two decades. I got the snot burned out of me with the crap that VIA passess off as a chipset. Learned my lesson there... no VIA. Ever. The AMD 760 chipset on the KG7 board worked well, even with the VIA southbridge.

The nVidia started showing a lot of promise. Then some German researcher found the serious performance holes in the follow-on to the nForce2 chipsets. Then came the endless stream of drivers and driver problems with the nVidias. I had a client machine that I rebuilt twice, from scratch, because one of the nVidia drivers conflicted with Windows Update and destroyed the OS installation.

F*ck that.

I no longer hack, so all the above holds no interest for me. I'm a business that services clients. My boxes have to run, without come-backs, glitches, or "that was fixed in the 3.303 version" bullshit. This is the same reason I abandoned Gigabyte and their endless BIOS and DPC problems.

Intel isn't perfect, for sure. But their chipsets are still the gold standard for stability. And that means a whole lot more to me, than a discount price.