OT- laptops
Turbo Mini Forums

i'll admit right now I know very little about computers other than switching them on in the morning.

I'm looking for a new laptop for work. It doesn't need to be all singing and dancing - most of my work is word and excel stuff with some autocad 2D.

I've got a Samsung R40 at the moment (had it for 4 years now) and its getting a bit tired (battery life is very short now). Due to shear ingnorance and stupidity, I'm can be very brand loyal and fancy another Samsung but thought I'd open the floor to suggestions before I jump in head first!

so what do you all recommend? budget is around £400 ish although may go a bit more for the right machine

cheers

Rob

most laptops today are either vista or windows 7, both greedy operating systems, i would imagine if it can run the os without fault it must be of reasonable spec and up tasks of general day to day work

i personally would buy an older higher spec laptop and a new battery so i cant comment on the new stuff

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett

I've had a number of IBM (lenovo) Think pads. Very robust. There are lots available on places like this http://www.tier1online.com/

I got a T60 from these guys http://www.accomputerwarehouse.com/ it's been fine and it's used in a tough enviroment. The only thing to watch with the think pads is that the cheaper one have lower resolution screens.

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph

+1 for ibms, mine are still going strong, the 15 odd year old ones lol (560x)

Yes i moved to the darkside

Instagram @jdm_brett

I was offered one of the lenovo machines yesterday but i'd never heard of them - the sales guy was bumming them up as being IBMs but i took it with a pinch of salt at the time. I think i need to look into it a bit more

I seem to keep coming across the Acer machines as well. I looked at these when i bought the current one and seemed a good spec for the money.

Acer laptops are shite. We used to buy them for work and they fall to bits after 12 months.

The Lenovo/IBM stuff we have is good, HP stuff is not bad, The newest Dell stuff is pretty good surprisingly. I have an old Sony Vaio at home which I really like and it seems robust.

End of the day you pays your money and makes your choice.

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing half of.

We have lenovos at work. The modern ones are made down to a cost rather up to a spec. Out of a batch of about 30, we ofund abvout a dozen different componants accross them...

We're currently rolling out about 10,000 desktops to the branch network. My opinion is that the equivilent HP is better.

I guess it depends what spec you buy.
We have top spec tablets (8 months ago) in Lenovo's 170-ish and they are all identical.

I agree with the HP desktops being good. Laptops tend to go through PSU's and we have had a few screens go.

As much as I hate to say it the modern Dell desktops we have seem to be very well put together and reliable too.

If something is worth doing, it's worth doing half of.

reliability is key - I pretty much run my business from it and when it goes wrong its a major pain

windows 7 is much better then vista,
Dell are a good laptop and the ones with decent RAM can handle Cad well so shouldn't have any problems with that.
The dual hard drive laptops will run faster still if one is used for files and the other for operating system!

ever thought of an apple....just throwing it out there :/

Costco have £30 off their Toshiba has 3GB of Ram, 250gb hard drive W7 home premium, 2yr warranty etc for £352.00 discounted price inc VAT

On 5th Sep, 2011 Vegard said:
I stand corrected. You should know

I've always had Toshiba laptops, first one got pinched, second one expired after too many 1/4 mile runs in the DON datalogging, I'm on the third now. I've been pleased with them all, although I don't use them for anything especially taxing.

I've got a Sony Vaio at home. Seems to take all the abuse I can throw it at and has done for over 3 years. Had to replace the battery and charger, but cheepo ebay copies aren't expensive.

Have a Dell for work, it does the job.

the toshibas keep coming up - the costco call might be wort looking into as well

[quote=Rob Gavin,31st Aug, 2010]the toshibas keep coming up - the costco call might be wort looking into as well[/quote

£30 off offer due to finish soon!

On 5th Sep, 2011 Vegard said:
I stand corrected. You should know

didn't have the discount on at Costco this afternoon

I'd echo the comments about Acer laptops, mine felt worn after a year and knackered after two. I replaced that with a Toshiba which has now been handed down and is still gong strong 4 1/2 years later with only a new screen being needed due to my clumsiness.

Currently running a HP/Compaq which must have at least 3 1/2 years on it and is holding up well despite being on it's third power supply.

My step daughter has just bought a Macbook ('cos it's pretty) which seems to be quite a bit of kit, but I know the square root of zip about Apples apart from them being out of the range for what I could justify spending on a computer, pretty or not.

i network my laptop with 2 other machines in the office when i'm in so moving to a mac is simply a step too far for me to understand!