Laptops

I have much more disposable income this year, and my laptop (which has been on the way out for about 3 years) is now definitely on the way out. I've had to uninstall and streamline everything just to get it to handle simple things like streaming live TV. It doesn't help that my connection at home is fucking terrible, but I'll be out of there and getting a better service at some point too.

As tax is going up this January I figure it might be best to find a laptop in the week between Christmas and New Year's. I have a friend that works in an electronics shop too, so I should be able to get an extra 10% or so off.

Anyway, recommend me some laptops, please.

I want to play Civ 5 (graphics card?) and Football Manager (not a priority but is a pretty heavy game), but it'll primarily be for internet use (Chrome).

I'm not too bothered about a massive hard-drive because I think I've reached a natural limit in my music consumption and usually delete any films that I download immediately after I've decided how shit they are.

I don't want something that's completely obsolete within a few years, but then I don't think there's any way to really get ahead of stuff like that. I wouldn't mind a large screen, but then I don't want anything too heavy either.

I originally wanted to spend up to £500, but after speaking to my friend he says a decent laptop should be more like £500-£800. So around £650 might be my new target.

To make all that a little simpler; please recommend me a good mid-range laptop and share your experiences of particular brands.

Don't buy HP, they are noisy as fuck.

Look for something in the 15" range, I've found that anything bigger is too bulky to carry around, anything smaller is shit for movies and so on.

Not very helpful I know, but there you are.

Toshiba are pretty good, with some nice ones in the £600-700 range.

I´ve got an Acer 12" Netbook, but a friend at university got the "bigger" version with 15". Extensa I think?

it has decent speed and the battery lasts around 4-6hrs. Also it has a rough casing and anti-glare display(dont buy anything else)

Id like to buy a laptop for 100 dollars. They've been around forever now and their must be perfectly good lappys for very little money

I recommend you generally avoid Sony Viao and any dell laptops. Other than that I'm not too sure. More of a PC man.

Oh yeah, I'm definitely avoiding Sony. I would have considered a custom Dell, but it's just not worth the money when I could get everything I need already.

Good call on the matte screens. I'll pass up anything that's got a glare. And I have heard some good things about Toshiba, so I'll keep them up in the list.

Keep going.

i've been pleased with my lenovo thinkpad t400, it's about 2 years old now

i mostly use it to run renoise and web consumption, so i can't really speak for games..

  On 11/19/2010 at 2:26 PM, spratters said:

I recommend you generally avoid Sony Viao

Why ?

Buy a cheap laptop, then blame torrents or something once it breaks. Its the cool thing to do. Avoid well constructed computers that don't break at all costs.

My Vaio laptop was the only laptop I ever had that didn't break down because of overheating. If you're planning on getting a laptop, read a lot of reviews and check for heating problems if you plan on gaming on it. All my other laptops got into performance problems after 6-12 months because they couldn't handle the stress.

i've got an acer that's pushing 4 years old. still running the internets, music, and movies with the best of em thanks to a 1TB HD, 24" monitor, and Ubuntu.

i thought we all agreed ASUS was the best laptops for the money

i'm putting in an order this week and looking at an ASUS

Toshiba was good... about 10 years ago when they were actual innovators in laptop design. But that's changed quite a bit in recent years.

I had a fairly pricey Satellite model, purchased in 2004, and was the worst computing experience in my life. Complete trash. Serious fucking design defects, especially with the cooling/internal layout -- the fans seemed designed to do nothing more than direct dust to the mb, and within a month of light use in typical environments (school, library) you'd have serious thermal problems and the computer would abruptly shut off (read: not shut down). That was fun during exams/finals etc. I got a class action notice about this a while ago.

Plus the flimsiest plastic build quality imaginable.

You couldn't pay me to own another Toshiba laptop.

Honestly, the build issues are what got me to pay up and get a Mac laptop, which is sturdy as hell and has lasted 3 years of intense use with no noticeable degradation in quality, whereas the Toshiba was junk within a few months.

late attempted edit: also the Toshiba was so noisy I'd actually get people pissed off at me in large lecture halls. At first it was just typical fan noise, but after two months the fan developed a persistent rattle, like an old air conditioning duct, and no amount of warranty repairs could clear it up. I probably could have fixed this myself, but they'd check to see if anyone had opened the body of the laptop, and thus void the warranty, at each of my monthly service repairs (most of which were just to take a vac to the internals and clear out the dust trapped within-- again, something I could have done myself, but I'd be voiding the warranty on a fucking lemon).

edit one million: also, get an extended warranty with any laptop. It's a fucking scam with almost any other consumer product, but not laptops.

HPs are fine, mines lasted me 4 years with no grief......

thinkpads are nice. But to be honest I would just try to find a sale on something cheap and have money left over for a decent desktop pc.

I've had my macbook for 3 1/2 years now, no problems and still works very fast.

i have a dell studio and it's been nice to me so far. i recommned, i think all brands are pretty much the same, so buy from the cheapest big brand, like toshiba or dell.

can only recommend a macbook pro. nothing beats a solid aluminum case. also, apple just gave me a free replacement battery 6 months after my warranty expired.

I also recommend Macbook Pro. I've had two Toshiba laptops before,they are really noisey.

toshiba and acer

I've had my ASUS for close to 2 years now and it still runs strong. It's the hub of my studio dual core pentium, 4GB of RAM, I put Win7 on it. I dropped it a few weeks ago on hard concrete, and all it did was bend a bit of the case in the corner that I didn't even initially notice.

iPad

maybe it'd be best if you wait till this new tech is out:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/intels-next-must-have-upgrade-a-look-at-sandy-bridge.ars