Laptop - which to avoid?

Captain Slow IRL

I'm looking around for a replacement for my Dell right now and was wondering is there any manufacturers to avoid?

Agent_47

Defo Dell, have a new Dell Latitude from work, lasted 5 months before 1st failure, waiting a second failure. I have owned the Dell desk top so know what to expect.
Personally I am looking at only Lenova, Samsung, Toshiba, Apple, Sony and HP in that order for a personal laptop replacement for my 4 year old reliable HP pavillion.

Captain Slow IRL

Why Lenova first?

This is my second dell and I've never had any major trouble with either. The only thing that would put me off it now is the lack of customisation that you used to be able to get - now they don't really stand out from any other manufacturer.

Hal Emmerich

Buy the best deal you can get. Any brand could have a bad batch or last years.

That's what I'd do anyway.

Graph though answers your question.

Agent_47

Captain Slow IRL wrote: »

Why Lenova first?

This is my second dell and I've never had any major trouble with either. The only thing that would put me off it now is the lack of customisation that you used to be able to get - now they don't really stand out from any other manufacturer.

A few links to what I am picking up,

http://news.cnet.com/rounding-up-the-latest-high-end-13-inch-laptops/8301-17938_105-20063614-1.html?tag=TOCcarouselMain.0

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Top-10-Netbooks.17036.0.html

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/topratedskus.asp?CatId=17&Sort=2&Recs=10

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/top-ten-notebooks.aspx

Want something fast, powerful, light and good battery so will probably go with one of these 4

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2520M 4GB 320GB, 7,200rpm 3.8 lbs. MacBook Air 13-inch 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2GB 128GB SSD 2.9 lbs. Samsung Series 9 1.4GHz Intel Core i5-2537M 4GB 128GB SSD 2.9 lbs. Toshiba Portege R835 2.3GHz Intel Core i5-2410M

jay93

Avoid ASUS computers anyway!

Hal Emmerich

jay93 wrote: »

Avoid ASUS computers anyway!

This kinda agrees with what I said.

Asus has the best record and you say not to buy one because I assume you bought one that broke shortly after.

So just buy the best deal.

banshee_bones

HP

Bought a Pavillion a couple of years back, chronic over heating problem. So bad it actually cracked the top of a glass-topped coffee table. :mad:

jackthelad321

My Dad Is having a lot of trouble with a Dell, I got an Acer 5 years ago (jesus) and though I thought it was a piece of crap at the start it's survived wars.

They can all break, as Hal said, but Dell is one I will avoid in future. I found Asus bad for customer service.

shanefitz360

Everyone who is saying avoid Dells, do you have bad experience with their upper-range models? Like the xps 15 etc.

jackthelad321

shanefitz360 wrote: »

Everyone who is saying avoid Dells, do you have bad experience with their upper-range models? Like the xps 15 etc.

Dell inspiron 1370... :mad: about a year old now so maybe not selling anymore.

duckysauce

can't beat the dell warranty though , it you have to send your laptop back for repairs you will be minus a laptop for up to two weeks , if you have the next business day with dell , someone will be out to fix it the following day.

pieface_ie

i have a Dell XPS M1530 2 years ,its very well looked after. About 18 months in and i hit problems.

1. Motherboard failed
2. Hard drive failed
3. DVD/CD slot drive failed
4. Cant remember the other problem

I bought the extended warranty and found Dell very good in that respect, the next day the engineers would call out to fix it everytime i had called.

Fiskar

that's rather a lot of problems with a Dell/any pc in my opinion.

Looking at the graph above, why are the failure rates so high? What % of these failures are user related rather than manufacturer?
Either way, doesn't inspire confidence, perhaps a cheaper middle price based value laptop would be the best choice.

burrentech

Definitely go for the best deal you can get.

As every single on is now almost certainly built in China there won't be much to choose between them other than price given the same spec.

If you can visit a store where you can at least test them. There can be a huge difference in keyboards, get the wrong one and its a pain. Also the mouse pad can be tricky on some.

Go with the one you feel most comfortable with.

Hal Emmerich

Laptop Reliability Study: Asus and Toshiba Come Out on Top


New data from SquareTrade (one of the bigger warranty providers) says Asus and Toshiba have the least hardware malfunctions over 3 years, while one-in-four HP laptops are projected to experience problems. Oh, and crappy netbooks are worst of all.
They say that sub-$400 netbooks are 20 percent more likely to fail in the first year. But no real surprises there.

SquareTrade says it randomly selected over 30,000 laptops and netbooks covered by its warranty plans for the study. Brands with a minimum of 1000 laptops included Acer, Apple, Asus, Dell, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba. Accidental damage and software issues handled by the retailer were not included in the numbers.
Summary below, while the full report can be found at: URL="http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109/"]SquareTrade[/URL

• Over 31 percent of laptops will fail in the first three years of ownership.
• Of these failures, two-thirds came from hardware malfunctions (20.4 percent) and one-third (10.6 percent) was reported as accidental damage.
• Asus and Toshiba were the most reliable manufacturers, with fewer than 16 percent having a hardware malfunction over three years.
• Netbooks are projected to have a 20 percent higher failure rate from hardware malfunctions than more expensive laptop computers.
• Manufacturers proved to be a more reliable determinant of reliability than the type of laptop and should be a greater factor in making a purchase decision.

From here.

jay93

Hal Emmerich wrote: »

This kinda agrees with what I said.

Asus has the best record and you say not to buy one because I assume you bought one that broke shortly after.

So just buy the best deal.

i don't know how they have the best record as i've know a lot of people who got asus laptops and broke within 3 months of purchase.

Just in my experiance they are bad laptops but i'm sure most people don't have any problems.

I find HP to be very bad for overheating i had a compaq mini 700 and it was always very hot from day one and all other HP laptops i've dealt with have given overheat problems.

I'm currently using a MSI laptop and find them great.

MSI,ACER/emachines seem to be the best makes for me .:)

Kinky Slinky

I have two dell laptops and nothing has ever gone wrong with them. I would avoid Toshiba at all costs ... pile of scrap

Razzuh

I'm with Hal Em on this one. Just get the best deal you can get. If you really want to consider reliability, look at the graph he posted.

The web is full of horror stories for every major electronics brand with people saying 'avoid [x brand] at all costs' or 'if only I'd seen this thread before I bought it, oh my gosh!!!'. Even in this fairly short thread you can see that the anecdotes are starting to contradict each other, so just ignore them all.

Almost all electronic products are fragile and break easily, that's just the way it is. Most laptop manufacturers don't make all the components they use: they buy them from 3rd parties. Have a look inside your laptop and you'll see that your disk drive was made by NEC, your hard drive by Hitachi, your RAM by Samsung etc. Since HP, DELL and all often source components from the same suppliers, the likelihood of them failing is exactly the same. The only faults you can really pin to a vendor themselves are problems like overheating, incompatibilities between components, and similar issues. Good support once something does break is really what you should probably consider.

HTB

Thats good advice from Razz.

Its about personal taste really.


My house is littered with Dell laptops, one of mine especially, an old latitude 2100, gets fired about the place and it never misses a beat. now running Ubuntu and is plenty fast.

eshortie

As raz said the innards of any laptop will be littered with many different brands of hardware, get something that's well built and good for your budget. Acer are very good for the money these days

abelard

I bought a Dell laptop in 2005 that was pretty much bust after a year (motherboard).

I bought another Dell laptop in 2007 that I still have to this day and use every single day, and it's never given me any problems.

It's always going to be hard to know, if you feel wary, get an extended warranty.

ED E

Would like to make some points:

Firstly, Dell have a HUGE market share when it comes to home laptops. These tend to be the worst abused IMO, dropped, drinks spilled on them, left on beds and couches, lifted by the screen, etc etc. Subsequently, you hear a lot of complaints about dell. These ARE somewhat true, but it depends on what you buy. Inspiron 15XX series units are junk imo, cheap all over. On the other hand Vostro(Similar or lower price point) are waaaay better. Still all plastic construction, but still very sturdy. This 1000(the first in the series) has been abused by me for over 3 years of extensive usage. With the obvious exception of the battery, its working fine(note: New CPU, but out of choice, not necessity). The slightly more expensive XPS laptops are nice machines. There is one caveat, but I'll get to that.

eMachines: No No No. Out. Label the things with the fisher price logo, ktanxbai.

Toshiba: I dont like their design, but generally everything about them can be classed as "ok". No major pros or cons.

HP: AFAIK they have a large segment of the business market, so they're doing something right. The dv6XXX range has tarnished their name though.

MSI: Uncommon, often expensive, but good machines.

Acer: Slight premium, stylish, Aspires I've seen are nice and reliable.

Samsung: For netbooks, a great choice.

Sony: Expensive, slick, dont know about logevity, but if their customer support is anything like their accessories, you'll be paying through the nose for everything.

Note on all the above, especially Dell XPS and HP dv's, nVidia. Despite what they might claim, nVidia cards love to melt themselves. The green team is ok in terms of desktops, not in the confines of a laptop. If you omit these stats from the above charts I'd wager they'd shape up much better. It would be my opinion to solely buy ATI for laptops.

jay93

No matter what brand you buy any can fail even if they have a so called low failure rate .

Go for the best deal or whatever laptop suits your needs

overshoot

had a dell inspiron for 3 years, went through 3 hard drives, iv talked to other who have had similar problems. general consensus seems to be they used to be a solid machine but crapped out 4ish years ago and now burn through hard drives. although alienware has held its rep.
have had a toshiba a660-11m for a year now. €1k for a core i7, 4gb ram, 500gb hard drive, 1gb graphics card. its been faultless, absolute beast that does everything i ask of it (3d rendering probably being one of the most intensive) still as fast as ever
i7 is a great processor, was definately worth the extra money. only mention it as you seem to be looking at highend stuff with the i5, but i know a top line second gereration i5 beats my first gen i7

jimmycrackcorm

TBH, the ops question is incorrect. There'll always be people posting about problems with their laptop and saying to avoid that manufacturer as a result; As in their own experience is the definition of quality.

The question that should be asked instead is who has the best support in the event of failure.

savagecabbages

I've had a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo since early 2007 and its still going strong. My advice is to aim for the 'best built' laptop you can find, but obviously keep an eye on value too! Something that appears flimsy or badly put together may often lead to problems down the line.

My Fujitsu-Siemens is amazingly well constructed, and while I look after it, it has put some SERIOUS hours down including lots of gaming and 3D CAD which are particularly hard on a machine. I put its continued existence down to the build quality more than anything else.

Compare an Audi and a Seat car, they share many identical components (like laptops) but an Audi constructed in Germany will be subject to much stricter quality controls than a Seat built in Spain.

Other well constructed brands I've encountered include ASUS, Apple (can run windows don't worry) and Sony. All of these score well in the chart surprise surprise!

An Ghaeilge cac

Definitiely just go for the best value -- people have confirmed there's too much variance attached to brand names and reliability.

Captain Slow IRL

Argos have a Toshiba with an i3 processor for €429 (508/4760) which is very appealing now! I'm still on the lookout though, don't know what I'm gonna spend but don't want to have to spend too much.

banshee_bones

I had a toshiba before the HP and it was brilliant. Had it for a solid three years. Would buy again.