Advice on laptop buying

My only advice is to stay away from HP.

 

Why? I just bought an HP laptop.

 

I got two HP laptops over the years and both experience have been negative. The first one's hard drive crashed after 2 years, and the second one is a little more than two years old now, and seems to be on the verge of a total break down. The battery has already died out, and random hardware errors occur every now and then. There are some design issues with both laptops I got, and they very easily overheat, even when I was just browsing the internet. I haven't got much trouble with other laptops that I own or work with.

 

According to this HP is the worst in reliability

http://purplejunction.com/2009/11/20/3-year-laptop-malfunction-rates-asus-beats-out-apple/

 

I just bought a laptop online from Best Buy. They ended up being out of stock and notified me 3 days later. They let me pick another laptop, I told them I'd pick it up in the store. Then, they told me the charge didn't go through. It turns out it did. Then, they charged me in the store for the laptop. Then, today, I was charged for another laptop for no apparent reason. So, I got 1 laptop for the price of 3. I placed the order a week ago, and I still don't have my money back. My advice is don't buy from Best Buy.

Make sure you don't get a single core processor. for $500, you can get something with a core i3 processor. Get at least 4 gb ram, and get something with and hdmi port. I got a Toshiba about a year and a half ago and it's been great. (knocking on wood). Personally, I'd go with Toshiba or Lenovo. I've had and worked on many crappy Dell laptops.

Some pretty decent deals posted at http://dealnews.com/Computers/PC-Computers/PC-Laptop-Deals-49.html

Good luck.

 

I'm not getting into a geek battle, but I don't understand the HP complaints. I've purchased a dozen over the past 2yrs, for my development team, and sales. I'd get an HP. But then again, maybe their cheap ones are bad....I couldn't say.

It's Dell that sucks.

At $400-500, you're talking about a tablet, no? If so, I'd probably try ASUS. For medium to high end laptops, I don't see how you can beat HP or Apple.

 

http://www.directron.com

They have top notch reviews online and they're based in Houston so you can pick it up yourself.

 

I think you have good sense in listing your requirements already.

You are right that giving the usage of your parents, a netbook may have served the purpose already and netbook pretty much serves within your price range. Unfortunately, netbook seldom has the screen size you need. I assume you are talking about 15 inches up screen here.

I think there's a way you may get some cheap notebook with larger screen size, instead of those i3 - i7 CPU, you may consider the ones that are going to be phased-out, e.g. P6100 or P6200 CPU. Get yourself a 2GB RAM, 15 inches screen and probably 320GB harddisk, you may also choose on board display card as I guess your parents won't spend too much time on the PC games or video rendering. I am not familiar with the US market but I am sure you can get one of the above config at the price of USD500 in HK.

My choice of notebook brand:

1st - Lenovo's Thinkpad (note that it's not Ideapad)
2nd - Fujitsu and Sony (if you don't have much concern about the price)
3rd - HP (note that it's not Compaq)
4th - Acer and Asus

And I am once the owner of Acer, Thinkpad (x2) and Sony.

 

I agree with this 100%

Consumer-level HPs absolutely suck. I'd say that 80% of the laptops people bring to me that are dead for good are HPs.

Unless they've made great strides over the past two years, I find that Lenovos are almost as bad.

Sony is good, but you pay for the brand.

I'm very high on everything that Asus makes lately. I don't have a ton of experience with their laptops, but everything that they make seems to be solid.

Fujitsus are great, but seem to die around 4 years old.

My first laptop was a Toshiba. I just don't feel like they're as quality as they used to be- they seem more 'flash', like HP. But I don't steer people away from them if that's what they want.

I generally tell folks to go with Dell. Aside from a few desktop missteps (Optiplex 270 and 280) a few years ago, their stuff is rock solid.

..but I recommend a good manufacturer warranty no matter the brand (not a store warranty- have heard countless horror stories about BB and Fry's warranties). Also, who knows how a person will treat their laptop? They could treat it like a gentle flower, or they could treat it like a weed.

 

I got an HP Pavilion which is now about 1.5 years old and runs alright after heavy usage. I think you can't expect more than 2-3 years from a laptop and honestly after that amount of time you should replace it anyway since it probably is going to be out of date.

I've burned through all sorts of laptops and I'd say the best I've worked with is definitely the IBM thinkpads / lenova but I've seen people have issues with them as well. Sony Viao I am not so sure - that one gave out on me after 3 years. I'd never by a Dell. Macs seem alright.

Frankly, I think HP is fine for most usage. It's not the best laptop in the world, but if you only got $500 to spend, you'll get a more powerful machine buying HP then other brands.

 

HP laptops are only worth buying if you are willing to spend between $1400-$1800. My envy 14 has been nothing short of amazing, and everyone else I know who bought one has something great to say about it too...

For $400-$500 I would maybe look in the range of some Dell's, but I don't think you'll get anything worth a damn. Also, get a warranty from SquareTrade.com, it is well worth it.

 

save up...buy a Mac.

 

This is a very good advice.

 

cheap laptops are pretty bad for every brands out there. dell, hp, etc.

for me, im waiting for the sandy bridge processors to come out in maybe feb? but right now, if i had to buy immediately, itll be a dell xps 15 with the full HD screen. good speaker, solid keyboard, case, great specs, usb3.0, beautiful screen.
the bad is bland design, thick and the battery is mediocre if u dont upgrade.

another one im looking at for easy travel is the lenovo thinkpad edge 11.
theres a 13 incher too.

 

At the 400-500 dollar range I've found Dells to be very reliable with a nice range in systems specs. They usually have good deals for a machine you can put together on the website.

 

Don't mean to derail, but I got this for $330 because of a price mistake. This isn't the first I've read about HP getting trashed for quality/dependability but I'm having my doubts. Should I take the risk or take it back?

FF, I was looking at this and seems to be a good deal. bestbuy

 

At the $400-$500 range, its a crap shoot no matter what brand you buy. People like to complain more about HP right now because they are the market share leader at this point, there are just more of them out there. A few years ago it was Dell.

I've had HP laptops work great myself. If you spend $400 on a laptop and get 2-3 years of use out of it, you've done pretty well.

The HP Envy is the best comsumer laptop in PC/Windows that I've ever seen by the way.

 

Consumer-level HP's have problems. I'm running an HP Elitebook and have had no problems with it over the past 8 or 9 months of use. I've owned a Toshiba laptop for about 5 years with no problems. I've owned a Dell Inspiron for about 5 years with no problems.

 

Personally, I've found that if you ask enough people, everyone has a problem with everything.

To me this signals that 95% of the problem is with how the laptop is treated.

If you keep your computer's hard drive clean, light and secure, I think you can pretty much go with anything.

One piece of advice is to format whatever laptop you get (to get rid of the bloatware) and only install the things you need (in your case windows + browser + office). While many people will tell you that you can simply uninstall bloatware, I find that formatting the PC right from the start is really really really really worth it for the not-so-tech-savvy person like me.

Also, keep in mind that sometimes less is more. If hard drive space is not a big priority, I would go with a smaller one (maybe with a higher rpm) - this might save you some bucks, and will allow your computer to function better/quicker.

Good luck. I was looking for a laptop forever, then I got really lucky and got my hands on a 50% discount voucher. I went with the Asus G73JW-XA1 and am planning on replacing the RAM with 8GB of Crucial 1333mhz (rather than the 1033mhz already in the system, which I'm selling btw if anyone is interested!!).