Headed to college. Laptop help?

[EHaskins]

I'ma fan of tablet computers for school. I had've a Gateway CX210X (discontinued), and an HP tx2z (replaced by tm2 series). I strongly recommend looking into them for college use.

When you're looking at consumer grade machines they are all equally pour quality (80+% of laptops are made by the same handful of companies which you've never heard of), and everybody's support is in India now. Find the cheapest one with the features you want, and get it. If you want to get a quality machine Lenovo Thinkpads and HP EliteBooks and ProBooks are good, but you will pay a 30-60% premium over consumer grade machines.

The advantage of business class machines is you will usually get support either in this country, or at least from someone who's first language is english, they are usually easier to upgrade, and extended warenties are usually cheaper than the consumer equivalent (if you are inclined to purchase one, which I don't usually reccomend).

As for places to buy TigerDirect and Newegg both get some good deals if you watch, otherwise buying direct from the manufacturer when they are running sales works good. You can also get an additional 10% off HP Direct and TigerDirect purchases by going to the store through Bing Shopping (http://www.bing.com/shopping/pages/stores.aspx).

Eric

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by EHaskins

The advantage of business class machines is you will usually get support either in this country, or at least from someone who's first language is english,

Heh, just a bit offtopic- but you would be surprised to learn how many people in India learn English first, and speak it better than many people here.

I too would highly recommend a Lenovo though, they're very robust machines and can handle pretty much whatever software you plan to throw at them. No experience with HPs though.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

I too would highly recommend a Lenovo though, they're very robust machines and can handle pretty much whatever software you plan to throw at them. No experience with HPs though.

HPs have generally annoyed me. Inferior build quality and below average customer service.

[EHaskins]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

HPs have generally annoyed me. Inferior build quality and below average customer service.

Are you refering to consumer or business machines?

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by EHaskins

Are you refering to consumer or business machines?

I imagine that he's referring to a consumer one. I use a HP G60 at home, and it runs fine (disregarding Vista...no free upgrade for me ]: ) and is somewhat durable, but I can imagine that it would completely falter and die if I were to try and run Inventor or LabView on it and bring it to robotics.

What I've found to be the case with HPs is that they heat up...really fast. I've only had the computer on for fifteen minutes, and it's already a lot hotter than most people would consider normal. My laptop is also really hard to keep clean :/ And yet, the Dell something-or-other-laptop that my family has that is 5 years old often runs better after it's started up, and it has endless amounts of games and programs installed on it. Dell > HP