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

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Alex Cormier

STAY away from Toshiba, go for Dell. Period.

Ever since Toshiba has been out sourcing their components, the laptops and other products have gone down as well as their customer service.

Dell also had this issue, but in the past couple years they have brought most of the production back into the states and their service and products are a lot better.

I have dealt with both companies and products for a very long time.

Dell makes very little in the US unless you're going to buy an Alienware, and by next year won't make a single PC here.

[JamesBrown]

I will join the group reccommending ThinkPads (They are still ThinkPads, they are just Lenovo's now not IBM's)

I am on my second ThinkPad, I still have my t60 (from 2006) I haven't had any real problems with it, I still use it regularly for things that don't require high performance just before the warrenty expired (last summer) my hard drive failed, lenovo tech support had me run a diagnostic test, then they sent me a new hard drive with factory image at no cost. I also have a t400 that is less than a year old, I had a problem where it would not power on one day, I called Lenovo tech support they sent me a box, I shipped everything to them and they replaced the mother board and returned it to me. The whole process took 5 business days, there was no cost to me.

I have been extremely happy with both of my ThinkPad's. The Lenovo's are the most common computer at RPI (by far) and are the most common computer at Hasbro (my current job), over all most people seem to have good experiences with them.

My only advice if you decide to go with a Mac instead is to find out where the nearest Mac store is to you at school. School help desks are usually very good at fixing computers they are fammiliar with but it is hit or miss whether they have a Mac expert there, even when they do it is usually faster and cheaper to go to the Genius Bar instead.

[Foster]

Lenovo tech support they sent me a box

Oh baby, I didn't stress that enough. Thinkpad/Lenovo sends you a box. It arrives on Monday, you pack it up, ship it and by Friday your laptop is back working. No "We're sorry it's a virus, you run Labview, back version of Office, you eat chicken wings while typing, etc.", its working. Fixed, back in the box to you.

If you can't live without the laptop for 5 days then buy two, one to use while the other one is in the air. But Lenovo support is 5 days. And they mean 5 of the 24 hour days, not the 5 days, but weekends don't count and well Friday isn't really a day and so who gets stuff done on a Monday that you get from Worst Buy.