Author Topic: Laptops  (Read 10550 times)

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Offline [MAF]Vertigo

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Laptops
« on: January 15, 2015, 04:05:16 pm »
Going to buy a laptop for work. Don't need it for gaming or anything, but don't want a slow one.

What's the best brand for something like this? HP, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell? Something I haven't mentioned?

Only want to spend around $400 AUD, so yeah. Thanks lol.

Offline [FSR]Ush

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Re: Laptops
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2015, 05:47:59 pm »
Just make sure there's a SSD in it, if you want it to work fast! I only ever had an HP laptop, it was fast and reliable untill the mobo burned. I think most laptops these days are good enough, although I'm not a big fan of Acer/Dell, for no specific reason.

How many euro is 1 austrian dollar worth?

Offline 3DSexVilla

Re: Laptops
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2015, 06:12:21 pm »
Asus with eyes closed

Offline [MAF]Epoxi

Re: Laptops
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2015, 07:02:45 pm »
ASUS and Toshiba have the best finish and build quality from my experience.


Any laptop is good enough if you treat it carefully, all the broken laptops I am aware of are because people have mistreated them in some way (but I guess that's what a portable computer is for, carrying around etc.).

Offline nero

Re: Laptops
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2015, 07:13:52 pm »
I had a Sony VAIO for 6 years now, still gaming on it. Have to agree with Ush about Acer/Dell. Acer has best price-performance ratio, but all people I know who owned one had terrible problems with brokes pieces, overheating after short time and stuff like that. Dell is quite expensive, not sure about build quality though. Only had one friend with a high performance Dell, he was not satisfied with it.

Watch for battery time, modern chromebooks offer up to 13 hours battery life, where as "multimedia" laptops can last below 1 hour.

Go for the SSD, external storage is never a problem to buy.

Also, I have very specific expectations of a keyboard, some laptops are a pure no-go for me just because of a shitty designed keyboard (key size, pressure point, integration into laptop, quality etc).

Offline Troublemaker

Re: Laptops
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2015, 08:33:10 pm »
Lenovo is the best imo.

Offline [MAF]Karlis

Re: Laptops
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2015, 10:23:32 pm »
from my experience, unless you buy the premium brands (mostly lenovo and sony), there is no difference in the brands. I have a cheap acer that looks pretty good and is in a fine shape 3 and a half years later, but way more expensive asus and samsungs my friends have are made from such a cheap plastic, that it sqeaks and slightly twists when you take it in your hands.
so, don't judge the brand, and just try the particular laptop yourself.

performance-wise, i'd just suggest to get an SSD, as it's even more beneficial for a laptop, because everything will be stored in it, unlike in desktops, and laptop HDDs are even worse than desktop ones.
at that price range, you will probably have to install one on your own, but it's definitely worth it, even if you end up with way worse laptop.
you will also need to decide, do you need 256GB of storage, or will 128GB do just fine, obviously second is way cheaper.

tl;dr - brand doesn't matter, check the quality yourself, and get an SSD

Offline [MAF]Epoxi

Re: Laptops
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2015, 11:23:39 pm »
In my experience Lenovo are very middle-range. They are better than brands like Gateway and Dell (the cheaper Dells, expensive Dells are very good), but I have found them to be squeaky and plasticky.

I guess it depends a lot on which model you buy, the Lenovo I know was made of cheap plastic and the ASUS I know is made of solid aluminium, which is the opposite of Karlis's experience.

I strongly agree that an SSD is a must-have (even on a PC!), the speed difference is too big to ignore: my PC starts faster than my phone. You could always get a 128GB now, and replace it with a 256GB in a few months when it is much cheaper (and put the old 128GB in your PC to run your OS from).

Offline [MAF]Karlis

Re: Laptops
« Reply #8 on: January 15, 2015, 11:30:55 pm »
they won't be much cheaper in a few months though, unless I'm missing something. the prices are dropping, but it happens over the years, and not in a matter of months.

Offline [MAF]Vertigo

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Re: Laptops
« Reply #9 on: January 16, 2015, 02:25:13 am »
Problem is none of the laptops from normal stores come with SSD. If they did, I bet they'd be super expensive. Either way I'd rather not spend the extra cash right now.

These are a couple of the stores I'm looking at:

Website 1

Website 2 Is that HP for $299 any good?

Website 3

Offline Terrorfist

Re: Laptops
« Reply #10 on: January 16, 2015, 03:26:09 am »
HP also has a good build quality but their service is :X. I'm only lucky that my 7 year old HP Desktop is running good.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
GIGABYTE GA-P35-S3L
6GB DDR2 RAM
GeForce GT 730 1GB GDDR5 64-bit
Seagate Barracuda 250GB + Western Digital 320GB
Astone Enforcer Mid Tower Chassis

Offline [MAF]Karlis

Re: Laptops
« Reply #11 on: January 16, 2015, 11:23:44 am »
that HP is terrible, i mean... 32GB of storage... really (with the speed opposite to the ssd's lol)?

minus the lack of ssd, the Acer Aspire E5-511-280C Laptop looks very good, i wasn't aware laptops at this price point ever had quad cores (much less intel ones).
http://www.harveynorman.com.au/computers-tablets/computers/laptops/acer-aspire-e5-511-280c-laptop.html
it seems to be sold out, but you can probably still find it somewhere

the rest are worse than that.

Offline [MAF]Vertigo

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Re: Laptops
« Reply #12 on: January 16, 2015, 12:17:22 pm »
that HP is terrible, i mean... 32GB of storage... really (with the speed opposite to the ssd's lol)?

minus the lack of ssd, the Acer Aspire E5-511-280C Laptop looks very good, i wasn't aware laptops at this price point ever had quad cores (much less intel ones).
http://www.harveynorman.com.au/computers-tablets/computers/laptops/acer-aspire-e5-511-280c-laptop.html
it seems to be sold out, but you can probably still find it somewhere

the rest are worse than that.

32GB? I see 500GB...

Offline [FSR]Ush

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Re: Laptops
« Reply #13 on: January 16, 2015, 03:00:18 pm »
Only 2GB ram tho, not sure what applications you want to run.. and how many at a time.

Offline [MAF]Epoxi

Re: Laptops
« Reply #14 on: January 16, 2015, 06:40:11 pm »
My 128GB SSD is only £40 (around €52), and it's a Crucial which is one of the better ones. You don't need the laptop to come with the drive as most good laptops let you change the drive very easily (just one screw to open the flap and swap).

RAM is also cheap to upgrade, so make sure the laptop motherboard can take the extra RAM if needed.

The most important things are the motherboard, CPU, screen and graphics card (if it exists) because these are very difficult to replace, everything else can be changed for little cost and effort. I have replaced a laptop motherboard before...not fun.  :L