r2i forum

This is a dedicated thread - to discuss laptops and related issues:

--Admin

Hello Members,

I am in the market to buy a new Laptop primarily for home usage and occasionally connecting to office to work from home. I was at office depot this weekend and did find some good laptops and was about to buy until the office depot guy tried to sell me a Protection plan by telling all scary stories. Just thought I will check with fellow netizens and get a feel for the quality of the following machines / specs / manufacturers.

Most of the machines these days come loaded with Windows Vista and I heard the guy tell me that it is terrible and hence will not work as smooth ( and hence he thinks, need a service plan ). How true is it ?. I have Windows XP at work and have not had a chance to know details about Vista yet.

This laptop is of Lenovo make ( former IBM think pad machines ) and was wondering about the quality ( now that it is not by IBM anymore ). Any horror stories about Lenovo and their support ?

Other machines that are available in that price range ( ~ $ 700 ) are Gateway and Toshiba ( though Toshiba has smaller Hard disk etc ). Any opinion on these manufacturers.

Best Buy and Office Depot both rated Sony as a good laptop and rated Toshiba, HP, Gateway as a second tier companies. But, Sony is very expensive :( Any truth to this ?.

One last question..

How memory intensive is Windows Vista OS. Any good / bad feedback from members ? ( not that I have a choice of OS when buying a new machine ).

Thanks in advance
FR2I

Vista is okay except that it has so many security features built into it that it's really annoying. The UI is newer than XP. Maybe if you google enough you will find patches, updates etc. so turn off some of those security features and atleast get you through stuff that you do often without much botheration.

XP is good. If going with XP saves you money then going with that wont be a bad idea.

Lenovo is a good. They have good quality and customer support.

Toshiba is actually pretty good too - i don't know why best buy rates it as second tier.

The thing is I don't trust Best Buy/Office Depot etc. - they come up with their own ratings to fool customers into buying what earns them the biggest profit margin. Also don't get fooled into buying service plans from them - instead go with the manufacturers warranty.
Secondly, you can find much better prices and deals on laptops if buy them from online retailers. You will even find many more choices.

See the thing with laptops is that nearly all brands are pretty reliable nowadays. I have bought two Dell Inspiron laptops and a desktop in the past 5 years and each time I bought them at nearly half the price for which a similarly configured Sony or Lenovo were selling for. All my computers have been working fine. On the other hand i know people whose Lenovo's hard disk has crashed - i also know people whose Dell's hard disk has crashed on them. So it's somewhat a matter of luck too. I like to buy my computers as cheap as possible so that I can use the saved money to upgrade (or buy new) more frequently than I would like to if I buy a $2000 computer.

DBN,

Thanks for the reply. Any web sites you suggest to look for laptops ?

FR2I

You could check out the deals here (updated throughout the day):

www.xpbargains.com
www.techbargains.com

I have a Dell laptop and had all kinds of problems with it. My hard drive was crashed with in 7 months and mother board was crashed after 18 months. Dell sells worst laptops. Toshiba and HP/Compaq are much better.
My advice is never buy a Dell laptop. Also their Indian Customer support is worst.

Even couple of my other friends had same kind of problems with Dell laptop. Their desktops seems to be ok. If you still want to buy a Dell laptop make sure you take a protection plan.

i believe Acer is amongst the highest ranking laptop.

try at fry's if you one close to you or try mail order.

I had bought a Dell Laptop in 2003. Still working fine. There was a problem with the power adapter connection, it got quickly and cheaply fixed in Noida. The problem was not with the Dell hardware, but my handling of where the adapter fits into the laptop, I think.

I am using Vista Home Basic for a little over a month now. I like it, especially the Rs. symbol, multiple clocks (India, us and UK in my case). The one problem appears to be the IE7. It crashes every now and then. I do not know why. My son tells me that this is a problem. I hope it will be resolved soon.
I remember, i did not like XP in the beginning. I had to be coaxed back into using it and only when it became essential. Vista, I am using it unless it becomes impossible to use it.
It is very memory intensive. Do not plan to use it without 1 GB, preferably 2GB.