Laptop question

[Machew]

I'm looking for a laptop right now. i need it for school, and games. The one im looking at right now is a compaq, has 512 mg ram, nvidia graphics card and uses amg processor.

Im not too good with computers, but anybody have previous problems with compaq? If this isnt good, anybody know of a better one, for around $1000?

[uhmeebuh]

I used to sell almost everybig name - Dell, IBM, Compaq/HP, Sony, Toshiba, and Acer. We also did service wo I got a chance to see what brands conostantly sucked and who was pretty good.

Here's my opinion of what's out there...

Dell is the best bang-for-the-buck but their once fantastic service now sucks ass. I own a Dell but I also know how to fix my hardware and software problems. In general, their parts are least expensive and fairly easy to get a hold of.

IBM makes the highest quality laptops out there. They don't promote the latest, greatest, cutting edge technology but their stuff works almost flawlessly. Their customer service is the best out there but I'm unsure how it'll fare since being purchased by another company.

I hate Sony's. We constantly had Sony's in for service and their parts are very expensive. Most common problem was dead motherboards. In most cases it cost more to fix it than buy another...

Compaq used to be a great name but with the merger with HP the quality has come down. Compaq/HP service is third after IBM and Dell.

Toshiba and Acer laptops are well made but service isn't great and parts are expensive.

Keep in mind, all systems come with a one year mail-in warranty. A mail-in warranty works like this: you get approval from tech support, they send you a box for your laptop, you send it in, in 2+ weeks you get your laptop back fixed. Most of the time the problem has been fixed but I've received more than one laptop back from every manufacturer that wasn't fixed. Of course you can upgrade the warranty to suit your needs.

In general don't buy the consumer quality laptops - anything you can buy at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. They are made to a lower quality and we had them in for service all the time - not money well spent.

I prefer Intel processors but AMD stuff is getting better and certain processors can be over clocked (made to go faster) if you want to be a hardcore gamer.

How are you going to use the laptop?

[uhmeebuh]

Originally posted by MackeyStingray
laptops aren't really cut out for games esp. stuff like HL2 and D³

Yup - but if he's only writing papers and surfing the web he doesn't need some bad ass video card or a 17" screen... Or maybe he does - just looking for some clarification.

[goose]

I got one of theses from my boss as a X-mas bonus and it's a great machine but I don't bother trying to game with it. http://www.datavis.com/product.jsp?prid=13057 Even a top dollar laptop is an inadequate gaming platform. No $1000 laptop will be useable for any modern game. This machine has a 1.5 gig Celeron processor and you need a P4 to run Doom3 or HL2.

In order to run Doom3 on my PC at home I scrapped a perfectly good 1.6 gig Athalon unit in exchange for a P4 combo. This also required purchasing all new ram sticks (1 gig) and a new power supply as well. I topped it off with a Radeon X800 Pro video card and ditched the GeForce 5200FX I bought a year and a half ago. Guess what, Doom3 kinda sucks. Half Life 2 is all good though and I'm dying to play the Doom3 TFC mod in developement.
http://www.planetdoom.com/d3f/
:troy :rsrai

[rsrider]

If you want to game, get a platform. PS2, cube, or XBox. If you read the above post, you can imagine how much money it took to bring the PC up to spec to play D3, and D3 is going to be ported to the XBox....any ID game in the future will be ported. I quit upgrading my computer when I got my XBox. The next gen platforms will put the stake into the gaming computers heart.

Laptops: I have a Toshiba, and it does it's job. One thing I will mention is that you should get one that has a DVD player or DVD combo. That way your laptop can be used as a portable movie system. Comes in handy when work becomes suck.

[zefflyn]

Originally posted by uhmeebuh
IBM makes the highest quality laptops out there. They don't promote the latest, greatest, cutting edge technology but their stuff works almost flawlessly. Their customer service is the best out there but I'm unsure how it'll fare since being purchased by another company.

I'd like to qualify that to "some IBM's" are high quality. My company supported IBM Thinkpads at Cisco for 6 years. Many of the Thinkpad model lines had systemic engineering problems that required retrofits, and one model (T30) had 4 retrofits to try and fix an engineering problem*. The newer T40's seemed to be blowing out the system board very frequently. Their 30 and 40 gig HDDs failed frequently within the 1st year.

There's a reason why IBM, two months ago, sold their entire PC/Laptop division to a Chinese company.

I hate Sony's. We constantly had Sony's in for service and their parts are very expensive. Most common problem was dead motherboards. In most cases it cost more to fix it than buy another...

I've also heard Sony device drivers are somewhat flaky, and Sony tries, as much as possible, to stick with their proprietary technologies for memory stick and so on.


* T30 was designed without enough room for the system board, and it would twist, and half the memory slot would snap off the system board.

[uhmeebuh]

Originally posted by zefflyn
I'd like to qualify that to "some IBM's" are high quality. My company supported IBM Thinkpads at Cisco for 6 years. Many of the Thinkpad model lines had systemic engineering problems that required retrofits, and one model (T30) had 4 retrofits to try and fix an engineering problem*. The newer T40's seemed to be blowing out the system board very frequently. Their 30 and 40 gig HDDs failed frequently within the 1st year.

There's a reason why IBM, two months ago, sold their entire PC/Laptop division to a Chinese company.

[B]

I've also heard Sony device drivers are somewhat flaky, and Sony tries, as much as possible, to stick with their proprietary technologies for memory stick and so on.


* T30 was designed without enough room for the system board, and it would twist, and half the memory slot would snap off the system board.

I agree and think that almost any laptop will need additional 'retrofittings' to meet company requirements (hardware and/or software). But IBM's are (were??) solid machines that would outlast their counterparts. FWIW, I had the same problems when I was at Cisco years ago... But we can't forget that these are laptops made by humans on Earth - they are far from perfect.

I'm curious to see how the new owner of IBM consumer PC's handles the business.

Yup - Sony has more than one problem with their systems. In fact, a company named Bony (name changed to reduce my libel damage) doesn't have enough confidence in their products to use their own systems at their US headquarters - I know this first hand. Sad but true...

[Machew]

The only game i really plan to play on it is world of warcraft. not too into Doom 3 or that stuff (mainly cause i have an xbox for stuff like that) WoW deffinetly doesn't need as much as d3 does to play. But a friend of mine told me that dells are the best laptops, so i think i might order one of those. im kinda sceptical because i have a dell pc and it sucks balls. sound card went out once, one of the cd drives is bad, but i havent called them about it yet because it was such a pain for the sound card, its doesnt really seem worht it. but thanks for the info

[MeisI]

Originally posted by zefflyn
The newer T40's seemed to be blowing out the system board very frequently.

[B]

I've also heard Sony device drivers are somewhat flaky, and Sony tries, as much as possible, to stick with their proprietary technologies for memory stick and so on.

Interesting. I'm using a t41p, and i'm having problems which i believe to be the system board. I've shipped it into their customer repair service twice now, both times they just swaped the HDD, and reflashed the bios, and the problem presisted. It's about to go in for it's 3rd time, and this time it goes to their "escalation team" (oooooooooooooooooo:hand ) hopefully it'll be fixed.

I have to say the customer service, although hit or miss when you're dealing with the initial rep on the phone, is VERY good. They use next day air DHL, so there isn't much time scratching your butt wondering where your package is. My family is what i like to believe a hardcore IBM family, we have one as old as the early/mid 90's, as well as my t41p, and my dad's t42p. They are great machines. Although i'm having trouble with them actually fixing the machine, they have been more than cooperative with my oh so frustrated calls after i pull the computer out of the box and see that the problem wasn't fixed.

[zefflyn]

Yep, that's their Easy-Serv group. It's acutally a company called Solectron. They do quick service, but we've had problems getting them to actually fix what was broken.

They had lost a few of Cisco's laptops, too, so make sure you keep good records of the airbills that you are shipping on, to prove delivery.

[deaconblues]

when I did warranty repair for Airtouch (now Nextel?), the company had about a 50/50 distribution of IBM and Toshiba laptops.

The Toshibas accounted for 4 out of every 5 repair tickets, mostly HD controller arm/head crash failures.

We put out a memo for people to STOP and WAIT until their drives spun down before packing them into the carry cases - apparently a lot of road warrior types were doing the equivalent of the Samsonite 'luggage vs gorilla' test while the computers were still running (slam shut, toss into bag, rush out to car, dump bag in trunk, repeat ad nauseum).

[zefflyn]

Same thing's happening at Cisco, with the IBM's, where they have a campus-wide wireless network. No one bothers suspending their laptops before undocking and carrying them around the floor, or up and down the staircase.
And then, of course, the drop them, but that's a seperate issue entirely.

[Sane_Man]

Originally posted by deaconblues
when I did warranty repair for Airtouch (now Nextel?)

Verizon. :teeth

[deaconblues]

Thanks, Sane. I knew it was one of the still-extant wireless companies.... didn't much matter, I was contract labor anyway.

My point was, the IBM Thinkpads tended to fare better against such abuse. Which was good, because it was a LOT easier getting into a Tecra than a Thinkpad.

[Machew]

thread jackers... :cry

[deaconblues]

hey it's at the top of the list!!

What do ya want for nuthin, r-r-r-r-rubbber biscuit??? :D

(besides which, I'll bet you don't buy any of the systems we've bitched about, eh?)

[zefflyn]

Oh yeah, you had a question up at the top there.

Basically, any of the major companies should be fine, just make sure you buy the extended warranty, and don't drop it, run it over with your car, eat on the keyboard, take it to the beach, catch it on fire, put the fire out with wine, let your cat sleep on the keyboard, or hold it upside-down and shake it.

Yes, I've seen all that and more done to laptops.

[uhmeebuh]

Originally posted by zefflyn
Oh yeah, you had a question up at the top there.

Basically, any of the major companies should be fine, just make sure you buy the extended warranty, and don't drop it, run it over with your car, eat on the keyboard, take it to the beach, catch it on fire, put the fire out with wine, let your cat sleep on the keyboard, or hold it upside-down and shake it.

Yes, I've seen all that and more done to laptops.

:laughing :laughing :laughing

We had one frat boy bring his Dell in because someone pissed on his keyboard at a party! You should have seen the techs run! I was first to say "not it"!

And he wondered if it was covered under warranty :rolleyes

[MeisI]

Originally posted by uhmeebuh
:laughing :laughing :laughing

We had one frat boy bring his Dell in because someone pissed on his keyboard at a party! You should have seen the techs run! I was first to say "not it"!

And he wondered if it was covered under warranty :rolleyes

My friend was driving the 5 back to school, didn't want to make a pit stop, so he pissed into a keg cup. While attempting ot drive/shift/open the window/put his dick away/hold a cup of piss he managed to spill some on his ipod. Now the FF button doesn't work. he's going to attempt to get warentee work preformed on it :-D. I can't wait to see what they say. I didn't have the heart to tell him to just deal with it.

[weak_link]

Also stay wasy from used ibm t-21's. They develop white dots on the lcd and the replacement is $500+. The t-20 and t-23 seem to be much better for some strange reason. You would have to be looking at used laptops to come accross one but maybe someone else reading the thread could use the info. I worked for a couple years running a shop that did nothing but refurbish and work on laptops.
Compaqs are actually pretty nice, despite the bad rap.
When it came time for me to buy my own, just for surfing the net on the couch and no games or anything like that, I bought a dell.
my $.02

[unraveled]

<------------------ I've also had good luck with my compaq laptop. :teeth

Almost 5 years old and the power supply (internal) finally died this weekend. The screen was getting kind of fuzzy and the battery only held a charge for about 20 minutes, but it's outlasted most of my friend's laptops. (*Sniff*I'm going to miss the 133mhz goodness of that thing.)

Anyways, I'm thinking of being a sheep and getting a dell but does anybody have any experence with the new compaq AMD64 laptops? Specifically, how's the power consumption? I can't find any specs about battery life on their site.

[zefflyn]

Originally posted by weak_link
Also stay wasy from used ibm t-21's. They develop white dots on the lcd and the replacement is $500+. The t-20 and t-23 seem to be much better for some strange reason. You would have to be looking at used laptops to come accross one but maybe someone else reading the thread could use the info. I worked for a couple years running a shop that did nothing but refurbish and work on laptops.


Plus, the T20, T21, T22, and T23 all have a "known" breakage point along the plastic that wraps around the keyboard. It breaks there so frequently, that IBM finally had to start replacing it under warranty.
And you're right, the T23 is the best of the bunch. The LCD with white dots should be replaced under warranty, but you'd be hard pressed finding one that still is under warranty.

[Machew]

Im still considering that AMD compaq, and if i get it, i'll let you know... you say that store bought laptops are made of lesser quality than ordered ones? Should it matter if I get an exdended warranty? Cause I was thinkin of buying from bestbuy, while getting a bestbuy credit card for a start on my own credit. (i only just turned 18)

[Gragorin]

I looked at Compaq's website. The only AMD based notebook that was listed has the Geforce 4 440 which might be rather sub-par for gaming but in that price range you don't have a whole lot of choice AFAIK.

[zeo1500]

Look at HP Pavilion. Make sure its a pentium 4. It's around your price range.