Laptop

samcan said:

Hi Folks

Looking for some input regarding laptops.

Have been looking at Toshiba and Acer, although I know 4 people
who've had problems with Toshiba(overheating,bad wireless cards,other).

Looking to spend 8-1,000, min 512,good video as son will play games when mobile, no need for dvdrw-have an external but can't hurt, 15 inch widescreen and hopefully descent sound for mp3s.

Any thoughts on used/refurb also welcom

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

For that price , look at the Toshiba line
I bought an Acer Aspire 5002wlmi in April worst mistake, thought I could hook it up to my HDTV with no damn flicking luck --> There is no S-video Card.

I trusted Sony beofre but those are a bit out of the price range you're looking for......

Toshiba has a gret line of support when needed unlike Acer, Also look at if the specs re upgradable, i.e. RAM and HD space depending on what you're using it for.

Hi Samcan,

I don't have a comment on specific brands but I tend to like used/refurbs. My caveat on these would be the type of support you need for your laptop...the only refurbs I know that have support is Dell.

toshiba are great for reliability and durability. lenovo (formerly IBM thinkpad) are also a good choice, although they are a bit proprietary with regards to hardware upgrades. i have had both and found them to be both excellent laptops. if you are willing to go with Apple the iBook (now called a MacBook w/ intel processor) would also be a good choice.

I bought my Acer last summer and haven't had any problems to date.

Toshiba

As I posted here recently....I had horrendous problems with a Toshiba lap top. The first time, the screen went...three weeks later the Toshiba repair center got a new screen in from Japan. A year after that, the motherboard went. Staples tried to get a new one from Toshiba for over a month before they finally gave me a new laptop...my choice from their store. Guess what, I didn't choose Toshiba.
Now using a compaq...and so far so good.

Dell.ca

I know the anti-Dell crowd will pounce, but I recently bought the Inspiron 6400 for $1099 - it's in their current ads. It's my 6th Dell in 10 years and other than a 3.5" diskette drive 7 years ago, I've had no problems.

Dell. Ugh. Horrible experiences with them.

I have a used one for sale.

I'am selling one that I bought from Dell back in 2005... its the Inspiron 700m notebook, you can get all the specs on it at www.dell.ca. It looks just like the 710m model. I barely used it and it costed me just around $1600 with all the taxes and shipping. I am selling my for $1000 cash. If you need pictures of it I can send them to you. I still have the original box for it, it has the extended battery which lasts 5 hours exactly. I barely even used it and looks like NEW.. If you are interested in this Dell laptop instead of Acer or Toshiba PM.

dell laptops have one of the worst reliability records and their customer service is less than ideal. My office purchased around 10 just over a year ago and it has been nothing but trouble....battery problems, display problems, hard drive failures, etc etc......they do make great desktops. however, i wouldn't go near a dell laptop with a 10ft pole

I've had my Toshiba for two years now and it's been a good machine. Yes, it does tend to heat up quite a bit, and the fan does sometimes run loud, but minor things I can overlook.

Had the hard drive crash on me and some other weird things happen (wireless has been wonky lately, thing wouldn't come out of hibernation), but other than that nothing major. With warranty repairs I've had good and bad experiences. Depends on who they tell you to take your laptop to for repairs (took four weeks to replace a hard drive, but 3 minutes to fix my keyboard)

FWIW, go with a Thinkpad...they're tanks!

I recommend HP

whatever you do dont get an Alienware. My brother in Law bought one and it sucks. spent $2500 2 years ago and had to buy a motherboard, as well as other misc. items just to keep it running. In all he has spent over $3000 and its a piece of shit

I have a Toshiba Satellite and havent had any problems at all I paid $499 after rebates at Best Buy 18 months ago. It works great.

samcan said:

Have been looking at Toshiba and Acer, although I know 4 people
who've had problems with Toshiba(overheating,bad wireless cards,other).

Click to expand...

Well, now you know 1 person with 4 problems with Acer laptop! I bought an Acer laptop, used it for several hours, then the LCD had hot-pixel clusters (yes, plural) all over the screen and several dead pixel. So I went back to the vendor and they replaced it with another one.

So this second laptop seems to be fine for the first 30 minutes (I'm installing all the apps I need for the laptop) when suddenly the HDD crashed (or maybe the MOBO, I don't know. (it's supposed to restart after installing a program but it refuses to restart, just blank screen with a blinking cursor which I can't even typed anything).

I exchanged the laptop again the very next day. This time the DVD/CD burner/reader stopped working in the middle of reading a program (while its being installed). I went back immediately to the vendor and they exchanged it again.

This time when I opened the box at home, the LCD cracked.

Returned it within 15 minutes and asked for my money back.

I bought a Toshiba Portege instead... haven't had any problem (yet). It's been a year now.

WHATEVER YOU DO... Don't buy a Dell... I have had countless problems with Dell... And there after sale service is horrible...

emailme84 said:

WHATEVER YOU DO... Don't buy a Dell... I have had countless problems with Dell... And there after sale service is horrible...

Click to expand...

That one too! They sent me the wrong laptop (I ordered one with 2 Gb RAM the sent it with 512 Mb RAM) and when I called in with the serial number, they told me the serial number doesn't exist. Took me almost 2 months and countless hours of phoning them over and over again (and filed a lawsuit through small-claims court) before getting my money back.

Then I bought the dreaded Acer... sigh.

what about a Mac book? You can contact CPUsed for used ones...