It's time for me to look into some a laptop purchase. I hear that building a laptop isn't so common as building a desktop so I won't go that route. The question then remains as to where the best laptop might be! Recommend what you like, Massassians!

So far glancing at Dell, Compaq/HP, Sony, and Toshiba, all I can say is m3h. Nothing appealing although I didn't look in depth. I am not aiming for a high-powered gaming laptop, just something that is fast, energy efficient, and doesn't have a battery life of 30 min.

I don't know a terrible amount about laptops, but avoid anything with the Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chipset. My family recently got a laptop with one in it, and it annoys me.

Dell has some DAMN GOOD refurbished laptops available.

But watch out for bait and switch.

Toshiba isn't bad. HP isn't horrible, either. (But seriously, you have very little choice in the laptop market.)

I'd avoid Dell as much as possible, due to what Rob said, the bait and switch. They have a class action lawsuit against them for giving customers less than what they bought. Like 256MB RAM instead of 512MB RAM.

If you want power and battery life, look at the Pentium M's. Unfortunately, you'll be hard pressed to avoid the Intel graphics chipset, which is horrible to say the least. (You might be able to run UT. The original.)

Get an Apple.

Get An Apple.

I'd have to disagree there with Dell. I personally have two Dell laptops (D600 and 600m), and they're both in beautiful shape. They're all actually built surprisingly robust too (I've aided in destroying a D600, and it really took a lot more of a beating than we expected before we were able to kill it). I personally know quite a few people who own Dell laptops as well and the problems are pretty minimal (nothing more than you'd get with anyone else).

About this lawsuit crap, I dunno about that, but it's not very hard to know whether you get what you order or not, and there's no way they can keep you from getting what you order. I imagine it's nothing more than just a case of a few angry customers who got unlucky and instead of just calling Dell about it and letting customer service fix the problem, they decided they'd try to exploit it. I know tons of people who've bought various Dell systems, where I work orders a few hundred every couple years, and I've never heard of anyone "getting less than what they bought".

And they're much cheaper than anything else. Twice in the last 3-4 months Dell's had $750 off $1499+ laptop specials that let you put together a pretty killer laptop for under or around $1000. Now all Dell's main laptops are Pentium M based as well, including their incredibly expensive gaming laptops, which is great.

Actually, the complaints run into the hundreds in just California alone. Supposedly there is a Class Action lawsuit in the making on the federal level also, but I'm unable to find any proper links on that.

Some of the complaints talk about how they are charged $1,400 for a $599 system, and how Dell refused to talk about the matter. Really, it seems to be the class action suit was a forced hand on the customer's side.

http://news.com.com/Dell+sued+over+bait-and-switch+charges/2100-1047_3-5587443.html?part=rss&tag=5587315&subj=news

I've read all those articles, and to me it sounds like people either got unlucky as far as something not meeting the specs of what they bought, or didn't read the conditions of a coupon or instant rebate they were trying to use and then ordered it without taking note of the final price.

I base my opinion on tons of experiences from myself, family, friends, and work. Not what some article says.

I base mine off of experience too, and not one Dell I've used was satisfactory for me, and I've had one friend personally ripped off by them.

But it's not my decision to buy it. JDKNITE, you heard both sides, make the decision

I could start citing you bad experiences people I know have had with HP and Toshiba, but I'll spare you...

The point is, everyone has had their bad experiences. But I don't see class action lawsuits against Toshiba for them.

If people based everything off every class-action lawsuit that popped up, I don't think anyone would be buying anything from anybody...

Well that's purely speculation. And plus, when given the choice, what would you pick? A company that has such a suit against them, or one that does not?

But as I said before, I am just putting the facts out. Its up to him to decide.

A pending lawsuit that hasn't even been settled is hardly presenting facts.

I go for what gives me the best products for the best value. And for laptops, that's been Dell on more than one occasion.

Do you honestly think some lawsuit's going to affect whether a product I buy lives up to what I expect or not? Cause I sure don't in this case.

I'm going to have to vouch for Dells too. My school, has an asston of Dell laptops and all but a few went kaputt. One had a cracked screen but that was (l)user error. I would still pick Dells even after this lawsuit.

How is that not a fact? Just because you don't hold it as an influence in your buying decisions doesn't mean it's not there...

Let me rephrase that. Saying accusations in a pending lawsuit are facts when the lawsuit isn't settled and such accusations haven't been proven is hardly presenting facts. It's obvious you're assuming all of the accusations are true due to your stance.

Not to mention I've seen you spouting the "Don't buy Dell!" stuff 3 times in recent weeks, it really sounds more like a vendetta against them than anything. Almost sounding like Yoshi.

I've said it 3 times because 3 different threads have been made on the same subject... what do you want me to do, ignore it?

I just found a laptop for my sister..350 bucks -- 15" 1400x1050 screen, 30gb/512mb/850mhz with 16mb video & DVD..are you looking to buy new or used/older?

HP and Compaq are both horrible, do NOT get an AMD, get a Pentium M, get 512mb of RAM, and that's all you need to know. From there on out, it's just what you want.

The issue is there is no "good" laptop company. Unless you want to spend upwards of $2000 for the high-end systems like voodoopc laptops and such, you just aren't getting a really reliable system.

Yeah there is. There's no good BUDGET laptop company, but there's some good laptop companies. Dell, Toshiba, Sony, all make great laptops, Apple makes really good work/school/media laptops, but that's only if you dig OSX. There's just no good gaming laptops. There's a difference.

It seems a little zealous when repeated multiple times, but it's not nearly as bad as constant MS bashing, so I'll forgive you.

Gaming laptops. Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2. My brother got to play with one while he was still working for Dell and loved it.

Yeah, but that's usually a little out of most people's price range :p. Hopefully the price of gaming laptops will eventually go down.

Sony can be overpriced, though. And all said companies have had issues with something or other.

And on the topic of gaming laptops...

If price was no object, voodoopc.com is GOD. I'd die for one of those :/

Well yeah it's expensive, but it's cheaper than other comparable ones. And it was the first to use a Pentium M in a "gaming laptop". Still don't know if any others are doing that.

Couple more bits of generic laptop advice. Get the best battery you can for whatever you get (basically just the most battery cells). Also, if you want to save a bit of cash and get a lot of memory, don't buy your memory with the laptop. Get like 256 MB or whatever the minimum is for the laptop, then go somewhere like Newegg and get 512 MB or a gig for a lot cheaper. $100 can get you two 512 MB 533 MHz DDR2 SODIMMs, as opposed to paying someone like Dell over $200 for the same thing. Then you can sell that leftover 256MB SODIMM or whatever. Laptop memory isn't hard to install, and manufacturers really rip you off on memory prices.

I wouldn't really reccommend DDR2, but what Darth says is true. 12 cells is REALLY good for a laptop, for example.

If you get a newer Pentium M system running a i915 chipset, you're going to be using DDR2. What I said still holds true for DDR though.

And DDR2 actually does make a bit more sense in laptop chipsets than it does in desktop chipsets. It consumes about 30% less power, so better for the battery, and it actually does noticeably outperform DDR on laptops (cause remember, laptop chipsets never had dual channel DDR like desktop chipsets do).

This is probably a bad idea, but here goes. If you are serious about you laptop (and I mean serious), and want a laptop that can take everything you can dish out, I strongly recommend the IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpads. In particular the G series.

The G series Thinkpads are supposed to be a "Desktop Replacement", so they are bit big, and rather heavy. I personally have the G41, with a 3.3 GHz P4m. I bought it to be a replacement for my main desktop while off at college, not just as a gaming laptop, but I have yet to find a game that it cant run well (yes, it does only have a GO5200, but I personally have not found this to be a limitation).

I spent a long time working with laptops, especially defective or damaged ones, so I had a very good idea of what I was looking for in a laptop. Build quality was the absolute most important thing to me, and I am in no was disappointed in my Thinkpad.

I know there are many people who do not like Thinkpad’s for one reason or another, they do then to be a bit more expensive, and often come with lots of “business enhancing” software preloaded (god knows mine did). If you want a laptop that is good for gaming right out of the box, you probably don’t want a Thinkpad, but all you really need to do is re-install the OS and your good to go.

If you don’t want to buy a Thinkpad, let me give you some additional advice. Physically use and inspect any laptop before you buy it. First thing I recommend is to check the hinges to the LCD, make sure they do not wobble at all, if the screen shakes back and forth during normal use it puts a LOT of wear on the hinges. Next check the AC power plug, I would normally advise against barrel plugs, as lots of laptop manufactures connect the AC barrel plug to the motherboard through a simple soldered standoff, this means that under normal use it is very likely that the barrel plug will become loose, requiring maintenance, and possibly even the replacement of the entire system board. Finally check for hot spots after using it for a while. Any serious laptop is going to generate a lot of heat, but allot of them do not deal with the heat well.

I know a lot of kids in my dorm who spent ~$2000 on brand new laptops, and had to send them back for service within the first six months. Let me put this strait, you do NOT build laptops, for the most part, a consumer cannot even do proper maintenance on laptops as the parts as non-standard and can often prove difficult to locate. Because of this it is very important to buy a laptop that is well made. If you buy a laptop, and find yourself out of warranty with a hardware problem you usually have two options, sell the laptop on ebay, or buy a laptop of the same model from ebay for parts and attempt to fix your laptop yourself. (there are exception, laptop memory and hard drives are usually very easy to replace by hand, and you can use off the shelf parts 90% of the time)

My general experience has found that the worst general build quality are HP/Compaq’s, with Dell’s being slightly better. Sony’s laptops are pretty good, but their service has always sucked. Toshibas are usually a good bet (with a few notable exceptions) but tend to be under-whelming and rather expensive. I don’t have any personal experience with Asus’s laptops. eMachine’s has suppressed me, some of their laptops have managed not to suck, but I personally would not risk it. The best laptops I have seen so far have been IBM’s (now Lenovo) and Apple’s.

Anyway, that is my little laptop speech. People are going to disagree with me, but it does not really matter. I worked for a year and a half for a major player in consumer computer hardware, and will openly admit that I have become Jaded against large parts of the industry. All that matters is that I am happy with my laptop, and with any luck, you will be happy with whatever laptop you chose to purchase.

Did I mention that a powerbook would be a good choice for you?

Apple (PowerBook), IBM, Sony

Those are the names I trust the most, especially IBM. I have PowerBook G4 myself, and it kicks f'n ***.

Apple is a good choice, if you got the money that is, they tend to be a little more expensive.

Actually, Apple laptops are at a reasonable price. If you spend money on an IBM or a Sony, you are spending near the same amount that you would for a PowerBook.

You can get some pretty good deals in the Apple Certified store too.

Apple is also supposed to have a student discount that could count for something, assuming you are a full time student...

Yea, $200 off I think. Plus they're running a sale for students now, buy a laptop and get $170 off an iPod.

It's a $180 rebate. So an iPod Mini 4 GB for free or $180 off any others (except photo).

And the student discount isn't a set number. It's as little as $100 off the cheapest and up to $300 off the most expensive.