What Laptop brand to go for ??

Discussion in 'Laptops & Notebooks' started by Marri, May 27, 2008.

  1. 1wacko

    1wacko Master Guru

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    I would suggest to check out killernotebooks at www.killernotebooks.com. they have real excellent laptop with quality build. the most important thing is they have excellent support and customer service.

    I have been dealing with them recently and I am extremely happy with the service and the attention.
     
  2. 1wacko

    1wacko Master Guru

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    KevKiev you better check killernotebooks before you decide, they provide world wide support too if you are going to travel a lot. You can go to their forums and post any question you have and the owner will actually respond back to you. his name is Mark and he is extremely helpful. he is involved in the building and the tweaking of the laptops. check out the Nagamaki, a nice machine with lit keyboard; looks awesome, but mainly it is an excellent laptop. I'm waiting to get mine soon.

    EDIT: Sorry man I forgot you already did buy it. my bad.
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2008
  3. KevKiev

    KevKiev Maha Guru

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    Thanks. Sounds like they're a great vendor. I actually clued in to that company, but unfortunately after I'd already ordered a Sager from XoticPC. Prolly shoulda done more investigating but I gotta say I'm very happy with both my new Sager and with XoticPC. They have 24/7 toll-free support and have always responded to my queries the same day.

    The only drawback is that I've discovered that even on a laptop a backlit keyboard would indeed be very handy. Ah well..... I get just under 15K in 3DMark06 so no way can I complain.

    Hope ya enjoy your new lappy. By the looks of the wicked rigs on the killernotebook site, I'm sure you wil:thumbup:
     
  4. 1wacko

    1wacko Master Guru

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    Thanks KevKiev. I'm sure you are enjoying yours. after much research I did want to get a Sager - same as yours, in addition i did not want to get alienware, dell or other brandnames - before i stumbled on killernotebooks and i got hooked to them ever since.
     

  5. CJ3D

    CJ3D Guest

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    I am seriously thinking of getting the Toshiba Qosmio G50, check out the specs for the price! plus it has a massive 18.4" 16:9 screen, subwoofer, cell HD processor for MPEG4 encoding/decoding, decent graphics, tv tuner, designed in japan, nice cpu and graphics.

    http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/qosmio/G50

    or maybe i should keep my desktop for a bit longer :p
     
  6. KevKiev

    KevKiev Maha Guru

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    I know it's not about looks but, man, that rig's gorgeous!

    And, yeah geez, amazing price for all it's got. I especially like the idea of stock high-end sound. I snagged an XFi external card, but I'll have to get external speakers to get the sweet sound outside of headphones. (Glad I got this for travel by car and not plane - kinda strayin' from the portability concept. :p. Though I'm actually on it at home more than my desktop lately. Gotta loveshiny new toys:D)
     
  7. robtorbay

    robtorbay Guest

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    hey man, if your looking for a laptop that is great in almost every way i would look into the compaq or toshiba lines. dell as well is good but my opinion towards them is biased form an experience i had along time ago. all the same u said that u want something that has a good screen u may want to look into a macbook pro. they seem to be pretty sweet as far as quality goes but u will pay for it. also idk if its myth or bs or what but i hear that mac have some of the best screens a notebook can have. but again idk if u want a mac or not. all the same bro gl with what u get :)
     
  8. Marri

    Marri Guest

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    Yeah , I think the new Mac's are out..
    Great screens indeed..
    Priced decently too , great body..
     
  9. RandyB

    RandyB Banned

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    Two years ago, most Desktops didn't score that high. :bigsmile:
     
  10. aweston

    aweston Banned

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    Most of what I do is repair.. And most of what I repair is laptops. I also sell medium to high end laptops. As I fix a whack of them each week, I can give some idea...I think.

    By far the worst, and I mean the absolute worst, piece of crap laptop out there is Acer. They are built with the worst garbage parts ever. They even use garbage RAM. On the latest Acers, the three weakest parts are the hinges, the power plug and crappy motherboards.

    Wait.. There's one even worse. Averatec. I have never in my life seen a cheaper, crappier built laptop in my life. When a manufacturer screws the hinges into plastic moldings on the LCD cover, it's garbage. They're also difficult to source parts for.

    Sony.. Oh..my..God. They look pretty... But man, when they break they are a total pain getting parts for them. A Sony laptop is all looks. There's no real build quality behind them at all and parts are HORRIBLE to get a hold of.

    MSI.. Garbage. MDG Computers uses MSI white box laptops.. and they are absolute crap. And good luck getting parts for them. Even MSI won't sell them.

    Seanix. Very good. Built on the Asus platform. Rock solid build, ugly as sin to look at.

    Dell.. Inspirons are hit and miss. Some are good, some aren't. Problem areas are hinges and batteries. The Vostros are proving to be really decent, solid little units. XPS.. Beautiful, but very expensive and wickedly heavy. Latitudes seem to be exceptionally rugged for the most part, but rough on hinges.

    HP. The 2000 series are hopeless, several recalls. Motherboard and wireless problems mostly. The 6000 series is decent, the 9000 series is their "Cadillac" and extremely nice machines, albeit heavy.

    Asus. Stellar machines. The price premium is worth every cent. No weak points observed yet (in fact, we're authorized Asus dealers because they're that good).

    LG.. I sold them for a year. Loved them...until one was shipped to us defective. It took FOUR WEEKS for the LG rep to authorize an RMA for my supplier. LG won't let suppliers issue RMAs without their authorization. Their service is TERRIBLE!! I ditched them.

    Fujitsu. Fantastic units. Not exactly pretty, but extremely well built and durable. We picked this line up to replace the LG.

    Toshiba. Decent. The A200 series is ok. We're seeing a ton of the A10, 20 and 40s coming in for service. Battery, motherboard, fans, power supplies, dead hard drives, bad LCDs, blown inverters. A myriad of issues with them. The Toshiba-branded hard drives are absolute garbage.

    IBM. Some of the older IBMs were ugly as all hell, but very solid, rugged builds. Problems were optical drives and hard drives. Other than that, nothing major to speak of. We've also seen the occasional bad LCD panel.

    Lenovo.. Absolute...total...garbage. IBM really blew it selling off their laptop division to these cheap, Chinese hooligans. Every Lenovo we've worked on has been a total piece of crap. They even solder wires on boards when they forget to run a trace. I mean... these things are a complete joke. The failure rate of Lenovos are absurdly high, so much so that many dealers have ditched them altogether.

    AMD based laptops for the most part are turds. The performance isn't even close to their Intel counterparts. The worst offender seems to be HP. Their AMD platforms are terrible performers. Even their desktop AMD machines are total dogs.

    The worst memory we've seen used in laptops is Hynix. The worst drives are Toshiba. The worst keyboards and batteries appear to be the Inspirons.

    Personally, I've owned Acer, Dell, HP, Asus, IBM, Compaq, Averatec. I currently own a Macbook Pro.
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2008

  11. Pill Monster

    Pill Monster Banned

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    You have a very secure job :p
     
  12. RandyB

    RandyB Banned

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    Looks quite accurate to me; although the "Lenovo" bit surprised me. I attended a 'laptop' seminar/show and one of the units was stood upon by the presenter. I forget whether he dropped it or not. :confused: LG also dropped a notebook from about 3 feet and it wasn't injured in the fall. ;)
    So, would you say my new Asus M51sn-C1 is a good product? The base price was $999. I replaced the T5750 CPU with a T9300 and the HD with a Seagate momentus 320gb, 7200rpm!:banana:I reckon my RAM is a bottleneck now. :( I'm going to have to get some 800mhz RAM. :)
    My old lappy is an Asus Z71V; which was a white box that I assembled myself and I can guarantee you that there is NO laptop that's built more solidly than that 3yr + old laptop (which is still in mint condition) Too bad that Asus has NO Vista support for that one. :(
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2008
  13. aweston

    aweston Banned

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    *fap* *fap*.. lol. I love all Asus laptops. I've not sold that particular one, although I'm familiar with the line. The Seagate must eat some battery.. :p

    How do you like that little 180 cam? Awesome picture on those. :) I've owned two Asus models, the W7 and two A8Hs. Loved them.
     
  14. Æther Tech

    Æther Tech Master Guru

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    Dell Vostrol buisness line or Lenovo ThinkPad have always given me my moneys worth (and a bit more) Acer has some good laptops if your on an extreme budget. Otherwise, go craiglist something nice for cheap.
     
  15. MountainLynx

    MountainLynx Guest

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    I agree with pretty much all of it, except that the HP dv9000 series has a horribly weak left hinge, and the build quality on Acer machines are not all horrible. The ridiculous-looking Aspires (the ones that look like children's toys) are the crappily built ones. The ones with the laser-cut multimedia I/O panels are rather nice, and the Extensa line is pretty good as well. In a related note, Gateway build quality has improved quite a bit since being acquired by Acer. And as far as RMA's to LG, I haven't had to deal with it. In a year of working with a company that sells a lot of LG's, I've seen only one with any hardware failure at all, and our warehouse took care of that.
     

  16. RandyB

    RandyB Banned

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    Ya, I'm going to have to get a 9 cell at some point...and the camera is very cool. I was sitting at the back of Starbuck's, watching all the people come in on my webcam, while I was surfing the net. :bigsmile:
     
  17. aweston

    aweston Banned

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    The Extensa is definitely the exception. I should have pointed that out in my post and I forgot :(

    I deal with wholesalers... so unfortunately I don't get to send it back to the "warehouse". I deal with Supercom, etc, directly, who then deals with the reps....and unfortunately the wholesaler is not allowed to issue an RMA without LG approval. Really frustrating :(

    My concern was that if my clients had a problem, what would the service be like? If it's that bad for me, how much more so for the client?
     
  18. RandyB

    RandyB Banned

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    What a PITA doing an RMA at Supercom!
     
  19. aweston

    aweston Banned

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    Yeah, sometimes. Especially when the manufacturer gets anal about returns.

    I buy an absolute ton of stuff from Supercom though. Several thousand dollars a month. In all of that, I've only had to RMA four things. Fortunately, three of them they had an RMA # issued instantly. The problem was the turn around time.. grrrr :bang:

    I've never had to RMA at ASI, and FTC, well, the stuff is cheap enough that if it breaks it goes into recycling. However, I've RMAed a couple things through them and they've swapped it out same day.

    Anyways, back to laptops. I've seen a couple of those DV6000s show up lately. On a Google search I'm finding out there's a ton of really pissed off people with DV6000 laptops. Maybe that's a brand to be wary of as well. I've got two here, an AMD and an Intel, both with fried motherboards ATM.
     

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