Time For A New Laptop

[bendejo]

Time for a new laptop. My present one (Compaq CQ40) is dying a slow death, on it's 3rd life, having been dropped from table-height, christened with coffee (milk & sugar), and now the screen is going goofy. Leaves a trail of screws in its wake. It's been a long 3.5 years. I won't go into it being splashed with soup, naam pla, etc.

I had been planning on a Lenovo G470, saw one a few months back, looked good and the price is right. After reading a few posts here I started to consider Dell. Last time I handled a Dell it was 20 years ago, a desktop model that when I opened it up to add DRAM I found it was very different on the inside than 'regular' PCs and have avoided the brand since. I've zero'd in on an Inspiron N4050. The price and tech specs for Intel versions are similar enough for my purposes. What I'm wondering about is the sturdiness. I'm a clumsy bastard. And a slob. I'd like to hear from anyone who's had experience with the ruggedness (or lack of) with either of these. I'm not near any dealers right now so no hands-on, but will be in Big City in a few weeks, maybe will have to get around by kayak.

I'm intending to run dual-boot Win7/Linux. I noticed the Dell has 'Dell Wireless' wifi, which from my research seems to be an Atheros chipset. I first thought “ugh, Dell with their own peculiar crap just like 20 years ago,” good luck finding Linux drivers, but it turns out to have Ubuntu loaded, and not only that “he's bona fide”:

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201104-7891/

Maybe the Lenovo would take an Ubuntu-based installation without glitches, seems other people on the net have done so with minimal tweaking, but the certification is a point in the Dell's favor.

[ITGabs]

Is a quite difficult recomend you something, one year ago I've been looking an allienware or something similar here in Thiland but really Thailand have very few or not models at all in the high end ...Malasya, Singapur, Hong Kong or Australia will be better, but go only for buy a laptop is quite expensive.

Maybe you want a laptop for the 3 next years?

Look what is the best that you can buy in the big city, the most importan it's CPU and GPU if you want to play games, memory is easy to upgrade if you need more than 4GB 8GB in the future, check for a fast hardisk 7200 rpm or SSD since everything is faster but not the hdd and in the next years that will be the bottleneck.

At the end I bought a dell n5110 with a core i7 that was the fastest that I could find in the shops of Chiang Mai, not problem with drivers for linux

[bdw]

If you get a Lenovo makes sure it's a Thinkpad. They can stand up to some abuse, but a Dell will fail the first time you splash a little Nahm Plah on it.

[Chicog]

Why don't you buy a high end laptop with Ubuntu on it, and install Windows in Dual boot? Chances are it will work OK.

[ITGabs]

BTW check this webpage

http://www.invadeit.co.th/category/notebooks-laptops/

[bob4you]

I just bought the 5110 with 4gb ram 600 gb hard drive, bought it 2nd hand with legal Windows Ultimate and am very happy with it.

[Gary A]

My Lenovo Think Pad's main board went bad some time back. It had a three year international warranty. I had to take it 150 kilometers to the nearest service center. They replaced the main board at no charge. The new board lasted two years. Since it was then out of warranty, I took it to a laptop repair store. The guy confirmed that it was the main board. The repair cost was almost as much as a new laptop.

He advised me to buy an Acer. I quizzed him about Acer and the bad reports I have read about Acer laptops. He agreed that they have as many or maybe more problems than other brand names. He told me that the difference is that the Acer spare parts are much cheaper than the rest and repairs are easily done.

I bought my wife a new Acer from Tesco Lotus. That was about a year ago and so far no problems. It came with Linux and I replaced Linux with Win 7 because her English lesson programs wouldn't run on Linux.

[astral]

I have an HP Pavilion dv6 that I bought a few months back

Core i7 processor, 8Gb Memory, 1Tb disk

Not cheap, but I hope it will last me 5 years like my previous HP did.

[Chicog]

My Pavilion has been trouble-free for that long, apart from having to change the battery because I actually never take the thing anywhere.

Good machine, and I just put Win 8 Pro on it - completely flawless installation.

[electau]

I have just purchased a new notebook, an ACER V3-571 with an i3 processor and 2GB of RAM , 500GB 5200rpm HDD , and OEM Windows 7 Premium.

Versions as standard, 2GB i3, 4GB i5 and 8GB with the i7 Intel dual core processor.

[tinfoilhat]

My Pavilion has been trouble-free for that long, apart from having to change the battery because I actually never take the thing anywhere.

Good machine, and I just put Win 8 Pro on it - completely flawless installation.

iv never had an HP computer or laptop last more than 1.5 years. freinds have had the same issue

[bendejo]

iv never had an HP computer or laptop last more than 1.5 years. freinds have had the same issue

Three years is about normal for me. That my present one is still somewhat usable at 3.5 is only because my tinkering with the hardware has continued it into a Frankenstein/Darth Vader phase.

But advancement has slowed down -- the specs on a new laptop now aren't so drastically different from 4 years ago, but from 1988 (when I bought a 286) to 1991 it was like comparing a biplane to a WWII fighter plane.

[ITGabs]

BTW the Dell laptops as you probably know, have a lot of problem with the adapter

"The AC adapter type cannot be determined. This will prevent optimal system performance.

Strike F3 key ( before F1 or F2 key) if you don't want to see power warning messages again.

Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility."

a lot of people think that they are designed to fail, dell adapters are very expensive

you can read more at:

http://www.laptop-junction.com/toast/content/dell-ac-power-adapter-not-recognized tech problem review

https://getsatisfaction.com/dell/topics/_ac_power_adapter_not_determined_and_power_adapter_wont_work users complain about dell charger

But this is the unique problem with Dell, I've been travel a lot with my laptops the old one have 6 years (inspiron E1705), has mold on the screen, and still it's working 100%

[thaicruze]

Get an ASUS.