What Notebook/Laptop Brand "Not" to Buy

[indyuk]

Toshiba purchased 1995 still in use now. Has never stopped. Running Windows '98 before Win '95.

Compaq purchased 2006 (HP Architecture Win XP Still running. No Hardware Problems

Sony Vaio 64Bit Purchased 2011, Win 7 Professional 64Bit. Spent most of first year in workshop the back to factory. Has Had two new main boards, New DVD, still very unreliable.

Acer Netbook, total disaster don't want to talk about it.

Next time I buy HP upper range for sure.

[Pib]

...the Toshiba had a big mark on it where my palm used to rest...

Yeap, mine to...after 7 years of use and palms laying on the front of the computer I have large black marks on the left and right hand sides since skin oil and friction has worn off the original silver/gray color. I'm also keeping it in the back of my mind as a small point to consider in my new buy decision...that is, maybe get a black colored laptop to start with...but with my luck the black would wear off and I would have silver/gray spots.

[KRS1]

The last Acer i had lasted 2 years , first the hard drive died, then the chipset fried a year later. Froze and hung up very often along the way. It was a very thin model.

Had a Toshiba before that ALWAYS ran hot, keyboard was like marshmellow, very slow Core 2 duo processor. Ran XP at the time and had many reformatting nights..it never actually 'broke' though.

Lenovo Z380 right now, best darn keyboard i ever had, best speakers ive heard, very compact and has a dedusting function to blow the dust out the vents (love that) had it for about 7 months so far so good...its only a 13.3 " screen though, but thats exactly what i was looking for to travel with.

Nowadays i try to stay away from the really thin laptops, before they were very enticing because of the lightweight...but now i realize they lack ample heatsinking and thermal ventilation because of the thin profiles.

[cacruden]

Even if you want to stick with Windows, I would get an Apple laptop and add Windows to it.... it tends to be the best Windows machine out there and the build quality is very good.

Acer avoid....

you say add windows ti it .this is boot camp right.?

Do all windows programs work ?

One program I use a lot is thai2 English. But it's only on windows.

If this works on a mac ill buy one for xmas. .

Thanks

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

As one person above said there are two good ways to run it. If you basically want Windows for everything then bootcamp installation is the way to go. You are installing windows on the computer and can boot into windows or "OS X". It is running directly on the hardware as it would run on any other computer -- no difference. All programs are compatible.

The second way to run it is to install VMWare Fusion. It is a great product. It creates a virtual environment to install Windows on.... I believe you must install Windows Professional or above in that environment. It runs Windows on top of "OS X" as if it were running on the hardware itself and therefore has a small performance hit - but still works great. It basically is bringing Enterprise grade virtual environments into "OS X". All programs will also run here since you are still running them in a complete copy of Windows. You might have to tweak the settings - such as memory available and number of processors to allow it to use. VMWare provides the same software for Windows, Linux and "OS X". Yes thai2english will run on it.

I use to run VMWare Fusion, but now have no programs that I use on Windows anymore so it sits idle now.

[GBK]

Even if you want to stick with Windows, I would get an Apple laptop and add Windows to it.... it tends to be the best Windows machine out there and the build quality is very good.

Acer avoid....

you say add windows ti it .this is boot camp right.?

Do all windows programs work ?

One program I use a lot is thai2 English. But it's only on windows.

If this works on a mac ill buy one for xmas. .

Thanks

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

As one person above said there are two good ways to run it. If you basically want Windows for everything then bootcamp installation is the way to go. You are installing windows on the computer and can boot into windows or "OS X". It is running directly on the hardware as it would run on any other computer -- no difference. All programs are compatible.

The second way to run it is to install VMWare Fusion. It is a great product. It creates a virtual environment to install Windows on.... I believe you must install Windows Professional or above in that environment. It runs Windows on top of "OS X" as if it were running on the hardware itself and therefore has a small performance hit - but still works great. It basically is bringing Enterprise grade virtual environments into "OS X". All programs will also run here since you are still running them in a complete copy of Windows. You might have to tweak the settings - such as memory available and number of processors to allow it to use. VMWare provides the same software for Windows, Linux and "OS X". Yes thai2english will run on it.

I use to run VMWare Fusion, but now have no programs that I use on Windows anymore so it sits idle now.

I have Windows Home Premium under VMWF and it runs well, with 2Gb of RAM and all the processors it wants allocated. My uses are minimal, but critical, if that makes sense??

[deepcell]

Compaq and HP are both garbage! My compaq survived only 1y2m and I sold it out as the same price of bananas!

ASUS are high quality computers desktop and laptops (for programming tasks, gamming, media, whatever you need..) you can sure trust this brand! I have been using Asus since 10 or more years ago and I have never found one single problem is the motherboards. My last Desktop died of old. ;-)

VAIO is really good computers and well designed, some models are a bit noyse (cause the cooler), but in terms of hardware functionality, no problems at all, most problems caused in vaio are related to software malfunctions for exemple Windows 8, it crashes by itself and you need to refresh or recovery the system, but it is not cause the hardware but software, microsoft release a new version of Windows 8.1 to solve some common problems.

MAC (no discusion about the hardware) is great but expensive than others brands, the most problems I saw about MAC was related to software, also malfunctions of the software. Apple has backdoors for all its programs, then if something just stop working without notice, let the apple technician take care about it. Just make sure you have its warranty active, otherwise you will be charged a lot for the service provided.

Today you have a lot of manufacturers and unfortunatelly some of them assemble their chipsets in a not appropriate way, and then hardwares crash out sometimes!

Another tip is .. pay close attention to the parts of the computer, for example, motherboard intel or asus, memory samsung ... network card, video/sound card or onboard, processor intel, amd, etc.. it is very important you are not going to buy some pcchip or some shit like this..

[rwdrwdrwd]

I've been a Macbook Pro guy for a few years now, and would recommend you consider a used one of those a couple of years old for 18 - 25k rather than a cheap PC model, but I've had a few PC laptops over the last 15 years:

Sony Vaio and Fujitsu Siemens were both excellent - toward the top of the range price wise

Toshiba Satellite was a decent machine - employer supplied, it was a good model

Mid range Dell Inspiron in the early 2000s lasted quite well

Cheapo Compaq was surprisingly good given I spent under 15k on it when my Fujitsu got stolen :'( - it lasted 2 years and gave it to my then girlfriend who used it for at least another 18 months

Cheapo Acer very bad as others have mentioned, chassis basically fell apart within 1 year.

[smccolley]

The Lenova thinkpad models have seriously buggy BIOSs that can ruin a hard drive - stay away!

Avoid any Intel SSD drive, they are plagued with serious data corruption issues as well.

[p_brownstone]

I am glad some of you had good luck with your Toshiba laptops. My first one crashed in a year and a half it had Starter 7 O.S. My second one was Windows 8 and crashed in eight months a Satellite 850. Still under warranty but I would have to take it to Bangkok for service. I had the Windows O.S. replaced in Chiang Mai with Licensed Windows 8 Manufactured in Thailand. Their Quality Control leaves a lot to be desired. The grammar icons are out of order. " is @ and there are more. Thank you all for the advice on a new laptop brand. Got the laptop out of the shop yesterday and am having fits with the new operating system.

If " and @ are reversed etc. you simply need to change the Language settings to English (United States).

Patrick

[MKAsok]

I have to agree about Compaq/HP. My experience of both has been absolutely terrible (admittedly this was about 8 years ago).

I've had a great experience with Vaios. My last 2 laptops (the first was a mid-range, the second a high end model) have been running for 7 and 4 years respectively without a single hardware issue and both of them have been hammered.

I'm looking to buy a new machine, but I can't find anything I really like in the new Vaio ranges which now seem kind of all over the place and incoherent, so I'll probably go for a Macbook Pro.

[apiwan]

Thanks mate. I'll look into it

Sent from my GT-I9305 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[GBK]

I have to agree about Compaq/HP. My experience of both has been absolutely terrible (admittedly this was about 8 years ago).

I've had a great experience with Vaios. My last 2 laptops (the first was a mid-range, the second a high end model) have been running for 7 and 4 years respectively without a single hardware issue and both of them have been hammered.

I'm looking to buy a new machine, but I can't find anything I really like in the new Vaio ranges which now seem kind of all over the place and incoherent, so I'll probably go for a Macbook Pro.

Why not the Macbook Air 13"? Save yourself a bunch of weight. Very good resolution, unless Retina is critical?

[MKAsok]

Why not the Macbook Air 13"? Save yourself a bunch of weight. Very good resolution, unless Retina is critical?

Yeah, I want the Retina screen. Also, a 13" is too small for me. I won't be moving it around that much anyway, it's more of a desktop replacement.

I do have my concerns about the MBP though, primarily that everything is now glued to the motherboard making repairs difficult and pretty much impossible to upgrade the RAM or the SSD. Also, no dedicated graphics card in the new model.

[GBK]

Why not the Macbook Air 13"? Save yourself a bunch of weight. Very good resolution, unless Retina is critical?

Yeah, I want the Retina screen. Also, a 13" is too small for me. I won't be moving it around that much anyway, it's more of a desktop replacement.

I do have my concerns about the MBP though, primarily that everything is now glued to the motherboard making repairs difficult and pretty much impossible to upgrade the RAM or the SSD. Also, no dedicated graphics card in the new model.

Yes, Apple have virtually forced us to buy BTO out of the gate, which annoys me. Keep an eye on www.macsales.com for an eventual aftermarket SSD for the now proprietary versions that Apple use. I have bought from them many times and their customer service is excellent. Just don't buy anything made by NewerTech - it's all crap. They have 24/7 live chat and it really is a human on the other end!

Desktop replacement? How about the 27" iMac? The RAM is upgradeable in that model, but not in the 21"...

Unless, of course, you will want to cart it around occasionally?

[MKAsok]

^Thanks for the advice. All very helpful. I will be carting it around occasionally, so the iMac is a no go really.

[GBK]

You can also save yourself 5% by going to the bottom of the store page and clicking on the Education Store... ;-)

Or, just click this link:

http://store.apple.com/th-k12/buy-mac/macbook-pro

THB69,404 with 16Gb RAM.

Edited October 31, 2013 by GBK

[MKAsok]

^Wow, excellent. Thanks for that, but aren't they going to require some kind of proof of being a student or something?

[GBK]

Nope! ;-)

I would imagine they gave up on Thailand long ago...

Notice there are no Apple Stores here, only Authorised Resellers? I wonder why..?

I have 3 kids in school anyway, so I'm not telling porkies. Much.

Edited October 31, 2013 by GBK

[MKAsok]

^Nice one. Thanks again for that.

Pib - apologies for somewhat derailing the thread. I'll start a new one if I need to know anything else about this prospective purchase.

[GBK]

Glad I could help.

[watcharacters]

Splurge on the best HP.

After that fails buy a Mac.

[Jib Teenuc]

Been in the business since 1982, so over 30 years. Frontline sales and technical support, so I know my craft.

Avoid HP like the plague.

Avoid anything brginning with the letter "A" (Acer, Asus...ermmmmm Amstrad).

Sony are good when they work but a nightmare when they fail (Sony not interested in talking to you unless you spending more money with them).

I swear by Lenovo.

Built to IBM standards.

Enough said.

Samsung are pretty good.

Fujitsu have the best backup and support, bar none.

Edited November 1, 2013 by Jib Teenuc

[Pib]

Jib, What's your opinion on Toshiba? Thanks.

Sent from my Samsung S4 (GT-I9500)

[manarak]

Been in the business since 1982, so over 30 years. Frontline sales and technical support, so I know my craft.

Avoid HP like the plague.

Avoid anything brginning with the letter "A" (Acer, Asus...ermmmmm Amstrad).

Sony are good when they work but a nightmare when they fail (Sony not interested in talking to you unless you spending more money with them).

I swear by Lenovo.

Built to IBM standards.

Enough said.

Samsung are pretty good.

Fujitsu have the best backup and support, bar none.

which Lenovo model would you recommend that includes the following features:

- dual harddrives with RAID-1 support

- dedicated VGA

- WXGA screen. nowadays it's mostly just 15.6", gone are the days of 17.3" WUXGA, sadly (that's 1920x1200).

- USB3 ports

nice to have: TV tuner with remote control and firewire port.

[Bpuumike]

After having owned 3 in a row, I will no longer buy HP. The first (a desktop) was excellent, the second (a higher end lap-top, 50k about 5 years ago), still pretty good but not without a number of issues at times, but the last one that we got for my other half (a cheaper 22k b model) has just been horrible.

(I got an Asus N56V to replace it and it's just great- a truly lovely piece of kit).

Have had major problems with HP cooling fans and replacements "not available"

Am very happy with Acer and Lenovo good too.

[watcharacters]

I still have an old acer laptop that works fine not sure why people do not like them.

Now HP that is scary shit, i would never buy an hp laptop again!!!

but i had few or little problems with dell and acer

i DO want to ask

what laptop SHOULD we buy???

who makes the best ones from low end to high?

Best low end Asus

Best high end MacBook Pro

Avoid, HP, Acer & Samsung.

.

Apple for me while the Missus uses Samsung.

[BKKdreaming]

I usually buy used 1-2 year old laptops that someone sold as they upgraded to a new one ,

I bought a New Panasonic Toughbook W8 a few years ( $400 ) , worked great until a few months ago , but now it will not charge up ,

might bring it to BKK next time and have someone open it up........

[Guest]

Don't buy Lenovo Thinkpad Edge series. Lenovo Thinkpads are generally good, but Edge is very low build quality. Mine broke in just a few months.. and has been acting as server ever since.

[loeuftok]

got plenty laptop over the last 20 years.

I still have a compaq with stylus that I baught in 92. still working, but unusable by today's standards.

got a Dell high end inspiron (125K baht) that lasted 2.5 years, motherboard fried.

got a fujitsu siemens that lasted 9 month, motherboard fried.

have 2 Sony Vaio, one is 4 .5 year old and still working fine, but the screen hinges could not bear my son's handling. The other one is 2 years old and ok but dvd out of service (doesn't open anymore).

got an Acer that lasted 18 month, gpu fried.

Had a Samsung that lasted 18 month or so, can't remember what happened with it.

Had a toshiba that I gave to a nephew after 1 month, cause I did not like it at all.

Have a samsung netbook (nc 10) still working 24/7, even though it got serious beating from my 4 years old kid.

Had a few other that I don't remember, but for sure they did not last more than 18 months.

Now I have a MSI. Definately the best machine I ever had. 15" full HD, 1 ssd OCZ 128GB, 1 HD seagate 750 GB 7200 rpm, 16 Gb ram, 2 Gb amd GPU, 2 external monitors plus the laptop screen, 3 USB3, 1 USB2. Only draw back, it's a bit bulky and heavy, but that is nothing when compared to graphic capabilities.

Don't know how long it will survive, it's only 3 months old.

My business partner went through a bunch of Acer,Asus,HP,Compaq and have had plenty problems with them. Now he is on a Macbook, but says it's not worth the price.

[Jib Teenuc]

Jib, What's your opinion on Toshiba? Thanks.

Sent from my Samsung S4 (GT-I9500)

Hi Pib,

Toshiba are rather hit-and-miss, same as is the case with Sony (both often seem to concentrate on style over substance - a likely throwback to each manufacturer having evolved into the PC market from their core audio/visual TV and Hi-Fi foundations).

Additionally, it's not unknown to strip a Toshiba down and find not a single component as having been Toshiba manufactured......eg. IBM hard drive, Panasonic optical drive, Samsung screen etc., etc. This, in itself, need not be a bad thing but it does seriously compromise their own quality-control aspect (particularly if they have bought and assembled - based on component cost, rather than having manufactured the unit, themselves).

Hope that helps.