Re: Budget general purpose laptops - overall quality


"Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:3a1e4$494afe54$14815@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
FOR A CHILD, I'd get a Toshiba laptop and get a Toshiba warranty with ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE COVERAGE (not all warranties have this, and it will cost more than a warranty that doesn't cover accidents). I am not recommending Toshiba because the build quality will be better, but because support is better. The other brand I'd recommend for the same reason is Lenovo, but I don't know if they offer an extended warranty with accidental damage coverage, but I do know that Toshiba does.

It's not necessary to spend a lot of money on the laptop .... $500 to $700 will do it. I'd avoid any with a Celeron processor, and make the low end a "dual core Pentium" processor. The step up, about $100-$200 more, is a Core 2 Duo, nice but not absolutely necessary for most users.


leehanken wrote:
Over the years I have recommended or bought budget laptops for a
number of people, and I am trying to gain some wisdom from my
experiences.

1. I bought an Advent laptop (PC World's own brand) for a relative
about four or five years ago, with wifi and windows XP. It has been
well looked after, but the power connector broke (after the warranty
had expired) and had to be repaired at considerable cost. Now the same
thing is happening again, the cable has to be plugged just right or
the external power goes off and on.

2. I recommended a similar laptop for a friend, and told them to
ignore the insurance that PC World sells, as they had a tight budget.
Then a year down the line their child spilt liquid on the keyboard,
which is non-replaceable. From then on they have had to plug in an
external keyboard.

3. I bought a budget laptop for another relative, and it seemed to be
okay, except that to enable wi-fi you have to press a button and wait
about twenty seconds. The only workaround is to never shutdown the
system but always hibernate it instead, then wi-fi is always enabled.

4. The most recent laptop I bought for someone was a proper brand
model running vista, and fingers crossed it seems to be okay.

5. I have access to second hand laptops made by IBM and Toshiba, and
am impressed that they still work perfectly many years after they were
made.

This brings me to my current dilema. I have been asked to recommend
two new laptops, one for a child to use for school work and playing
games and another for a novice computer user. For practical reasons
they have to be bought from a shop rather than ordered online. I hate
wasting other people's money, but I am now reluctant to recommend a
budget model for either, because of my experiences with poor build
quality, poor design and difficulty of repair which can significantly
reduce the useful lifetime of the system. I am also aware that paying
for insurance and technical support may be worth the extra cost if the
laptop is to be in a high risk environment or used by someone with
little experience. I would be interested in any views about these
different trade offs.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

I have a Lenovo of the IdeaPad series. I haven't had it long enough to comment on the long term durability but I'm impressed by the build quality, and the general 'lack' of useless bundled junk that seems to slow down every other "branded" computer I've owned. It's relatively low spec'd but it's plenty fast enough for Photoshop CS4 and Dreamweaver. I paid $600 at Microcenter. I'm totally happy with it and I expect it to last a long time, hope I'm right.

Alan

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