Laptops

[Edmonton Mike]

Thinking about buying one with all the Black Friday deals and whatnot. I don't know shit about them though.
I'm not a gamer. All I do really is browse, watch por...music videos, Netflix, some streaming and use EHM for this league.

Any advice? Brands I should avoid? Details and specs that shouldn't be overlooked?

[Jets GM]

Would like some advice like this as well....

[Parker]

I've bought ASUS for my last three laptops and I haven't had a single problem with any of them. I'm sold on them for life now. They have a pretty decent range of products, and they come with a two-year warranty rather than the one-year you see with pretty much every other manufacturer.

[SharksGM]

Thinkpad 4 lyfe.

I would never buy a laptop without a trackpoint or similar alternative to a trackpad. Hell, I basically don't use the trackpad on my laptop anymore. Plus thinkpad keyboards are much more usable than other laptop keyboard I've tried.

[Parker]

I just use a mouse.

EDIT: I should clarify though that I didn't buy my laptop for its utility as a standalone with no peripherals attached. When I travel for work I take a mouse and a gaming keyboard (Logitech G35) with me, and sometimes even a 24" display as well. I hate trackpads too, and the ASUS keyboard is admittedly not that great.

[Montreal Canadiens]

Can't go wrong with a MAC. Except EHM doesn't work on it.

I'd stay far far far away from Toshiba, and gateway, but either than that, anything with a quad-core processor would do the trick. We have HP's here at work and they've been good to us and I have a HP at home and I've had it for 6-7 years now with no issues.

HP's usually are decently priced as well. Thinkpad's are pretty good for a business computer (my dad has one, and has had it for years). Small, compact, good HD, decently fast as you're just doing the essentials.

[Parker]

I've had terrible experiences with HP. My last non-ASUS laptop was an HP Pavilion that had a design flaw causing the graphics chipset to overheat and fail prematurely. It died after I had it for about six months. It would power up but wouldn't POST at all. After a two-month turnaround to get it back, I discovered it wasn't fixed at all; they replaced a hard drive that was fine before I sent it in, and it still wouldn't POST. I had to send it in again, gone for another two months, and this time they replaced the entire mainboard, but the same issue happened again four months later. By this time it was out of warranty and despite HP recognizing the issue as a design flaw on the American model of my laptop and extending the warranty to cover this issue for three years after the purachse date, they didn't extend the warranty on the Canadian verison (exactly the same hardware but with a slightly different model number) and refused to extend my warranty despite their incompetence in not fixing it during the first two-month period that they had it, so I was fucked. For $1600 I had a working laptop for a total of eight months. I had no intention of paying out of pocket to repair that piece of shit, so I ran it over with my Jeep, bought an ASUS, and never looked back.

I will never buy another HP product again, and I vehemently recommend against them whenever anyone asks. It's funny because at work I'm the "computer guy" (even though I'm not really) and everyone asks me what to buy. I figure I've probably cost HP about $25k in lost sales in the last five years. I consider that a good start.

[SharksGM]

Asus has the lowest 3-year return rates on average and HP the highest. However, keep in mind that those results are averaged over many different product lines, so they don't necessarily tell you who makes the best products at any given price point. Ideapads are cheaper than Thinkpads but with worse build quality and fewer features, so I wouldn't recommend them.

[Montreal Canadiens]

Well I think that list is a little bit flawed as I use to work repairing laptops and all we got non stops were Toshiba's.

However, you have to also consider how many were sold? How many HP's were sold in that time-frame compared to ASUS. That was also in 2012, where the HP Compaq was out ,which was a complete pile of shit. The Pavilion is pretty good, come to think of it my mom has an HP too.

I would compare it to the Dodge Grand Caravan. Worst ratings on the internet for mini-vans, but it's also the best selling minivan for the past 4-5 years?

[SharksGM]

Well I think that list is a little bit flawed as I use to work repairing laptops and all we got non stops were Toshiba's.

However, you have to also consider how many were sold? How many HP's were sold in that time-frame compared to ASUS. That was also in 2012, where the HP Compaq was out ,which was a complete pile of shit. The Pavilion is pretty good, come to think of it my mom has an HP too.

They're percentages returned, the amount sold is irrelevant. It does matter if companies make more crappy low-budget laptops with high failure rates, since that will bring averages up, but it still means HP's laptops are twice as likely to get returned than Asus.

[TorontoGM]

My last two have been HP and I have no complaints.

Toshiba is terrible and the keyboard is always fucken garbage. My mom just bought a brand new ASUS which looks pretty solid but I haven't used it yet.

[Jets GM]

I've had terrible experiences with HP. My last non-ASUS laptop was an HP Pavilion that had a design flaw causing the graphics chipset to overheat and fail prematurely. It died after I had it for about six months. It would power up but wouldn't POST at all. After a two-month turnaround to get it back, I discovered it wasn't fixed at all; they replaced a hard drive that was fine before I sent it in, and it still wouldn't POST. I had to send it in again, gone for another two months, and this time they replaced the entire mainboard, but the same issue happened again four months later. By this time it was out of warranty and despite HP recognizing the issue as a design flaw on the American model of my laptop and extending the warranty to cover this issue for three years after the purachse date, they didn't extend the warranty on the Canadian verison (exactly the same hardware but with a slightly different model number) and refused to extend my warranty despite their incompetence in not fixing it during the first two-month period that they had it, so I was fucked. For $1600 I had a working laptop for a total of eight months. I had no intention of paying out of pocket to repair that piece of shit, so I ran it over with my Jeep, bought an ASUS, and never looked back.

I will never buy another HP product again, and I vehemently recommend against them whenever anyone asks. It's funny because at work I'm the "computer guy" (even though I'm not really) and everyone asks me what to buy. I figure I've probably cost HP about $25k in lost sales in the last five years. I consider that a good start.

Funniest thing I've read all week.

[Montreal Canadiens]

Well I think that list is a little bit flawed as I use to work repairing laptops and all we got non stops were Toshiba's.

However, you have to also consider how many were sold? How many HP's were sold in that time-frame compared to ASUS. That was also in 2012, where the HP Compaq was out ,which was a complete pile of shit. The Pavilion is pretty good, come to think of it my mom has an HP too.

They're percentages returned, the amount sold is irrelevant. It does matter if companies make more crappy low-budget laptops with high failure rates, since that will bring averages up, but it still means HP's laptops are twice as likely to get returned than Asus.

How would it be irrelevant? ASUS might have only sold 10 machines compared to HP's 10,000. Of course more HP people would have more issues than the 1.5 ASUS people.

[SharksGM]

How would it be irrelevant? ASUS might have only sold 10 machines compared to HP's 10,000. Of course more HP people would have more issues than the 1.5 ASUS people.

Do you not understand what a percentage is? Christ.

[Montreal Canadiens]

No, please define it for me.

Do you not understand that HP probably sold tens of thousands (maybe even hundreds) more machines than ASUS thus would have more complaints?

[SharksGM]

So it's a good thing that link I posted, which you presumably clicked on and read, quite clearly lists percentages of laptops returned and not raw numbers, you stubborn ass?

[Montreal Canadiens]

Yes.....but....wouldn't you agree due to the sales of HP compared to sales of ASUS, there would probably be a chance to have more upset customers, hence more product being returned.

Going back to my original comparison.....the dodge grand caravan......worst reviews online....but best selling minvan for as far back as I can remember....why does it have bad reviews? Because there is 10's of million of them sold each year that they will have some bad customers.

Why would HP have 25 % compared to ASUS at 15 % or the rest of them lower? Probably because HP sold way way way more product than all of them combined, hence more opportunity to have upset customers, hence more of them returning something, hence the higher percentage, hence do you understand this yet or not.

[Parker]

The reason the Grand Caravan is the best-selling minivan is its low price compared to its competition. There's a reason so many people complain about them; they're crappy vehicles and they haven't been a quality build since the early 90's when Chrysler cemented its reputation as THE minivan builder. Ever since then, their advertising has been a fallacy of argumentum ad populum, meaning that they advertise them as the "best-selling minivan" appealing to people's beliefs that if more people buy a Caravan than any other minivan, it must be the best one. By that metric, a Honda Civic is a better car than a Mercedes S-Class, because Honda sells more Civics than Mercedes sells S-Class cars. If you can find me one person with an S-Class Mercedes who would be willing to trade that car for the same model year Honda Civic, that person is probably too dumb to live.

Caravans are great sellers DESPITE their build quality, and the percentage of complaints has nothing to do with the number they sell, it has to do with the percent of people who complain. 10 complaints out of 100 vehicles sold is not a higher complaint percentage than 1 complaint out of 5 vehicles sold. This is basic math.

[Parker]

In hockey terms:

Who's the better goalie? The guy who lets in 5 goals on 100 shots, or the guy who lets in 2 goals on 10 shots?

[SharksGM]

Yes.....but....wouldn't you agree due to the sales of HP compared to sales of ASUS, there would probably be a chance to have more upset customers, hence more product being returned.

No, HP laptops have a high probability of being returned because they are cheap pieces of crap. They sell well because they are cheap. Not surprisingly, the Dodge Caravan is also a cheap piece of shit, which sells well because it's cheap, but gets shitty reviews because it's shitty.

Why would HP have 25 % compared to ASUS at 15 % or the rest of them lower?

BECAUSE THEY ARE BAD.

In hockey terms:

Who's the better goalie? The guy who lets in 5 goals on 100 shots, or the guy who lets in 2 goals on 10 shots?

No you see, Ilya Bryzgalov has a bad sv% because he faces so many shots.

[Virtual Jarmo]

I hate Windows 8, so I won't be much help in this discussion. Since I've seriously needed a computer, so around high school, I've had only two Compaq/HP desktops and the one lasted nearly 10 years before a power surge and subsequent hard drive meltdown killed it. My Compaq laptop overheats and the processor speed is terribly slow now, though I think a lot of that is because I went without a desktop for a year, so my laptop got way too much use. But there are definitely overheating problems with them, so I'd probably stay away from that.

Unfortunately, there aren't any Micro Centers in Canada as far as I know. A lot of people I know rave about their refurbished products that come cheap and are worked on by total nerds. I'd go the refurb route if I was getting one so I could hopefully get one with Windows 7.

[Jungle Cats]

I have an MSi laptop, which has been mostly fantastic aside from two things - Windows 8, and being basically in the wilderness when it comes to tech support. Unless I learn Taiwanese, because they just don't have much to offer me en Anglais.