Laptops?

[lex137]

+1 for asus I use to buy expensive laptops, but really I was only using for email, web browsing, this site, and porn... No need for an expensive laptop to do that.

[ColoradoTJ]

+1 for asus I use to buy expensive laptops, but really I was only using for email, web browsing, this site, and porn... No need for an expensive laptop to do that.

Have you ever watched porn on a Retna Screen? Missing. Out.

[cstone]

Used to be $200 is the most I would spend on a computer, but that was when we had desktops. Now the most I will spend is $300 because everyone wants a laptop.

I generally look for Dell and Lenovo as they are simple to work on and easy to find AC adapters. Hard drives and RAM are simple upgrades. I usually end up with i5 processors and don't care much about battery life as most of the laptops end up being plugged in somewhere and sitting on the user's lap.

Computers are commodities. Everyone in the family has USB thumbdrives for their data and 98% of their computer use is on the Internet.

I do have a +10 year old Mac G4 Powerbook up in the bedroom running OSX. That thing is heavy and slow, but makes a nice check weather, news, email, stocks in the morning machine. When it dies, I will put one of my 5+ year old refurbished laptops up there.

When they die, I strip the hard drives, optical drive, and RAM out of them and they go in the garbage. Hard drives get wiped and if large enough get used to store long term data backups (plug in, load data, unplug, put on shelf). I need to get rid of some of the old sticks of RAM as some are too small in capacity and no longer fit in any machines I have. Sometimes when an optical drive goes bad on a working machine, I can swap in one of the older ones I have sitting around. They don't get used much anymore.

I have gotten rid of a lot of old stuff, but there is probably a lot more I should get rid of.

[blacklabel]

Don't forget to look at a Chromebook if it meets your needs. I love my Toshiba Chromebook 2.

[Honey Badger282.8]

I spent $2500 on a MacBook Pro back in 2007 and got 7 years of everyday usage before I retired it to be used as a home media server running Plex. Got another year out of it before the hard drive finally crashed. A simple formatting would have fixed it but I opted to replace it with a 1TB hybrid drive for $100. The damn thing is still going strong. In the beginning of 2014 I got a new MacBook Pro Retina with the discrete graphics card for about $2500 and I fully expect to get at least 7 years of use out of it.

[Gman]

I've had pretty good luck with HPs. I have an HP Elitebook 2530p that I bought refurbished from Newegg back in 2008 that runs 24x7. I did have to replace the little 1.8" HDD after 5 years. Went the SSD route and it's better than it was new. I like what I'm seeing from HP Inc. now that the PC side of the business spun off from HP Enterprise.

Surface Pros and the Surface Book are buggy. Macbook Pro's are nice (I own one), but extremely expensive when you load them up (can get mobile professional workstation class systems for less). Dells were being made on the cheap while the company was public, but they're improving now that they're private again. I don't have much experience with the ASUS and Acer other than some older netbooks.

I hated Windows 8/8.1 and could tell it was likely to be the next Vista. Migrated most of my personal systems From Windows 7 to Windows 10 and am enjoying using it.

If you decide to go the Apple route, you could Bootcamp the system with Windows or run Windows as a virtual machine on Parallels or VMware Fusion.

[68Charger]

I will say there are classes of laptops in the same manufacturer... HP consumer stuff is mediocre at best... My oldest daughter has one.

Their business class is good stuff, but pricey.. I've got an elitebook 8440p I put through hell, and it's my primary laptop right now, because my elitebook 840 has had a hdd failure... The 8440p is a little slow, but functional


Had another 8440p that was upgraded to the 840 in a"PC refresh". That one literally hit pavement in a motorcycle incident, and kept ticking. It had a dented corner, but was in service for more than a year after that.

[Gman]

We had a lot of issues at work with the Intel 840 G1, particularly HDDs. Switched to the 745 G2 AMD platform with SSDs and they've been really solid. I hated the switch to the flat black finish. Looks like you were eating a bucket of KFC when you touched it - absolute fingerprint magnets. Fortunately the next gen has gone back to silver.

We had an Elitebook 6930p that was in a case runover in a rental car parking lot. The laptop had a subtle curve to it, but it still booted up and functioned.

[HoneyBadger]

I came back to this thread to add another thought that might be worthwhile, but it looks like blacklabel beat me to it: Depending on what you really need it for, a Chromebook might be in your best interest. It might help us if we had a better understanding of what you plan to use it for.

[wctriumph]

I have been using a Acer next to the cheapest model nearly daily for almost, I can't remember how many years. Cost me like $325 with Windows 7 included. No issues.