Laptops?

[Jim B]

Knock on wood, I've been happy with my Toshiba.

[TheGrey]

I've always had luck with Toshiba Satellites. I also check out Microcenter, to see what they have on sale and/or refurbished.

[clublights]

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.

your lucky on the 07's.....

Notorious for the GFx crd going ... I've had one got repaired under the extended repair program.... died again last year.... not all it's fault ( bosses daughter was using it .. left it on her bed running so it got nice and toasty ..... )

I'm happy with my Mid 2012 retina

see no need to replace it yet!

I just replaced my work laptop( well windows is required to run the controllers I use.. and apple don't make a touch screen...) with a Lenovo Edge 2 ( i7 8gb geforce 940m ) open box from Worst... I mean.. Best Buy for 850... I dunno why Lenovo ham strings such a high spec machine with a 5400rpm Hdd but they did .. thing was taking upwards of 30-60 seconds to fully boot. Dumped that out for an SSD ( 250GB) now it boots in less then 10 .

The Sony Viao I was running before was just fine but I wanted the "flip" style and a hotter gfx card.

[Bailey Guns]

I know some of you have mentioned tablets... If you're going to use it very infrequently you might consider that route. I bought one of the Kindle Fire 8.9s and use it like a laptop. Not great if you need to do business type work...but if you're surfing, emailing, FBing, that sort of thing, they're perfect. They seem (to me, anyway) to have a very stable OS and I never have issues with it that requires a reboot or whatever. The new Fire 10 has the capability of using SD cards, too. They're very fast, durable, much more portable than a laptop, have fantastic screen resolutions and inexpensive. The new 10 is on special right now for $179 (base model). I may just upgrade from the 8.9 HDX.

I have the 8.9 right now. No complaints at all with the exception it doesn't have SD capability. But, the 8.9 HDX has 4G capability...the 10 doesn't. Not important to me but might be for some people.

Unless I need it for some sort of business work I'll never buy another laptop.

[O2HeN2]

...I use a laptop maybe once a month.

So many replies before HoneyBadger asked the really important question: What are you gong to use it for?

O2

[Alpha2]

I've had a lot of trouble with HP laptops where the text input jumps from where I am typing to the location where the cursor was previously. Suddenly you're typing somewhere in the previous text. Extremely annoying. I had to turn off the touch-pad completely to prevent this happening. I use a mouse exclusively, so not a big deal for me. This occurred on the last two HP machines.
My work laptop is a Lenovo, and batteries are really sketchy. My most recent one had to have the battery replaced when it was brand new!
I've beat the heck out of my iPad2 for years with no problems.

[Gman]

I've had a lot of trouble with HP laptops where the text input jumps from where I am typing to the location where the cursor was previously. Suddenly you're typing somewhere in the previous text. Extremely annoying. I had to turn off the touch-pad completely to prevent this happening.

You should be able to adjust the 'palm check' settings if your typing style encroaches on the touchpad.

[Irving]

I've had a lot of trouble with HP laptops where the text input jumps from where I am typing to the location where the cursor was previously. Suddenly you're typing somewhere in the previous text. Extremely annoying. I had to turn off the touch-pad completely to prevent this happening. I use a mouse exclusively, so not a big deal for me. This occurred on the last two HP machines.
My work laptop is a Lenovo, and batteries are really sketchy. My most recent one had to have the battery replaced when it was brand new!
I've beat the heck out of my iPad2 for years with no problems.

I had this problem with my Lenovo for work. Since it was a work machine, we could not adjust any settings. I had to tape a double strip of paper over the pad to reduce sensitivity enough for it to be usable.

[Ah Pook]

I always enjoy computer threads, kinda like caliber debates.

I've used both and like Mac products better. That said, how much computer do you need? Some of the iPads are in the $300-$500 range. I'd do a jail break and call it good.

Used an iPad 2 as a register daily for several years. Surfed the web and did vids with no problems. Sold it with the biz and, as far as I know, it's still going.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I used to build my own PCs, stopped when I got tired of Windows Vista and converted over to Macs. The Asus whitebooks were very well built, excellent value for the money and gave me excellent performance for travel and gaming. Best bet IMO for a solidly built laptop that will just keep going would be a used MacBook Pro from someone who constantly has to have the very latest model.