Computer ordered...ok deal?

[Octopod]

I need a new computer and I have decided a laptop would probably be best since I am back in school. In the past I have just bought my computers from Dell but I am not sure if that is the best choice so I thought I would see if anyone has anything to recommend. I do not want to spend a shit ton on it but price is not that big of a deal really for the right computer.

[Luke]

Google is your friend.

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 15&t=16133

[BigTinz]

Not that you can even buy one these days....but whatever you do don't purchase anything with a celeron processor.

[Luke]

Not that you can even buy one these days....but whatever you do don't purchase anything with a celeron processor.

HEY!

[Anapan]

Acers are affordable, fairly dependable, have good quality fairly rugged hardware compared to higher-priced competitors and are easily downgraded to XP from Vista. Having worked on many laptops recently I'd recommend a mid-to-high end Acer - the Acer Aspires are popular for a reason. Most of the ones I've worked on are still in great working order, even the 5+ year old ones (can't say that about the HP, Compaq, Toshiba and others), but usually have the same vista issues the rest do (vista sucks and will cause problems). I'm fairly concerned about the difficulty in removing vista from the new HPs. I shouldn't have to hack the Installation CD for XP to downgrade them, but that's what it's come to.

[lordofduct]

What do you mean you have to hack the XP disk to downgrade them? What the heck would there be standing in the way? Is there hardware incompatabilites with XP?

If it's hardware incompatabilities... yeah I'm not surprised. XP is older software and the HP is new hardware. There is probably some new chip in it that XP doesn't understand. Try installing Win 98 on semi-new hardware, it'll probably shit a brick not knowing what any of the crap on it is. Or similarly for a while I remember the was an IDE controller out a few years back (the ICH7 something or other) that the latest Linux kernel didn't support yet, a few months later they implemented it in the next kernel, but for a couple months I was with out my Operating System for that mobo.

Comparably I had gotten Vista because XP couldn't understand how to deal with all the IRQ registers for my 2 sound cards, 2 video cards, and 3 capture cards. Every time I booted up only half of them would work... I'd have video and sound, but no capture... next time sound and capture, but no video. And putting it in legacy mode caused it to freak out even more.



oh and @OP - I agree Acer's are pretty nice affordable laptops!
...

On a side note

I've never found anything unfortunate or inherently wrong with Vista. I have found things that some people may not like (options, features, the sort), or the fact that it requires more resources (as most newer OSs do because they expect better hardware to render all the prettiness I like to turn off). Any bugs I have come across were so glaring that I was like "holy crap how'd they let this through"... they more like "ohhh Windows, you never surprise with some odd quark". Basically any complaint I've heard about Vista I always thought to myself, "well yeah, and that's the same problem I had with XP, 98, and any variation of windows."

Aside from that my experience with Vista was pretty much on par with my experience with XP. Really my only personal complaints about Vista have been certain pieces of software not working, but those pieces of software were designed for XP and the way XP deals with hardware... so I wasn't to surprised. It'd be like me complaining why Photoshop doesn't work on Ubuntu. In the end it appears people prefer XP because they are blindly used to XP and how to deal with its quarks, they're there, but they've dealt with them for a decade now and know how to quickly get around them.

With that said I don't use Windows as my primary OS, mostly because I just don't prefer the windows experience at all. But that goes for XP as well and is my opinion. XP and Vista are pretty much on par with each other, and if I HAD to use Windows I'd probably go Vista (actually I just preordered 7)... it's not like my computer can't handle the extra needed resources. And if anyone had complaints about the extra resource requirements, then how about trying to install XP on the same computer you used to have Win98 on... then come back and say it again.

[Limewater]

Having worked on many laptops recently I'd recommend a mid-to-high end Acer - the Acer Aspires are popular for a reason. Most of the ones I've worked on are still in great working order, even the 5+ year old ones (can't say that about the HP, Compaq, Toshiba and others), but usually have the same vista issues the rest do (vista sucks and will cause problems).

My experience with Acer has been exactly the opposite. I am typing this on an Acer Aspire, but the machine has given me nothing but trouble.

* The housing in flimsy. I killed my first hard drive by pressing too hard on the housing above it.
* The screen hinges are too tight, causing the housing to crack.
* I sent in my computer for service due to the cracking at the hinges. They fixed it, but there were new cracks within a couple of months of getting it back. And I'm not even rough with the thing.
* The internal wireless card died within six months of purchase.
* This machine has killed two optical drives. I just keep the second dead drive in here now, since they're a pain to replace and there's no sense in just killing another one.
* One of the feet has long since fallen off, as has the Windows license key sticker.

Now, the machine still functions after 3.5 years, so I guess I need to give it credit for that.

After this computer, I'm not buying another Acer anytime soon. My new laptop that I use for work is a refurbished Dell Latitude e6400. By going refurbished, I was able to get a nice business-class laptop on a platform that will be supported for the next five years for under $650 after all taxes and shipping. Also, with a business-class laptop, you get better build-quality and more standardized parts, finding replacement parts in five years shouldn't be a problem if I'm still using it at that time. You also get much better tech support having a business-class laptop than consumer-grade. I seriously recommend going this route. The Lenovo T400 (I think that's the model) is similar and goes for a similar price.

[Luke]

Suggested reading:

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/152839

[Octopod]

Perhaps I came across wrong. I want a good laptop that is capable of playing games and music and stuff. I would like to get a USB turntable to go with it and I want as large a screen as possible. I just meant that I don’t want to spend like Alienware money on a gaming laptop but I would like it to be a good one if that is possible for under 2 grand or even cheaper. The price is not that big of a deal though. If I can get an awesome one for 5 or 6 hundred bucks all the better but if it is more so be it. Honestly I do not really know about this stuff so I am not sure who makes good laptops. I have actually never owned a laptop before.

Edit: Rereading my initial post I see that I did not state any of that before so I apologize for the confusion. I want one that I can take to school yes, but I am a gamer so I want a gaming computer and I want to use it as my main means of listening to music at home.

[Niode]

Go get a Macbook Pro. Best laptops you can buy if you want something premium. It will play most modern games with Windows installed. Best of all you get to use the far superior OS X. If you are into music creation Logic Studio is ridiculously cheap (mind blowingly cheap if you know somebody with access to the Higher Education discount).