Recommend me a Decent Laptop

[TheyCallMeTheSwede]

I have been thinking about getting a PC Laptop mainly because I want to start collecting PC games, playing Abandonware games on DosBox on a Mac was fun and all, but I felt like I need to get myself legit copies. Plus, I also want to play games from the post-DOS era, in other words, the games you can't play on DOS (ex. Myst, Jedi Knight, Half Life), How powerful the PC is I don't care as long I could play Left 4 Dead without any troubles.

So, is there any good ones out there?

[avrame]

It really depends on your scope of purchasing, if you are limited to a local purchase, hit up a local bestbuy or something. I purchased a laptop their for my finace last xmas, and I must say, for a stock consumer PC, the specs and pricing were really decent, I get roughly 30-40 fps on L4D on it, and that was a $800 laptop a year ago.

My opinion for a local laptop purchase:
HP - decent driver support, lots of bloatware, great spec for the price, lower end tends to feel cheap/plasticy
Sony - crappy driver support, low end it horrible, high end is amazing, sleek models but they'll eat your wallet alive
Toshiba - great spec for the price, awesome driver support, least concerned with style (ugly)
Dell - Middle ground for everything, but stylish models are available at a high price (Alienware, adamo XPS)

As long as the laptop has dual core, 4GB of memory and a dedicated GPU, you're golden for what you are looking for. Also, a $300 laptop is just that, a $300 laptop, you get what you pay for

[J T]

I just saw this article for the new Dell XPS laptops. They look pretty good.

http://kotaku.com/5669946/new-xps-lapto ... l-speakers

[thekorean12]

I purchased a Sony Vaio E Series at the beginning of the summer and I'm really happy with it. They just came out with the new models that have better graphics and a 1080p screen for the same price. Prices start at $650, I bought mine for $1100. With the options you'll probably want, I'd say the price should be around $1000+. Again, I'm not sure of your price range, but I'm very happy with my purchase. They build quality is really nice, for another $100 you get the "premium" 6 cell battery that puts you at about 3 to 4 hours normal usage, which isn't bad for something that isn't a mac.

[J T]

My opinion for a local laptop purchase:
HP - decent driver support, lots of bloatware, great spec for the price, lower end tends to feel cheap/plasticy
Sony - crappy driver support, low end it horrible, high end is amazing, sleek models but they'll eat your wallet alive
Toshiba - great spec for the price, awesome driver support, least concerned with style (ugly)
Dell - Middle ground for everything, but stylish models are available at a high price (Alienware, adamo XPS)

That's actually a pretty good assessment. I haven't used Toshiba, but I have used all of the other three and as an overview, that's pretty much right on target with my experience.

I have an HP dv5 that I bought for about $1000 after adding a 3 year warranty at Fry's Electronics. It's been a great laptop. I would not recommend the warranty though. My screen started to flicker pretty bad this summer, it started out very sporadic, but it got to where I couldn't use it for very long without having it flicker every few minutes. I took it into Fry's to get it fixed. They kept it for FOUR WEEKS only to tell me that they couldn't replicate the problem and were not going to fix it. I went down there to argue with them because it shouldn't have taken 4 weeks to figure that out and they should replace the screen just for having me wait so long. I opened it up and within a few minutes while arguing with them, my screen began to flicker again and I was able to show them the problem. They took my laptop back to have the technician look at it again. It's almost 2 weeks now since that point and I still don't know what's going on with my laptop. They let me borrow a Sony Vaio though, so I'm using that at the moment while they twiddle their thumbs and are probably just busy playing my videogames while I wait for a call back. Worst customer service ever.

[KDub]

I had a nicer post made and for some reason got logged out so I'll sum it up.

While that chart from engadget can be argued to death it does show a pretty true degree of reliability between each system from my experience. Dell is getting back on track but you should really stay away from HP especially their laptops.

Sony are nice but for the difference in price I'd say choose a Toshiba or Asus that is comparable.

I'd really say go for an Asus. Asus makes most parts you find in high end computers and now that they are making their own computers and cutting out the middle man you are getting a nice piece of hardware at a price cut.

[s1mplehumar]

I thought Lenova would be a little more stout than that.

[Hatta]

I'm kind of shocked that Sony beat Apple.

[avrame]

I thought Lenova would be a little more stout than that.

Can't help it, they released their cheaper 'Ideapad' line, and with that, problems ensued. I'm positive that Ideapad accounts for 70%+ of the problems, because I haven't had any issues with my work laptop.

I'm kind of shocked that Sony beat Apple.

I'm not really, while the driver and software support could be better, they use quality parts and charge up the yahoo for it.

[thekorean12]

I'm not really, while the driver and software support could be better, they use quality parts and charge up the yahoo for it.

I'm not sure what driver and software support you're talking about. I don't think it's bad... They have a good vaio update program and of course windows update. Between the two of those I haven't had any problems at all. At the same time, I don't use too many of the preloaded programs on my laptop, but the ones I have tried work fine. Really all of the vaio software is for people who aren't competent with computers so I don't think there's really anything to be turned off about there. Price is the only negative aspect for me.