What kind of laptop are you using?

[anitram]

Just curious because I recently had a not-so-good experience with a Sony, whereas the Toshiba and IBM I've used previously never had an issue.

Any thoughts?

 

[ntalwar]

I own a lightweight Acer, which I can't recall having had any issues with. It has served me well at home and while traveling. The price was great as well.

 

[U2Man]

I'm using an acer too. I recommend.

 

[Mr. BAW]

BAW and I have a Compac Presario that's been everywhere we've been, airports, local and distant hotels, airplanes, car trunks, its a workhorse and (knock on wood) so very dependable...

 

[Liesje]

HP Pavilion zt1000. HPs aren't great, but I've never owned anything but (because they are cheap and widely available) and have never had a problem tech support couldn't help fix within an hour. My laptop is almost 5 years old and is in amazingly good condition. The hard drive is about to die, but it's probably age and environment (it was 115 degree out here for a long time, very humid, stickiness in the computer = not good).

If I were to buy one tomorrow, I'd get a Toshiba satellite. Everything I need at great prices! I used to like IBM/Lenovo but not now that they've moved to Japan I think their tech support is TERRIBLE (we use these standard for our laptops at work so we have to call on a weekly basis).

 

[anitram]

My new laptop is a Toshiba Tecra (it's a business user machine, rather than the Satellite which is more for home owners). So far I'm absolutely loving it.

 

[tpsglick2424]

I have a Mac laptop and I had have this laptop for about 3 years and it is very reliable and has not screwed up once..

 

[anitram]

I thought about a MacBook Pro originally but I can't run ExamSoft and some other things on it so that means I wouldn't be able to write my exams on it at law school which is a big pain in the ass.

 

[Cleasai]

HP Pavilion zt1000. HPs aren't great, but I've never owned anything but (because they are cheap and widely available) and have never had a problem tech support couldn't help fix within an hour.

I agree with everything except for the Tech Support part. I had called them up to ask a simple yes or no question. Instead of simply answering me they wanted to charge me a freaking $45 one-time service fee! I ended up getting my question answered for free by a kid behind the counter at CompUSA.

I work off of a HP Pavilion zx5078cl In less than a year I had the Hard Drive and Power Adapter die out on me. I've been told that you are not s'posed to leave laptops running 24/7 as the hard drives cannot handle it like regular desktop hard drives. That's probably why it's breaking down on me.

 

[ntalwar]

A general notebook note:

DALLAS - Dell Inc. said Monday it will recall 4.1 million notebook computer batteries because they can overheat and catch fire.

A Dell spokesman said the batteries were made by Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). and placed in notebooks that were shipped between April 1, 2004, and July 18 of this year.

On the news (NBC TV), they also said some HPs and Apples use the same Sony battery as the Dell.

 

[Liesje]

I agree with everything except for the Tech Support part. I had called them up to ask a simple yes or no question. Instead of simply answering me they wanted to charge me a freaking $45 one-time service fee! I ended up getting my question answered for free by a kid behind the counter at CompUSA.

I work off of a HP Pavilion zx5078cl In less than a year I had the Hard Drive and Power Adapter die out on me. I've been told that you are not s'posed to leave laptops running 24/7 as the hard drives cannot handle it like regular desktop hard drives. That's probably why it's breaking down on me.

I've never called HP tech support. I use the e-mail on their webpage and I've never waited more than an hour for a response. It's faster to e-mail back and forth than to call. They've always given great advice, especially when I tell them I'm a computer technician, they'll skip the obvious stuff and tell me what I really need to hear.

I never turn off my laptop, but I have the discs turn off after a certain period of time and am good with the cooling pad. I even leave it on while I'm transporting it in my backpack. The problem with laptop hard drives is overheating, so yeah well-built desktop with better fans is not endangered by the heat, but as long as you're aware of this and use a cooling pad, there's no reason the hard drive shouldn't last.


The Dell overheating problem is no news to me. I've never met a single Dell laptop user that hasn't complained about overheating causing crashes and random shut-downs. I recommend Dell desktops, but not laptops.

 

[tpsglick2424]

I thought about a MacBook Pro originally but I can't run ExamSoft and some other things on it so that means I wouldn't be able to write my exams on it at law school which is a big pain in the ass.

 

[Angela Harlem]

I have an HP and it's brilliant. But it's new so it'd want to be. It's big, fast, reliable, pretty, thin, huge widescreen, I love it.

 

[Kristie]

i have a dell inspiron B130
it's not fancy, but it does what I need it to... never had any trouble with it overheating.
It's weathered 3 months in the Caribbean with no air conditioning... so it's got my seal of approval.

Well, we'll see if it makes it back home alive next week...

 

[neutral]

A G4 Powerbook, I really love it. I also have a Dell Inspiron around here somewhere, haven't used it in ages but it was okay for the price I guess. (was around $600 new )

 

[Liesje]

Anyone here affected by the Dell recall? A bunch of my co-workers have to send in batteries. Apparently, the'yre being pretty serious about it since they can combust and are thus a huge threat to planes, since so many people travel with laptops now. I guess I'm lucky mine is too old

 

[Kristie]

no, I checked it out yesterday and mine's not affected... though I bought it within the time period and it is of a likely model.

We also have a Toshiba Satellite 4100XDVD laptop here that recently pooped out... sold in 2000 for like $3000. When you try and turn it on it says something like "insert system disk"... which might mean the hard drive is corrupted, I think. This is bad because we have many tens of thousands of artifacts catalogued on there that were never backed up.

 

[Liesje]

I had a computer the other day that didn't think it had a hard drive and I booted it off of some random diagnostics CD and was able to open the command prompt, run a checkdisk, and then it worked again.

Also, sometimes if you can't boot from the drive, but it's not physically damaged, you can connect it to another computer, boot that computer (off it's own HD), and then access it like any other disc drive in My Computer. That's how we retrieve really-supa-important data from HDs that otherwise refuse to boot.

 

[Kristie]

since we don't have a diagnostic cd... My next attempt was just to take out the hard drive and put it back in and see if that works, and then take out the hard drive and see if I can connect it to another laptop, and THEN get a little converter thingy and hook it up to one of the desktops (like you said).

 

[the rockin edge]

A G4 Powerbook, I really love it.

mines the 12".

 

[Dismantled]

I have an IBM thinkpad I love it bought it before IBM sold

 

[The OOTS]

We also have a Toshiba Satellite 4100XDVD laptop here that recently pooped out... sold in 2000 for like $3000. When you try and turn it on it says something like "insert system disk"... which might mean the hard drive is corrupted, I think. This is bad because we have many tens of thousands of artifacts catalogued on there that were never backed up.

Had this happen on my Dell Inspiron. I had thought it was a hard drive failure. I read in various tech forums that this 'failure' is pretty common and can sometimes be fixed by just popping out the hard drive and blowing the dust off the connectors. It worked for me.