Can you recommend a good laptop?

I have to order 3 laptops for my workplace - only 1 of which needs a semi-decent gfx card but I figured I'll get the best I can for the money available.

I have a budget of $2000 AU for each and was wondering if there was any consensus here on make/models to check out or avoid?

So if you've got/know of a relatively new laptop you love or hate - then I'd love to hear about it. Windows only, I'm afraid.

Failing that, a good review link that isn't simply a sly advertisement for the products therein? Hard to know which review site to trust these days...

Thanks!

David

Lenovo T61.

A very good (unbiased) review site for laptops is http://www.notebookreview.com . Very thorough and subjective reviews. They test battery life, performance, report the screen quality, keyboard quality, etc., etc.

Also, the best place to ask this question is here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=16

But I've been researching laptops for months now, and I could probably answer your question, although you'd have to give a little more info on what you want to use the laptops for. There are literally hundreds of laptops out there, all with very different purposes (pros and cons).

For example what balance of portability / power do you want? Is screen size important? Or do you want to carry the laptops around at all? How much battery life do you need? How heavy is too heavy? Is screen quality important to you? Etc., etc.

Personally I'm looking forward to the upcoming Sony Vaio SR and Sony Vaio Z (although they're not even officially announced yet, but they should be in about 7 days I think), but you may not be interested in the thin-and-light (yet powerful) category. I learned my lesson long ago when I bought a big 17", 10 pound HP laptop - and if you're new to laptops I hope you don't make the same mistake I did. Lighter is always better, because if you compromise in this area you'll regret it in the future when you find you're nice expensive laptop is nothing but a compact (and soon outdated) desktop computer.

But anyway, if you give some more details it will be easier to narrow the 100+ popular laptops down.


Very good all-around laptop, excellent keyboard, very good reliability / durability, average weight (for the size), ~average battery life, although somewhat below average screen unfortunately.

I just got an Asus G1 and *very* happy with it. I do a lot programming on it and its very fast, the 7700 Go is great and as well as the screen. It plays Mass Effect at a higher fps than my desktop rig.

Hey, thanks for the responses! That's great.

Yes, sorry should have included a few more details. They are basically desktop replacements in the main. So they will almost always be used plugged in to a power socket and operated via USB mouse.

Most of the time the main programs they will be running will be business apps, as opposed to games. Large screen would be good. Basically I just want to order something that's not going to bite me down the track. Fast and reliable are my two main considerations I guess... But if they look good as well aesthetically then that'd be a bonus!

2 votes for Lenovo... will have to check that out thanks!

Ding ding ding! all of the Lenovo laptops I've worked with and own are fantastic. The durability is excellent.

You can get an upgraded R61 with a very good graphics card (nvidia).
The screen can be upto 15.4", at much cheaper then your price range.

Hmmm - that's interesting - our old laptops were IBM ThinkPads so I guess I'd be keeping with tradition.

My supervisor is pushing HP - not sure what model. Any votes for or against HP as a brand?

Time to head off to that link JohnJ suggested - looks like a good one...

[edit] Good grief! According to NotebookReview.com there's 101 Lenovo T61 models. This could take a while...

Our family has a particular distaste for Sony and HP, but if you want a huge screen that is the only thing I know (I think) HP is good for.

EDIT: You might want to look at the TR61 as well, I don't really think there is much of a difference though.

I like hp laptops and i have one my self. good screen and keyboard and nice graphics. I dont think you should be afraid of buying hp laptops.

If I wanted something robust, I'd definitely go for the Lenovo T61. It's not got the graphical muscle of top-end Dell XPS machines, but it's more than capable for dev work.

I would also recommend one of the new netbooks. I'm currently looking to get an Asus Eee 901 for some on-the-road C++ work.

I cannot emphasize this enough..

STAY AWAY FROM PACKARD BELL!!!! Their RMA on the first broken machine wich died after a year took 8+ weeks and when i demanded a replacement machine after 7 weeks, they complied but that too overheated after 7 months. I then demanded PC World replace it for another model, and i managed to get a Fujitsu Seimens which is alright, but have had a few problems with that too (but fixed those myself).

I recommend HP, sony or IBM/Lenovo.

A good friend of mine picked up an end-of-line Sony model from PC World last year for £700 and it's an excellent machine. I never considered Sony for myself (believing them overpriced) but I have to say I was impressed with it.

Whatever laptop you get, stay away from the budget models (e.g, Vostro). They are OK for occasional use around the home, but they are not suitable for lugging around every day.

I've had to use a Lenovo T61 at work for the last 6 months or so, and I don't like it. The screen is awful - the worst I've seen in many years. Also, all the Lenovo ThinkVantage junk causes trouble with certain hard disk encryption products.

You didn't say what you want it for, but anyway...

I currently have a Compaq Presario C700 which is perfect for Blitzmax dev. the only 'glitch' is that the hard drive is only 80GB as standard, but that's easily sorted. 17" widescreen, 1.4GHz dual core CPU, 2GB RAM and Intel GMA X3100 graphics which utilises shared RAM, and dynamically adjusts to whatever's needed up to 384MB (I think). Cost me £399 (~$825 AUS)

I had a Toshiba prior to that which I got a good six years out of before its hard drive packed in, and the motherboard developed a dry joint due to being dropped (might have contributed to the hard drive dying too, actually).

So I'd recommend Toshiba, or Compaq. The Compaq is perfect for what I need.

Note: Compaq = HP, now.

Ok. In that case I'd recommend posting a question in the "What notebook should I buy?" forum. I can't reliably make a recommendation for a specific desktop replacement laptop because I've only been researching the more portable class laptops.

But for reliability, quality, and an excellent keyboard, Lenovo is excellent. Their main weakness is their screens (dull, bad contrast, etc.), which unfortunately is one of the most important parts of a laptop since it can't be replaced. If you like bright, vivid screens, you might not be happy with a Lenovo.

In my opinion HP is a very good all-around brand (good keyboards, good screens, reliable, etc.), and I have no complaints about them, mainly because I've had a 17" HP laptop for several years and it's still working really well, and is in the same shape as it was when I first got it (except the battery, which I don't use anyway).

But there are many other brands, like Dell, Alienware, Saiger, etc., etc. that offer high-performance laptops and I hear a lot of good things about them (but I don't really know much about the non-portable laptops), which is why I'd recommend posting this question on a forum dedicated to laptops.

The company where I work with IT-Support we only have HP, and I would have to say that I find them very reliable. As long as you go for the business models at least, because thats the only models we use. We have about 10000+ notebook users and not a lot of cases of broken down laptops due to hardware issues, more so because of users messing up the system, which is quickly fixed with a clean cloning of their harddrive ;)

Take a look at something like their 8510p model, which is the most used model at my company.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/321957-321957-64295-321838-3329741-3355678.html

They start out at about $1600 so they should be within your budget, and they are execelent desktop replacements with decent gfx cards, good keyboard with a nice feel to it.

Laser Printers - FOR. Notebooks - Against.

Also don't buy an Alienware. Lenovo are great, Fujitsu-Siemens and Asus are okay. Dell are horrible, even the XPS.

HP is good but I love Asus G1 and G2, they rock.

Iam living a happy life with my HP Pavillion dv6000 but its more a nice laptop to walk aroud with than a desktiop laptop. thoe it playes oblivion at lowpolys fine. worlds of warcraft runs nice and smooth.

nothing evel about it. but screen cold be a little bigger. and it is not so sweet if you have strong lights at work cause of the relfletcions in screen.

In my experience Dell (Germany) has excellent corporate/business support and unbeatable prices - that's the reason why they are the number one supplier of the World Health Organization and other UN agencies. I'd give Dell's business customers hotline a call and ask them for a quote.

IBM notebooks also have a very good reputation, but I found it 'funny' that almost all IBM notebooks that I have seen 'in the wild' were having WLAN connectivity problems - and I've seen quite a few of them at the UN among visitors .

Compaq made nice servers and notebooks, but unfortunately HP bought them, and HP's business service SUCKS, especially in comparison with Dell. But my experience here mainly comes from servers.

Nothing keeps you from putting Windows on an Apple notebook - the MacBook Pro still is the fastest notebook for Windows Vista, and Apple has very good hardware service. But unless you buy from the Apple Refurbished Store, it probably won't fit in your budget.

Can't say much about Asus or Acer. Acer supposedly has great service, too, but that's only hear-say from the magazines.

Sony does not sell business notebooks, so they're out of the loop anyway. Although Vaios are quite nice - for PC notebooks... ;-)

Thanks so much for all the great replies! I'm going to take zawran's advice and get the best HP business model I can. Hard to beat 10,000 users! The fact that my supervisor likes HP also played a big part in the final choice - so Winni indirectly influenced me there as well.

I think you'll find good and bad experiences of any brand, tbh.

Except Packard-Bell. They're just bad.

I love Sony laptops, I've had quite a few.
I've also had 2 Dell XPS laptops (older and newer models)
My favourite has to be the Sony AR51SU with Blu-ray reader/writer and 17" 1920x1200 res screen and 2x250Gb HD set up in RAID 0
You can get this for about £1200 now (cost me £1800)

I know you said windows only, but you could get a Mac Book Pro and Boot Camp Windows onto it. Windows runs fine on my Mac.