So many laptops... how do I pick one?

Pada said:
Asus & Dell has excellent warranties & support locally. Unfortunately they are amongst the expensive options available, but in the end it is really worth it for the warranty/support, especially if the laptop is going to be used for work.
A friend of mine's mom had her Asus laptop serviced (broken HDD) and returned within 1 day in Cape Town, even though she bought it from a place in Jhb. I'm really impressed with that kind of service.

I've also seen keyboards from other laptop manufacturers having an offset to the left to cater for the numpad, which is terrible if you're not using an external keyboard.
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On the contrary, Asus is a lot cheaper than the likes of HP/Lenovo.

Wouldn't touch Acer. Terrible service record.
 
PostmanPot said:
On the contrary, Asus is a lot cheaper than the likes of HP/Lenovo.

Wouldn't touch Acer. Terrible service record.
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Never had problems with Acer laptops or After service support.
Buy about 4 to 5 a year.
 
It's hard to generalize across hardware manufacturers. For example Lenovo make some awesome laptops, and some crappy entry-level laptops too.
Asus make some really fantastic laptops.
 
Asus has local support a phone call away. It is the best in the industry. It's not like HP where you phone a ****** local number and get through to someone in India trying to speak American English. :mad: :p
 
I think you need to decide what you need, first, before fussing about brand.

Do you want a numpad? What sort of screen resolution are you looking for? Do you need a lot of RAM? Do you need high-end graphics? Do you need a CD-ROM/RW or DVD ROM/RW? Do you want to plug a lot of external devices in? If so, number of USB ports should be a factor. What sort of battery life are you looking for? What weight should the laptop be? Do you plan to store oodles of music and videos on it (ie need 500+ GB HDD) or will a smaller HDD suffice? Is boot-up time a factor? If it needs to be up and ready to work FAST, go for something with an SSD.

When I bought my laptop I had four requirements that were critical: a very long battery life, it had to be super light but still full-size, I needed a full keyboard (with numpad) and a built-in card reader. I also made a list of "nice to have" items: a quick-lockable trackpad, reasonable screen res, at least a 500GB HDD, a minimum of 3 USB ports, HDMI output. Using this I began looking for a laptop to meet my needs.

I found a laptop that had everything I wanted and more: Acer Aspire Timeline 5810T. I upgraded the RAM to 4GB myself. It has a ridiculous 8hr+ battery life, it's super-thin and very light, full keyboard, wonderful to type on, card-reader, HDMI out, 3 USB (incl one on the right specially for the mouse), quick-lockable trackpad... (this was what sold it for me, so few laptops have this feature). It just so happened to be an Acer.

Worry less about brand, and more about functionality that meets your needs.
 
AniV said:
I think you need to decide what you need, first, before fussing about brand.

Do you want a numpad? What sort of screen resolution are you looking for? Do you need a lot of RAM? Do you need high-end graphics? Do you need a CD-ROM/RW or DVD ROM/RW? Do you want to plug a lot of external devices in? If so, number of USB ports should be a factor. What sort of battery life are you looking for? What weight should the laptop be? Do you plan to store oodles of music and videos on it (ie need 500+ GB HDD) or will a smaller HDD suffice? Is boot-up time a factor? If it needs to be up and ready to work FAST, go for something with an SSD.

When I bought my laptop I had four requirements that were critical: a very long battery life, it had to be super light but still full-size, I needed a full keyboard (with numpad) and a built-in card reader. I also made a list of "nice to have" items: a quick-lockable trackpad, reasonable screen res, at least a 500GB HDD, a minimum of 3 USB ports, HDMI output. Using this I began looking for a laptop to meet my needs.

I found a laptop that had everything I wanted and more: Acer Aspire Timeline 5810T. I upgraded the RAM to 4GB myself. It has a ridiculous 8hr+ battery life, it's super-thin and very light, full keyboard, wonderful to type on, card-reader, HDMI out, 3 USB (incl one on the right specially for the mouse), quick-lockable trackpad... (this was what sold it for me, so few laptops have this feature). It just so happened to be an Acer.

Worry less about brand, and more about functionality that meets your needs.
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This oak knows what he's talking about :D

Also worth mentioning: https://www.nivo.co.za/#c/computers/notebooks

Never seen so many lappies!! :love:
 
Brand is very important. It determines overall build quality and perhaps more importantly, after sales/warranty support.
 
AniV said:
I think you need to decide what you need, first, before fussing about brand.
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Good post. MS Office, email and web browsing is the main thing. DVD-RW, durability, battery life, reliability are important. He's not very technically proficient so crappy drivers and software isn't acceptable.
At least three USB ports - printer, mouse, flash disk.
Didn't think about HDMI but I think that is a must.

How long does an SSD last compared to a hard drive? Might go for that, he seems to be fine with the 100Gb or so his old crappy laptop has.

Thanks everyone for your input :)
 
PostmanPot said:
Brand is very important. It determines overall build quality and perhaps more importantly, after sales/warranty support.
Click to expand...

I'd say model range is way more important than brand when it comes to build quality and reliabilty, e.g. HP: Entry level -> Pavilion -> ProBook -> EliteBook, in ascending order of build quality/ruggedness/price etc.
 
KhoisanX said:
I'd say model range is way more important than brand when it comes to build quality and reliabilty, e.g. HP: Entry level -> Pavilion -> ProBook -> EliteBook, in ascending order of build quality/ruggedness/price etc.
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The two are not comparable, I was merely saying that fussing about brand is important, not discounting the importance of better hardware...
 
PostmanPot said:
Brand is very important. It determines overall build quality and perhaps more importantly, after sales/warranty support.
Click to expand...

Yep, its a fine balance of brand and specs really. Nearly all brand entry level laptops are made of cheap plastic and more or less spec'd the same, the difference is how they handle the warranty claim.

Brands I avoid are Mecer, Acer & HP (unless its the high end stuff). Our entire company is switching from HP to Dell, finding the mid-range Dells to be really solid.
 
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