Topic: Need advice on finding a good laptop

[Cobra951]

Sandy wants to get a new laptop.  She's used to these 17" VAIOs she's had for years, which have been very reliable.  One of them had the screen go out recently, and replacing the screen has proven problematic.  (Either that, or the local repair shop can't do the job right.)

She now wants to look into replacing it.  Quality and reliability first; cost is secondary, though not unimportant.  I have very little knowledge about who makes good laptops.  My experience is mostly related to my daughter, who has had several laptops die on her prematurely.  I don't trust the things.  Any pointers?

[idolminds]

I am also interested in this, been wanting a new laptop I can take to the library. Hardest thing when being budget conscious about it is all these Chromebooks and such only come with 16-32GB of internal storage, a good chunk taken up by the OS. I need something with some real space since it's mainly a download machine where I can put game files and update them.

[gpw11]

Laptops seem like the wild west to me.  I know my mom has always bought Samsung and that's worked out well for her.  I, on the other hand, have only owned two HPs in my life and both have been good - the second far more than the first, but I can't say whether I lucked out or not.

If it were me, I'd go here:  https://www.reddit.com/r/SuggestALaptop/

[scottws]

Lenovo Carbon X1.

[Raisa]

Samsung's kinda weird after a couple years.

Lenovo Thinkpads are good if you want reliability and quality.. so far these are the hardiest ones for someone I know who tends to drop laptops.

[Cobra951]

Lenovo Carbon X1.

Lenovo is a name I'm not familiar with, other than seeing it here and there casually.  I read the review for the Carbon at Arstechnica, and it does look impressive.  I'm not sure if Sandy will go for the 14" screen, though.  Her VAIOs are 17".  I looked to see if they have the same thing only bigger, but it looks like the Thinkpads don't get any bigger than 15.6" anymore.  Now the Ideapad Z710 (which looks a lot like the VAIO) is 17", but gets nowhere near the stellar reviews of the Thinkpad (and since it's much cheaper, I'm not surprised).  I guess I'll pass along the links I've found, and see what she thinks.

Any other suggestions welcome.  How is Dell doing in this market these days?  My daughter had an Alienware that lasted her about a year before it developed an intermittent power-outage issue.

[scottws]

Lenovo is the Chinese company that bought IBM's PC business several years ago.

17" laptops are completely out of style and I think you'll have a hard time finding a good business-class laptop - which is what you want given your requirements for quality and reliability - in that size. Unless you get a mobile workstation like a Dell Precision but those are huge and very expensive.

Dell and HP both still make good business-class devices so either of those would be fine as well. Alienware is a consumer brand, so don't use that as an indication of all of Dell.

[gpw11]

I have heard good reviews of the Dell XPS 12 and XPS 13, but I merely ran across these while looking for something else.   Might be worth looking into though.

[Raisa]

I've been using a dell for several years now and it's ok. The built-in webcam tends to be a sore spot and DVD player is also sucky.

[Cobra951]

Thanks, all.  Anything else you can think of, pass it along.  We'll keep looking for a while.