D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] dont buy a laptop just yet....

 

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Simon Waters <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 15/06/11 18:15, Martin Gautier wrote:
>>
>> Acer's are notorious for breaking down. In my experience, almost all the
>> consumer laptops I repair are Acer. Invariably the power jack has broken
>> or burnt out, the GPU has fried or (at least) one of the caps on the
>> mobo have blown.
>>
>> A quick query on my CMS tells me just under 68% of the laptops I
>> repaired in the last 12 months have been Acer.
>
> There is a huge Acer repair place in Plympton which will do out of
> warranty repairs for a good price, and remarkable turn around.
>
> Sorry to publicise Martin's competitors, but we are clearly well served
> for getting Acer laptops repaired locally.
>
> Have to say Martin needs to tell us what the proportion of laptops in
> circulation (after warranty expires) to know if 68% is good or bad. My
> Acer did go for repair, but only after a major drop, don't think we can
> blame that one on build quality (unless "case not made from titanium
> alloy" is a fault). Possibly also it may denote that other manufacturers
> are more successful at attracting out of warranty repairs, or people
> throw other laptops away more willingly.
>
> My bigger concern would be they had poor GNU/Linux support. On mine the
> graphics card needed some obscure acceleration option disabled, the ACPI
> needed to be disabled, nothing major, but not IBM, oops sorry I mean
> Lenovo, style GNU/Linux support. So it worked well, but these days you
> want proper support for such things so it can keep power usage down (and
> battery life up) when it isn't really needed.
>
> That said colleague at work just got a lovely Lenovo laptop, and the
> price was pretty good (although that is with some sort of convoluted
> cash back scheme).
>
>  Simon

http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109/

According to this report of several thousand laptop brands (it's a pdf
- sorry). HP are one of the worst for reliability. Asus and Tosh being
the best.

I have a decent (read expensive - £1100) HP laptop. I question the
build quality. Some of the casing does not seem to fit perfectly
together, as I would expect. Also the DVD drives feels really
"flimsey". Mum's very old Packard bell machine appears to be built to
a far higher standard.

I keep it cool, well ventilated and am careful with it. It has served
me without issue for 2.5 years.

If I were to buy a new laptop i think i wud look at tosh or asus. Note
that I am not confusing acer with asus. lol ;-) I might look at a
think pad too - after seeing Rhia's!

Others will no doubt think and act differently... :-)

Best wishes
roly :-)

-- 
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq