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

 

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:43:35 +0100
Roland Tarver wrote:

> 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).
> >
> > ÂSimon
> 
> 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've had my HP G6092 for almost dead-on 3 years now.  I had a small
issue with the power-supply lead within the first 12 months and the
back-light on the screen went after 18 months.  Other than that, it has
served me really bloomin' well.

> 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... :-)

I'm also very pleased with my no-name cheap 10" Android tablet.  A
little irked by the way Android handles some things (why does it insist
on running damn near all applications on startup?!) but in general it
is a good little machine.

If I were in the market for a new laptop, I would probably go for a
netbook of some description.  Not really out for any particular brand -
I usually investigate damn near everything I can get my grubby little
mitts on in the shops, draw up an over-the-top spreadsheet with
lots of details about each system (like I'm doing at the moment for my
next phone) and then order it online. :D

Grant.

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