I am getting close to needing a new laptop, I have had hp's in the past and been pretty happy with them, with only a couple exceptions.



1) the batteries go to **** in fairly short time, less than a year.



2) After about 3 years the reason i am needing a new one is the power connection is ****. I took it apart, resoldered it to the board and it is still quite tricky and getting annoying, not sure i want to buy another adapter and risk it being something else.



3) Hard drive died on one, however i must admit hp was lightning fast on getting it fixed, within 4 days we had the laptop back with a new hd.



Soooooo, am i going to find something better or are these fairly common issues?

I havent had a problem like that with my toshiba. Its 2 years old now batt is still the sam as always. No problem with connections. Only thing that went wrong was the whole water on keyboard thing and eventualy after having it ride in my car the hard drive went out. The dvd drive broke when it fell once. All that was fixed under warranty in a week.

my roomate has a sony, it kicks much ass. i'll get the model # when i get home

every professor at the college i went to had a toshiba, my gf is thinkin about that or a dell, and most of the computer guru's at my work run toshiba.



don't know good they are, but it seems that most professionals are using them.

i've heard a lot of good about toshiba, pretty reluctant about dell they use crappy components

i built dell and toshiba systems identical to each other on the websites.. i get an employee discount through my company with dell, so i factored that in as well..



dell was 300-400 hundred bucks cheaper for a faster machine.. but then again, i would not buy a dell again. never had a prob with my old one, but i enjoy building em (desktops.. not labtops)

I have a dell that ive been using and taking all over the place with me for the past 2 1/2 years, and it still is working great, even for programs like AutoCAD 05 and Solidworks. The only thing that ever broke was the disk drive, it wouldnt pop out, and that was replaced under warantee

i have a fujistu.

Only laptop still made in Japan.

3 Yr Warranty.

Extensive testing on all models (they do lid pressure testing, socket connection testing, etc,etc)

Feature packed.

I just got a sony. I ******* love this thing, the screen is soo nice.



i got the fj series

i loathed my old sony, maybe they have gotten better.

I've got an Alienware, but I game a lot.

All pretty much depends on what you are going to do with it.



For displays Sony has a line of notebooks with X-black displays. These are the best displays on the market when it comes to photo-retouching.



For general quality and no worries about virus protection and crashing OS's get an Apple iBook.

Battery life is way beyond good on these as well. The average battery will last for 5-6 hours without recharging.



If you want a value for money notebook go buy yourself a Toshiba sattalite.



For gaming, Alienware



At the moment I have an iBook and a Sony with X black display (older FR415 series)

Both notebooks are running Mac OS X 10.4 at the moment, and Linux as backup. Never had any problems with either one of the notebooks hardware wise. Price for both was around $1400 each

I prefer a busty blonde on top of my lap. Preferably not too heavy.

MacBook Pro, just for the new power connector.

My toshiba satelite is great

Well I know yall have heard my woes with Sony, on my last computer. But since they sent me the top of line model in late 2004 I haven't had a single problem. The model I have is a PCG-Z1RAP. It is WONDERFUL!!!! I haven't had a single problem with it. Battery life is great. I love this computer and will probably stick with Sony. They have completely turned around in my book, after the first laptop. And their customer service has come a long way since then as well. When I had to get things fixed under warranty with the first computer I usually had a very short turn around time. They would overnight a box, and pick it up the next day. Then maybe three four days tops I would have it back.



- Hand

yea i hated my sony it was crap.

Well I think i've got it narrowed down to two brands, I've decided to go with the 17 inch screen as i really use the laptop for around the house mobility and not travel.



Here are the specs:

Dell Inspiron 9300

17 inch display

1 gig memory

100 gig hard drive

128 dedicated vid card

DVD burner

bluetooth wifi and reg wireless card

upgraded battery

Intel Pentium M Centrino 750 proc

XP Media Center



HP dv8000z

17 inch screen

128 dedicated vid

Athlon 64 2 gig proc 1mb cache

1 gig mem

dvd burner

wireless



To break it down, the only notable difference is the brand and the processor, one is the centrino, the other athlon 64