Who makes good laptops?

Nefarious

Nefarious

Nefarious

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Is it just me or have laptops become a bit pants of late?

The recent offerings from Dell have been either pig ugly, lack lustre or simply over the top (their XPS range looks great on SG-1 but in the real world looks rather foolish).

IBM have always had a very dated look but I believe this is because they are trying to set themselves apart as solely business, no flash laptops.

Sony seem to have gone rather bland in their appearance and terribly oversized.

Obviously there is more to a laptop than appearance; the buttons that have been appearing on Dells are now in the perfect place to get scratched and damaged and are also totally useless to anyone who actually wants to use the laptop as anything more than a portable DVD player and hideously oversized ipod. The batteries stick out of the end like a flabby arse and are liable to get snapped off.

Acer's laptops, apart from looking dated, seem terribly flimsy and leave a trail of plastic behind them like an incontinent hoover.

Have Apple cornered the market on making sexy laptops and everyone else has given up? If they're not going to make them look nice why do they have to make the form not even follow function!!!
 
IBM.
Acer's are fine if you're careful with your possesions...if you throw it onto a desk you deserve to be slapped round the face.
 
To be honest I think the Sony laptops look pretty nice, the bet competitor to Apple for looks but like Apple you don’t get a great spec for the money you pay.

Personally I think the HP Pavilion range are very nice looking but again you pay for the privilege.
 
Nefarious said:
Is it just me or have laptops become a bit pants of late?

The recent offerings from Dell have been either pig ugly, lack lustre or simply over the top (their XPS range looks great on SG-1 but in the real world looks rather foolish).

IBM have always had a very dated look but I believe this is because they are trying to set themselves apart as solely business, no flash laptops.

Sony seem to have gone rather bland in their appearance and terribly oversized.

Obviously there is more to a laptop than appearance; the buttons that have been appearing on Dells are now in the perfect place to get scratched and damaged and are also totally useless to anyone who actually wants to use the laptop as anything more than a portable DVD player and hideously oversized ipod. The batteries stick out of the end like a flabby arse and are liable to get snapped off.

Acer's laptops, apart from looking dated, seem terribly flimsy and leave a trail of plastic behind them like an incontinent hoover.

Have Apple cornered the market on making sexy laptops and everyone else has given up? If they're not going to make them look nice why do they have to make the form not even follow function!!!
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Acer laptops are good. As mentioned above, they are very good for the price. I have owned two and both been very good and solid. If you got abit more money, go with a better known brand. I currently own the aspire 5051. small and nice to use.

Apple laptops are overpriced IMO for what they are.
 
bitslice said:
I've just had a load of Toshibas nicked,
hahaha, good riddence :D

I'm now looking at getting some nice IBM's to replace them.
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I had always heard that Toshiba make some of the best laptops, is that not the case?

Why does everyone rate IBM so highly, like the OP said they look very dated.
 
Why do people always see Acer as a poor quality brand?

This is fact from experience two weeks ago... I purchased a Toshiba Satellite and took it back because it was flimsy, there was a gap around the screen, and don't get me started about the screen quality - washed out colours and a stuck bright white pixel. To top that off, I paid £999 for it.

I took it back and swapped it for another (because of the stuck pixel) to find that the 2nd one also had a stuck pixel, this time red. Took that back and swapped it for an Acer Aspire 5685 EXACTLY the same spec as the Toshiba for £300 less!!! Quality is better, especially the screen, NO dead or stuck pixels, and to my absolute delight, I ran 3DMark 03 and scored 7200! Compare that to the Toshiba, which scored 4000!!

How can people say 'go for a better brand'? Imo, Acer IS the better brand to go with. Just because they're cheaper. Why do people complain about it being cheaper?!? :p How can you want to spend more money on something like the Toshiba when it's inferior.

As for looks, you don't sit there starring at it all day... If it's got the power, then that'll do me. I could have bought a Sony for £1200, which is worse spec than this Acer at nearly half the price. :confused:

I will never look at a Toshiba again. Their quality control obviously speaks for itself having had two identical laptops with the same problem.
 
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Syntax said:
Why do people always see Acer as a poor quality brand?

This is fact from experience two weeks ago... I purchased a Toshiba Satellite and took it back because it was flimsy, there was a gap around the screen, and don't get me started about the screen quality - washed out colours and a stuck bright white pixel. To top that off, I paid £999 for it.

I took it back and swapped it for another (because of the stuck pixel) to find that the 2nd one also had a stuck pixel, this time red. Took that back and swapped it for an Acer Aspire 5685 EXACTLY the same spec as the Toshiba for £300 less!!! Quality is better, especially the screen, NO dead or stuck pixels, and to my absolute delight, I ran 3DMark 03 and scored 7200! Compare that to the Toshiba, which scored 4000!!

How can people say 'go for a better brand' imo, Acer IS the better brand to go with. Just because they're cheaper. Why do people complain about it being cheaper?!? :p How can you want to spend more money on something like the Toshiba when its inferior.

As for looks, you don't sit there starring at it all day... If it's got the power, then that'll do me. I could have bought a Sony for £1200, which is worse spec than this Acer at nearly hafl the price. :confused:
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totally agree m8. Acers are very good. But some customers look for the more known brands. Think Acers are only starting to appear at high street stores.
 
hoogie said:
Why does everyone rate IBM so highly, like the OP said they look very dated.
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Bear in mind that anyone who actually NEEDS a laptop will be travelling with it a lot. IBMs are solid as a rock.
 
totally agree m8. Acers are very good. But some customers look for the more known brands. Think Acers are only starting to appear at high street stores.
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This is how the electronics companies are ripping us off, because they know brand power is everything. Have you seen the state of Sony's range? Because they look good and are endorsed by Bond etc etc, they get away with abismal specs! All of their laptops are poor value for money, heck if this Acer I'm using now was in a Vaio case - it would be £1500!

People need to wake up and stop going for brand brand brand.

I keep banging on about Sony and their tax badge, as they're a prime example - look at their Bravia TV's - the screens are made by Samsung who charge £200-300 less for their comparable LCD's.
 
I've been recomending Acers for a while now, you can get a high specced machine for much lower price to big name brands. When I bought my Travelmate 270 1.6ghz SIS650 it was £300 cheaper than the equalivant specced Toshiba. My brother bought a "faster" Toshiba P4 2.4ghz well over 1 year later but the graphics card was so poor (Trident) that my Acer slaughtered it when gaming. Now you can buy this for £650 inclusive of vat.

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 - 1.66GHz (x2), 667MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache
RAM: 1024MB DDR2
Hard Drive: 120GB Serial ATA 5400rpm
Screen: 15.4" Widescreen TFT (1280x800 - 16:10)with CrystalBrite Technology
Optical Drive: DVD±RW Super Multi Double Layer
Graphics: NVidia GeForce Go7300 128MB
 
I bought a Sony Vaio, it is worth £1600 but I got it for £820. My friend works for Sony. This week I sent the laptop back to Sony because the HDD failed after one month of ownership. Very nice laptop but this doesn't look promising.
 
I've been recomending Acers for a while now, you can get a high specced machine for much lower price to big name brands. When I bought my Travelmate 270 1.6ghz SIS650 it was £300 cheaper than the equalivant specced Toshiba. My brother bought a "faster" Toshiba P4 2.4ghz well over 1 year later but the graphics card was so poor (Trident) that my Acer slaughtered it when gaming. Now you can buy this for £650 inclusive of vat.
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Or for an extra £50 on top of the above, you could get the Aspire 5685 with the following spec:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 - 2.00GHz (x2), 667MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
RAM: 2048MB DDR2
Hard Drive: 160GB Serial ATA 5400rpm
Screen: 15.4" Widescreen TFT (1280x800 - 16:10)with CrystalBrite Technology
Optical Drive: DVD±RW Super Multi Double Layer
Graphics: NVidia GeForce Go7600 256MB DEDICATED :)
 
IBMs maybe solid as rocks but that's because they're from the stone age. When I said they were dated I meant carbon dated.

As for other laptops it is the obsession with annoying buttons that they put on them that really irks me. They are normally put in places where they'll get scratched and damaged, they look ugly and I didn't want the damned things there in the first place.

I'm not a huge fan of Macs but they are light for their size, they look nice and they run BSD :)
 
noob said:
I bought a Sony Vaio, it is worth £1600 but I got it for £820. My friend works for Sony. This week I sent the laptop back to Sony because the HDD failed after one month of ownership. Very nice laptop but this doesn't look promising.
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heh heh was it a Maxtor? I wouldn't blame the Sony.
 
Acers are fine unless they break, then you know why they are £300 cheaper.

Never again.

If you NEED a laptop then buy from somewhere that offers better customer service. If you WANT a laptop then Acers are fine.
 
Spook said:
Acers are fine unless they break, then you know why they are £300 cheaper.

Never again.

If you NEED a laptop then buy from somewhere that offers better customer service. If you WANT a laptop then Acers are fine.
Click to expand...

And laptop companies with good customer service are?....Not Dell.
Mate's had good experiences with Fujitsu, basically sorted straight away no hassle, no threats of going to court etc.
 
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