Choosing a New Laptop

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Usually I go for the brand of HP. Are these still good?

I'm looking for something to be able to do everyday tasks on like browsing the internet and office work. I don't need any fancy features, but I want something that's reliable. I wouldn't use it for gaming. I want a laptop that will last me as long as possible, without any dodgy features like switching off randomly (my old Toshiba Satellite did that). Preferably it would have a giant HDD as well, although it likely would have compared with my current 90GB storage.

I hate Windows 8, but I can always uninstall that.

I have a HP that I bought in Sep 2012, and it works fine. As long as you keep it in a place where it's not exposed to extreme temperatures, it will last a while. I know a woman who bought a HP, but she lives in a trailer park in a tourist town, and her laptop was exposed to very high and very low temps, and the fans all died. My mom's Lenovo, OTOH, had the HDD crap out after six months, and Lenovos are pricier than HPs. She had originally bought a HP, but it didn't work right out of the box. Quality control with Chinese stuff is hit or miss. You might try Tiger Direct, tigerdirect.com, they serve tech professionals and hobbyists and often have better quality stuff than say Best Buy. I ordered my HP from them, and my mom was laughing at the two weeks it took to arrive, while the two PCs she bought from BigBox retailers both died. I saved $100 on my HP by buying from Tiger. Win 8.1 is supposed to fix a lot of the things that people hated about 8, or you can still buy Win 7 boxes from Tiger.

I'm using an HP as we speak. I think that Newegg.com has some excellent deals on refurbished laptops.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... 0Notebooks

You can also a laptop with Windows 7 on Newegg, unlike when you go to stores where you only have Windows 8 as your option.

I had a HP from Walmart, one of the student-special $400 ones, and I second the claim that insufficient cooling kills them near instantly. I think it fired itself up inside my bag at some point and fried itself, won't even turn on anymore. On top of that, the entire board inside is one piece including the power supply section, so dead is dead and you can't fix them by swapping parts with a donor (say, one with the smashed LCD but good power board, since there is no such thing as a "power board" just the "main board" and that's it) Even the graphics are stuck directly on the main board, if that toasts the whole thing is a paperweight. I think the CPU and memory were the only things not soldered directly to the board, aside from obvious peripherals like the hard drive and LCD. Some of the really integrated "disposable" little Atom based ones have the CPU soldered on as well, which is fine if you expect to just dump the whole thing in the trash next year when the new faster stuff is out (or, hand it down to a young'n, basically the same as tossing it in the trash, since they aren't the most durable items either)

I am not particular to brand usually (there are only like 5 companies that manufacture the parts anyway, so whichever brand it is masquerading as today is irrelevant) but Asus seems to make some really good stuff. Try to stay away from non-modular designs even though they tend to be a few hundred cheaper for similar speed/size, you will be upset when something dumb stops working and can't be swapped out. Dell also tends to be good, if it's a "business class" one (they also make the "disposable" personal-use at the bottom of their price range) but they still just rebrand stuff built from other peoples parts (the only thing Dell is the casing, and the BIOS, and the warranty/support).

I was going to mention that ASUS computers were decent, until I bought a netbook and had to send the thing in for repairs twice within one year. I've had a much better time with my ASUS desktop. That issue with the HP seemed pretty common a while back. My cousins and their step-dad bought HP's and all three burnt out within a year. I have a year-old HP Pavilion g7 and haven't had issues.

Come on guys, I really appreciate your input, but none of those sites are for the UK, and none of them even ship internationally!

It's interesting to hear about the internal works of an HP. Mine would always be at room temperature, so that's fine.

You're in London. Oh. I'm sure you can find mail order stores in the UK. Copyright and legal issues prevent Americans from owning overseas PCs, and vice versa. Google is your friend.

Sorry about that. Had completely forgotten to read your location. >.<

http://www.thelaptopcentre.co.uk/refurb ... ptops.html
http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/st/refurbished-laptops

Better?

Another thing you might want to do is get a barebones notebook and go from there. Google whoever might sell Clevo notebooks in the UK, or the EU, and go from there. You can save substantially getting one that's prebuilt with a blank HDD as opposed to getting a 'branded' notebook like an HP.

Still though, if you're getting and HP, it's a good idea to avoid AMD CPU's and go with an Intel CPU. --AMD's run hotter and use up the battery quicker than Intel's.

I wouldn't worry about the hard drive in whatever laptops you're looking at, that's pretty easy and relatively inexpensive to upgrade, should you need/want more space/speed.

My g6 was about 2 years old, barely even used. Went to use it one day and nothin'

That's pretty surprising. I guess if that happens to me, I'll get another Asus >.<... and pray that Microsoft does something right with Windows 8 later on.

An HP is bang for the bucks and quite powerful compared to other computers in the same price range. Having said that, their laptops tend to overheat rather quickly, and the battery life is a joke.

I'm fairly content with my Dell Inspiron SE computer. It cost the same as an equivalent HP computer would, but it doesn't overheat, the battery capacity is adequate and it's very silent.

Again, thank you all *very much* for your input. I am taking everything into account. Post more if you like - the more information I can gather on these, the better!

Although my old, current HP laptop worked fine for years, my mum bought a new one and in less than a year it's started to power-up less, which is a concern. From what I've read of all your reviews of HP laptops as well, it doesn't sound like they're as good as they were.

May I ask what it is about the business class Dells that makes them good? Is it the specs or how well-built they are?

Business class Dells (IE, The Latitude series) have a much higher build quality than their consumer class systems (Inspiron and below) that you can get at your local 'Big Box' store.

They are designed to withstand transport and corporate usage, while the consumer grade notebooks are made for light transport, and mostly usage around the house, or the occasion trip to a coffeehouse.

A lot of the Latiude series are built with either magnaloy, High Impact ABS plastic (Like old telephones were made from) or a mix of both.

They were made to compete head on with IBM's, (now Lenovo) higher end ThinkPad range.

Moving further along is their Latitude XFR series, which is usually a current, or Latitude from one generation previous in a ruggedised case that is dust, dirt and waterproof. These often have a touchscreen as well. They are Mil-Spec rated and are usually used in public sector, military, mining and harsh environment settings. The downside that I've seen is that a lot of them use the same 2.5" drive bay. This is problematic because the only way you can use a shock mounted drive caddy in one of these is to use a 1.8" drive, which besides being expensive, is hard to get through normal distribution channels. --The only reason why you'd want one is if you take in into harsh environments, or are doing field research in remote places where failure of a computer isn't an option

I have zero issues with my HP. Nonetheless, ASUS is excellent. I'd probably buy an ASUS if I were to get a replacement anytime soon. Oh! I forgot to mention that I really loathe touchpad. Their other models may have different touchpads, however. Also, what do you think about the laptops that "transform" into tablets? I think they're called hybrid. Is there anything you're really needing in particular? (Like specific style of keyboard, mouse, etc.) Does price matter all that much?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371334,00.asp