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For Uni, my parents are getting me a laptop. I was wondering what the general opinion of these two makes are, in terms of reliabillity and so forth.

Any advice that you can give would be greatly appreciated.

I am very much impressed with the Acer that I have bought. They produce high quality laptops with good specs for a very reasonable price. I bought an Acer gaming laptop. The thing cost only $2,500 WITH a 3 year total warranty.

Acer is better than Dell. At least if my experiences in the computer repair shop are anything to go by.

Edi

Dell is not a good brand for laptops. While I know that my problems have been because of a design flaw in the series, The fact that it has taken 6 AC adapters (3 of them in under 3 months) and 4 motherboards for Dell to admit that there might be a problem causes me to recomend NOT buying from them. If you do buy a Dell, pay for both Accidental Damage and At Home service. I payed for the at home service when I bought my machine, and Dell has sent a service tech out withing 2 days every single time.

I'd suggest Acer. Dells tend to be quite cheaply made and use substandard parts. A Dell -may- be cheaper to start, but in the long run maintenance may well run more than the price of the machine.

I had no clue Acer still made computers, to be honest. My last Acer was a little dinky used machine back in High School, which survived everything thrown at it until it was dropped when running(Don't ask), and the hard drive headcrashed. A new harddrive in, and she ran for several more years.

SirNitram wrote:I had no clue Acer still made computers, to be honest. My last Acer was a little dinky used machine back in High School, which survived everything thrown at it until it was dropped when running(Don't ask), and the hard drive headcrashed. A new harddrive in, and she ran for several more years.

Acer has actually gained quite a bit of prominence in the market here recently. They sell decently priced machines with decent hardware, make good laptops and also offer the option of preinstalled Linux for people who want cheap computers. Right now, one of those, an Aspire T136 with a Sempron 3100+, 256 MB memory, 80 GB SATA HD and DVD-RW drive is going for ~€290, which I at least consider a relatively good bargain.

Edi

As someone who sells quite a few of them, I almost never have Acer laptops or LCDs come back to me, and when I do, it's usually because some schmuck has beat the bejesus out of them. Good hardware, can't say much for their reseller support as I haven't had to make much use of it, and good pricing. Lack of a big brand-name cuts a surprising amount of overhead. You'd almost think that the big boys were padding...but naah, that couldn't be. *coughthinkpadcough*

I'm hard on laptops (not on purpose). Currently my Acer Aspire is surviving the abuse it's handed with little to no issue. When my partner was alive we were at the hospital every other day for treatment, and most laptops we've had seemed to have been made to just sit in one place and not actually travel anywhere. The Acer has survived the abuse a laptop gets when it travels, particularly in an enviroment like the hospital where there are times where it will get bumped or knocked.

Anecdotal only, but my Dell laptop has been good to me. The battery is now kind of useless after three years, but it otherwise works perfectly fine.

I'll get my Dell Inspiron in a week or so. If this thread yet lives then anecdoctal evidence will be forthcoming. (actually it arrives tomorrow, but it's being sent to my home, not my dorm, and dad wants to toy around with it before letting me collect it to see if its worth his money to get one for himself...)

Mind, I live in the same 3rd world country that assembles the things, so I'll be satisfied with "slighty better then mediocre"-build quality and a battery that doesn't explode in my face.

Just a note on Acer laptops.

This is the ultimate gaming laptop one can get without breaking the bank. I can play Battlefield 2 on nearly maxed settings and I can play games like FEAR on the level below maxed settings without any graphical slowdown. It handles the games sweet as can be.

2 gig Centrino processor

2 gigs of DDR 2 ram

256 megabyte X700 ATI video card

Full sized keyboard including 10-key

Widescreen 17" monitor

120 gig hard drive

So far I've encountered only one game that can bring my system to its knees. Thats Ghost Recon 3, and thats because the code is shitty.

I had an Acer desktop once. Pentium 60 MHz with 8 MB of RAM and a Cirrus Logic 2D video card. First computer that ever belonged to me rather than the family as a whole. That computer served me for five years without a single hitch or problem the entire time. If they still build computers like that, I'd definitely trust them.

Well, I think We're going for the Acer in the end. Thanks for everyone's advice.

I'm assuming you get some sort of school discount, but I've always been fond of IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads.

Lenovo's models are alright, but the Thinkpad series laptops are...alright, but approximately 'stupid' more expensive than equivalent hardware. Count me out.

White Haven wrote:Lenovo's models are alright, but the Thinkpad series laptops are...alright, but approximately 'stupid' more expensive than equivalent hardware. Count me out.

Depends on where you go. There's a Lenovo at a local Office Depot I'm eyeballing that's for just under $1,200. Several IBM models can be had for less than $1,500 in fact.

White Haven wrote:Lenovo's models are alright, but the Thinkpad series laptops are...alright, but approximately 'stupid' more expensive than equivalent hardware. Count me out.

If you shop carefully the premium isn't always so bad. Plus, you get much better build quality and support. (T-series will always be pricey, but the R-series is not a bad deal). Business laptops (no matter from whom) always will cost more as well.

Besides, my old T22 is still running fine and I think Crayz9000 has a 600E puttering around.

I have the Dell XPS M170, and I'm very happy. So far, it's running increidbly smoothly. Only downside, it's heavy and in my opinon, ugly. Would've liked it better in a normal looking casing.

I hate my dell from work - heavy, and overheats very easily.

Alyeska: A 'gaming' laptop with a 2Ghz Centrino? Is this just a manifestation of the significance of video cards? I'd never even consider a 2Ghz system for gaming, let alone a Centrino.

Stark wrote:Alyeska: A 'gaming' laptop with a 2Ghz Centrino? Is this just a manifestation of the significance of video cards? I'd never even consider a 2Ghz system for gaming, let alone a Centrino.

Uh... an Athlon 3200+ runs at 2GHz, and it was a strong performer for quite some time. It still performs fairly decently with modern games.

Yah yah, but Centrinos are hardly comparable to Athlons, to my knowledge. All the Centrino-based laptops I've used perform pretty poorly for the money.

However, clearly I should have been more clear. I meant 'Intel 2Ghz-comparable' - a 3200 is much better than what I would refer to in shorthand as a '2Ghz processor' even though it really is one. Er, if you follow me.

Stark wrote:Alyeska: A 'gaming' laptop with a 2Ghz Centrino? Is this just a manifestation of the significance of video cards? I'd never even consider a 2Ghz system for gaming, let alone a Centrino.

Centrino opperates differently then normal chips. It can process more then comparably ranked chips. This laptop has more processing power then my 2.17 Ghz AMD Athlon XP.

Its all in how the processor works. Clock speed is not the only factor in determining processing capabilities.

Stark wrote:Yah yah, but Centrinos are hardly comparable to Athlons, to my knowledge. All the Centrino-based laptops I've used perform pretty poorly for the money.

However, clearly I should have been more clear. I meant 'Intel 2Ghz-comparable' - a 3200 is much better than what I would refer to in shorthand as a '2Ghz processor' even though it really is one. Er, if you follow me.

This processor I am running compares very favorably to mainstain 3.2 Ghz intel chips for desktops when I got this laptop.

Centrino processors are designed for different things bassed on need. This particular Centrino was designed for raw power. My laptop is basicaly a mobile graphics workstation.