Hurro.

in the market for a laptop, since i'll be starting tertiary in a few months.

I've considered buying second hand, since its much cheaper and i like windows XP (the laptop i'm using right now was second hand, previously owned by a lease company or something) and it's had a great run thus far, completely trouble free despite a lot of use. But really i'm after any useful advice you may have, such as common faults with certain makes, what to watch out for, any good or bad experiences. blah blah blah.

get a mac!

danose wrote:get a mac!

NOOOO don't

iMac is the way to go. All the flexibility running Mac (and Win applications if needed).

spiderweb wrote:iMac is the way to go. All the flexibility running Mac (and Win applications if needed).

No thank you.

danose wrote:get a mac!

Get a perm.... oh wait no, computers, yes, MAC!

I had to read this link because of the headline when I saw it the other day - my ASUS has had a few problems, but I suspect the bigger issue was the useless store I got it from. The ASUS was faulty out of the box but it was 3 months or so before I had a functioning lappy. Conversely, Dad's HP netbook we got him recently was also faulty out of the box but we were given a fix, then an immediate replacement as that didn't last.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadge ... lity-study

I've used most of the major brands, and sold / supported literally thousands of notebooks. Typically I would say look for one of the major brands. They just seem to have the best service. At the moment I am using a Toshiba at work, and have a couple of HP/Compaqs at home. Have also had Dell, IBM/Lenovo, Panasonic. They all seem to be pretty good at doing what they need.

What you really need to consider is what you want to do with it. If you're just looking at web surfing, email, banking, etc then you don't need to waste money on something with grunty graphics, or excessive disk space, so you could go pretty cheap (<$1000 easily). If you're wanting something to chuck on your back whilst touring around the country then look for small and light with awesome battery life. If you're thinking about photography & photoshop, then you're gonna want bucketloads of RAM and disk space, but then if your a gamer at heart spend the $$$ on getting a decent screen / graphics card.

There is lots of options, and any reasonable store will be able to advise the best one (the one they want to sell you that is) for your needs. This will undoubtedly be the one that the sales person makes the best commission on though. (yup I've sold many for this reason).

Hope this helps.

Mac...

top three asus, toshiba, sony http://gizmodo.com/5406415/laptop-relia ... out-on-top

i use a toshiba at work. it's all top of the line and sucks balls.

go MAC i have had one at home for 5 years now with 0 problems. It still runs real fast and has never needed all the petty shit you have to do constantly on pc's.

nzmatto wrote:... I would say look for one of the major brands. They just seem to have the best service. ... They all seem to be pretty good at doing what they need. ... you really need to consider is what you want to do with it. If you're just looking at web surfing, email, banking, etc then you don't need to waste money on something with grunty graphics, or excessive disk space... If you're wanting something to chuck on your back whilst touring around the country then look for small and light with awesome battery life. ... here is lots of options, and any reasonable store will be able to advise the best one (the one they want to sell you that is) for your needs. This will undoubtedly be the one that the sales person makes the best commission on though. (yup I've sold many for this reason). Hope this helps.

This is really good advice. I've had lots of different laptops - I've never been without one since I got my first one at Xmas 1991. Overall I think Dell have the best balance of reliability and price, though purchasing anything online makes me nervous. We've had a few Dells over the years, they last and last, and on the odd occasions we've needed it, their tech support has actually been better than any of the computer shops we've gone back to for other computers. The thing to realise is that all the different brands are made in a handful of factories in Southeast Asia (just like bikes!) and badged according to the company that wrote the specification. So the issue isn't which has better components, but which brand has better quality control.

When I was at uni 2005-2007 I had a little Dell latitude that allowed you to disconnect the bottom half with the DVD drive and most of the ports, so what I took to uni was about 10mm thick and weighed 1kg. It still had a headphone jack to listen to music when lectures were boring and USB ports in case I needed to swap data with a pendrive/flashdrive/data stick (whatever you like to call it ). And the battery was good for about 6-7 hours of continual use.

In the long run it probably doesn't matter too much what brand you choose, they're all better than adequate but less than perfect; you can get a dud with any brand (even Mac). Just get one that meets your needs and decide it's the best - because it's the only one you actually have.

Get a Mac. Seriously, if you want something that will be worth what you paid for it 1 minute after you walk out the shop.

If you really HAVE to have a windows machine, generally the rules are:
Spec UP the memory to 4GB if you can.
Clean off all the shit they put on at the shop/ dealer

get rid of the norton/mcaffee antivirus and install AVG (although i understand recent versions of norton aren't quite such a bunch of resource hungry crap as they once were)
Get rid of IE and install firefox/ chrome.

Of course, if you are going to be doing heavy video editing or playing lotsa games, spec everything up and multiply the price by 10.

I have found a good place to compare prices and specs and put all options in front of you at once is: www.pricespy.co.nz

thelivo wrote:Get rid of the norton/mcaffee antivirus ;
Get rid of IE and install firefox/ chrome.

Doing these two things is a must. The current wisdom seems to be that ESET NOD32 is the best security software (integrated firewall-antivirus-anti-spyware).