The Breakroom > The Water Cooler
New Laptop Purchase Help
Darren:
Yes I guess you have a point, they all seem much a muchness to me regardless of price.
OK some are faster etc, but twice the price faster?? Next month they will only be half the price again and not twice.
It all moves so fast............. I suppose the real question is do we really need the progress .... or even notice it now it has got to "that" point in development/speed.
spuddevans:
The only thing I can offer to the discussion is to beware of the cheap laptops, or more specifically, beware of the LCD hinges on cheap laptops. Both myself and a family member had bought cheap laptops ( both were from different manufacturers and were different processors, features ect ) and both suffered with failures to the LCD hinge area after the warrenty ran out.
To be specific, it wasn't the actual hinge, but the thin, pressed metal frame that the hinge and LCD attaches to, that suffered metal fatigue and cracked from the repetitive strain of opening and closing. Chasing the manufaturers was completely fruitless, my Father-In-Law ( who works at a sheet metal fabrication plant ) got one of the welders to TIG weld it for me, but it broke again on the first open/close cycle.
I did manage a Heath-Robinson type fix, involving a sheet of 6mm MDF and some screws, but needless to say it did not look very good, although still operational.
I've since got a Dell Vostro laptop( I got it on special offer, and got Quidco cashback too :thumbup: ) and it shows no sign of the same problem, even after 2yrs.
--- Quote from: Darren on January 10, 2010, 02:44:49 PM ---OK some are faster etc, but twice the price faster??
--- End quote ---
I guess some of the extra cash goes on higher quality hardware like the hinges and keyboard ( I forgot to mention that the "i" key had also stopped responding on the old laptop ). Some laptops( the more ££££ ones ) have a dedicated graphics card with onboard dedicated memory instead of shared memory. That makes a big difference to games, but can also make a difference to scrolling through pages of text in a Word document or a webpage.
I hope you get a good-un :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
Tim
Darren:
That's some good advice Tim .... it's just that I have two Dells and they both have hinge failure ... not budget laptops either at the time. (though old now) The fact that they still run fine says a lot for them otherwise though.
These are the only laptops that I've had this problem with, in fact the only other failure I've ever had has been hard drives which seem to go at will. Again and again .... !!
OTOH, friends seem to have all sorts of various problems which makes me think it's all rather pot luck.
spuddevans:
:lol: :lol: :lol:
Well there you go, I guess it really is the luck of the draw.
It would be interesting to know if Dell were able to provide some spare hinges/LCD mounts for your older laptops, that might give you an indication that if a newer model was to fail in that way, then you probably would be able to get spares too.
Maybe laptops have now got to the price that if you get 18 months to 2 years out of them you will just upgrade them without much thought. Yet another aspect of today's throw-away culture :offtopic:
Tim
Darren:
--- Quote from: spuddevans on January 10, 2010, 05:48:16 PM ---
Maybe laptops have now got to the price that if you get 18 months to 2 years out of them you will just upgrade them without much thought.
Tim
--- End quote ---
I suppose really even a year is a long time in the laptop world .... if you have one five years old you wouldn't want to use it anyway. Even though it will still do 99.9% of your needs, if it boots slow then out the door they seem to go.
My old dell is a 700mhz processor, still does everything I need fine ... just a little slower, esp at boot-up.
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