Which laptop brand is the best for a student?

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Ocean Spray

New Member
I'm looking to purchase a laptop for college and I'm on a budget since I'm also working on building a windows desktop for gaming purposes. What I want to know is which laptop brand is most reliable in terms of performance, quality, and value. I know about Macbooks and such but I'm trying to stay away from them as they are quite expensive for what they have to offer. Please leave your opinions and don't mention Alienware! This laptop will be for:

-School
-Chatting
-Facebook
-Youtube
-Watching movies
-All that good stuff but I don't need a powerhouse gaming system! Just one that can do all the above and last!


Here are the list of laptop brands that I know.

-Sony VIAO
-Acer
-Asus
-HP
-Lenovo
-Dell

Thanks and have a good night!
 
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Well it's pretty hard to say a certain brand is best for "school, chatting, Facebook etc etc", it depends what's inside the laptop.

I'd say the best brands there are Dell (they make pretty solid units), Vaio (expensive though), Lenovo (ThinkPads are rock solid, not sure about their other laptops) and Asus.

Wouldn't go for an Acer or an HP myself.
 
Asus Eee would be good for school. Small and light weight.
Get at least 2 gig and maybe they have with SSD drive. (solid state).
 
Dell make great laptops, so do Lenovo, Sony and Asus.

spirit said:
Wouldn't go for an Acer or an HP myself.
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I've heard heaps of bad stuff about Acer but I've never had a single problem with mine. I do the usual stuff; facebook, youtube and some gaming (with no dedicated GPU). Other than lag while gaming I've never had any problems with my Acer Lappy.
 
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Asus is leading on quality computers and from what I have seen on this forum very few people have problems with them and on many laptops they offer a standard one year manufacture warranty and a 1 year accidental warranty. Plus usually for the price you can't beat Asus with the hardware it comes with.

Not to mention there tech support is in California so you deal with people who understand you.
 
I can't do any more than review my old hp compaq 615. Below average performances, but extremely reliable. Except for the time i dropped it on the floor and smashed the mother board, it has never let me down. Keep in mind that i use it at least 14 hours a day, since i work in a webdesign company on my own laptop. SO, all good for HP. Not the fastest, but they are reliable.
 
Seriously thinking about getting a Lenovo since I've heard great things about their product both reliability and performance. Any other suggestions?
 
Ocean Spray said:
Seriously thinking about getting a Lenovo since I've heard great things about their product both reliability and performance. Any other suggestions?
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Lenovo Thinkpads yes not so much on the idea pads. For the price though they are not best in performance.
 
S3AnD3 said:
I've heard heaps of bad stuff about Acer but I've never had a single problem with mine. I do the usual stuff; facebook, youtube and some gaming (with no dedicated GPU). Other than lag while gaming I've never had any problems with my Acer Lappy.
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It's not the performance, it's the build quality of the units. Acer's machines appear to be very cheaply made and they feel a bit 'plasticy'. The other laptop brands mentioned here are head and shoulders above Acer when it comes to build quality.

vroom_skies said:
You can't go wrong with a Thinkpad T or X series.
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^ Exactly. :)

Ocean Spray said:
Seriously thinking about getting a Lenovo since I've heard great things about their product both reliability and performance. Any other suggestions?
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I think you should go for a Lenovo ThinkPad. They're very nice machines, it will serve you well. :)
 
Yeah, I might just go for a Lenovo or an Asus. Anyone have any idea about Asus? I'm taking Dell/HP/Acer out because I've heard bad things about them.
 
Asus will give you better performance and quality for the price. Plus as I said on post on page one look at some of the Asus models because there standard warranty is unbeatable.
 
People have their favorites but having bought a new notebook at least once a year for over 15 years I have decided that inexpensive computers are not necessarily junk! I have owned dell, gateway, HP, compaq, toshiba etc and there were good ones in every brand name. Is a $300 compaq and/or toshiba etc. a piece of junk? I'd say yes, everthing in that price range is but you might find that most any inexpensive computer will serve you very well. There are brands that I stay away from but if it has the specs I need I buy it! Having said that I never keep notebooks for longer than 9 months so if you want a comput that will last for a number of years you might need to up your budget! I have a 5 year old inexpensive compaq C500 that I would frankly call cheap and I love it! It might be the one notebook I keep forever! Good Luck! :D
 
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I agree with above. But the slowest thing in a laptop is either its CPU or its HDD. A 5600 green small form factor hard drive will be super slow. The hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in almost all computers. SSDs make it significantly better, but still a limitation.

Spend your money on hardware, CPU and HDD in particular, use Open Source software and save up for RAM and Windows later if needed.
 
I like the Sony Vaio or HP Pavillion series. Both are equally good on multimedia and battery. Their specs are perfect for any studying purpose.
 
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