Upgrade desktop vs Buy Laptop

[TheHippi]

I survive on campus with a 3 hour battery life laptop for longer than 5 hours.. It's not hard. Find an outlet and use it. Use the sleep mode when its idle.

I've tried that before and having to time everything between when I can get to an outlet drove me crazy. Now I mostly just work off of a flash drive when I can't get to my desktop.

 

I'd advise getting a 12" to 14" ultraportable if you want a little power, otherwise get a netbook.

Edited July 13, 2011 by TheHippi

[xly15]

Could either of the laptops mentioned be a real good replacement for a desktop?

[wevsspot]

xly - frankly (and I'm probably gonna get bashed for this)................

 

I would stay as far away as possible from HP laptops. Sure, when you first buy them they look great, feature set and hardware specs. look great - but I can't tell you how many HP laptops I see repaired in a years time. Let's just say lots of them. The nVidia chipset fails, the power circuit fails, the motherboard dies, the LCD screen fails and the list goes on and on. And somehow HP has timed it that all of these parts seem to fail almost as soon as the factory warranty runs out.

 

If you're seriously considering a great laptop look at Sager, Asus, MSI or even Dell. You'll be glad you did.

[xly15]

Thanks wevsspot, the Sager I was looking at seemed like a good deal as well. But I am pretty certain now that I am going to upgrade my desktop.

[_TheAlexO]

Thanks wevsspot, the Sager I was looking at seemed like a good deal as well. But I am pretty certain now that I am going to upgrade my desktop.

 

Ok I dont know about the HP is crap thing (i've only owned 1) but I would strongly suggest getting a fusion laptop.

 

I have the HP dm1z w/ AMD E-350 and i'm also a computer science major. I take it with me to every class all day and the batter life is incredible.

 

It's also fast enough to do ANYTHING a student needs to do in class. The best part.....

 

ITS CHEAP!

[Deathmineral]

xly - frankly (and I'm probably gonna get bashed for this)................

 

I would stay as far away as possible from HP laptops. Sure, when you first buy them they look great, feature set and hardware specs. look great - but I can't tell you how many HP laptops I see repaired in a years time. Let's just say lots of them. The nVidia chipset fails, the power circuit fails, the motherboard dies, the LCD screen fails and the list goes on and on. And somehow HP has timed it that all of these parts seem to fail almost as soon as the factory warranty runs out.

 

If you're seriously considering a great laptop look at Sager, Asus, MSI or even Dell. You'll be glad you did.

Well I can't say I'd bash anyone for their opinion but I've certainly never heard anyone have so much trouble with HP laptops. Personally I recommend HP or Dell laptops to my friends all the time, they've always been the best quality and most dependable laptops I've used or worked on. However I also always recommend people get a quality laptop so that may be why I don't hear many complaints about those brands, most of the laptops I end up repairing anymore are those really cheap and junky $200 or $300 ones, they just aren't built well or with good parts.

 

As for brands, the brand I discourage anyone from is Toshiba, I've done more work on Toshiba laptops than any other and it's pretty much always the same problems, motherboard failure, bottom housing broke, power jack broke, it's almost always one of those three. To be fair I'm sure it's not necessarily the company's fault either, I tend to blame the customer and the company equally for things like the bottom housing or power jack breaking because I do know that a lot people don't treat the laptops well and often times people yank the power cord out instead of just pulling it out normally, but I think it is the company's fault too for not anticipating that and designing it to handle it, not that they should have to but any company that cared about their customers would do so in my opinion.

 

I totally agree with your other suggestions though, an Asus or Dell laptop is a good choice, the ones we've had in always seemed to be good quality laptops, especially Dell, I've only seen their quality get better over the years.