Hi folks A scenario that many of you are probably familiar with: my dad's old laptop appears to have died and he's asked me about getting a new one. Problem is that when we buy a new one it'll need to be something that we can walk into a high street store and buy then and there---he lives abroad and wants to get one in a shop next time he's over. I don't know a lot about laptops, can anyone suggest decent brands that are available in high street stores (PC World, John Lewis, etc). He's not very tech savvy and since getting IT support where he lives is tricky I don't want to get some POS that's going to fall apart after 6 months. The budget is in the £350 - £450 range and it'll not get used for anything too strenuous---web surfing, watching films, writing the odd document, listening to music, etc. Cheers
You can pick up some decent Asus models or even a cheaper Sony Viao at the upper end of that budget. As with most things, but it is even more true with laptops, you get what you pay for.
I'd day the best brands (like above) are ASUS. Samsung seem to be popular choice of stock for retailers (like John Lewis). Stay away from Compaq.
Aim for something with a decent warranty. Asus, Toshiba, some Fujitsu and Dell models. Stay as far away from HP as you can...
Clevo are the best PC laptops that I have ever had the pleasure to use. Build quality is second to none. Asus would be my second choice, but I actually think their quality isn't as stellar as they used to be. But still great laptops none the less.
Why? I am a HP reseller, in the last 2 years I have sold hundreds of workstations and probably about 200 laptops - I have had zero returns on anything I have sold so far. I also deal with HP warranty support etc. fairly regularly on account of how many production HP servers I have, and I literally cannot fault them there either.
1. Lenovo 2. Dell 3. Asus 4. Acer (Good value, but be picky. Their new stuff is better.) Avoid HP Toshiba (Reasonably reliable machines but bad service) PC WORLD like the plague. Lenovo U310 - Would do the job.
Good for you, but I've just had so much bad experiences with HP it's not even funny. I've yet to see an affordable consumer-level HP laptop that doesn't get hot and loud after about 5 minutes of use (and I'm talking recently purchased notebooks here, not something clogged up with dust). I've owned three different HP inkjet home printers that all died within a month of the warranty expiring (and the cartridges, of course, didn't work with any other printer they were peddling at that moment, so that's as good as wasted). Recommended a couple of their NX9420 notebooks to a few friends and never got to hear the end of it. Again, very soon out of warranty, one developed about two dozen vertical dead pixels on the screen. The other overheated within minutes, despite being cleaned and with the thermal paste replaced. One of those also decided to not turn on anymore, a problem that promptly disappeared 2 weeks later when he took it in for a service who charged him quite a fair amount of money to tell him there is nothing wrong with the laptop. Basically, the only HP product that didn't disappoint me, was an iPaq 1910 from 2002. Not surprisingly, considering it was manufactured by HTC, and the only HP bit of it was the badge. I'll admit their professional lines might be ok (tho, the NX were business models), but I can't in good conscience recommend a consumer HP notebook (or anything consumer oriented) to anyone.
