Personally, I've had it with HP. Their online tech support people are generally a nice bunch, but if you called them, you may as well have asked a chef how to fix it. My last HP tower was headache enough having to constantly find stuff to replace parts that had gone to pomegranate. Compaq is a part of HP, fyi. An ex employee who worked for a branch of HP in the states that I once knew said that at HP meetings, they literally sit there brainstorming of ways to cut down the costs of building something by eliminating stuff and bringing it down as low as they can. Understanding that the same can pretty much be said for many other corporations out there, it hit home for me when my cpu chip finally died and killed my hard drive in the process. About what was said about priciness... Well, let's put it this way, I can build myself a tower to match the specifications and a little beyond HP's 1 grand media computer desktop tower. And I'd still have enough to make even better upgrades. It was like a slap in the face when I'd gone online and did a price comparison -- and yes, I did mean AFTER tax AND shipping.
But since this is all for desktops, I'm not sure how well they fare in the laptops category. I doubt anything much would change, though. I CAN say one thing for sure though: HP is currently the trend in laptop brands -- just like Apple is for mp3 players. It's nice to be wary about that.
Dell, doesn't stand out to me. lol Coincidentally, my friend told me how hot Dell is -- no really, it's seriously quite the hot stuff. That aside, nothing fancy hits me besides the fact that schools keep on using Dell systems. o_O I wouldn't put the um.. hot stuff issue against Dell though (and um, pay some attention to the bottom links too, at least). And hey, the guy at futureshop (canada; bestbuy owns futureshop) told me that Dells are built more sturdier. ... whatever that means. lol
Acers ... *tend* to look like they're made of cheap plastic and metal put together with crazy glue. And well.. we all know how much heat laptops are able to generate. :[ Sorry Alysha, but I've been laptop browsing lately too. And everytime I run across an Acer laptop, I keep finding their cases to be disappointing. But hey, feel free to stand up for Acer -- I'd love to know its good sides; I really just haven't found an Acer that didn't look like it were built of cheap stuff. =\
I can't say much about Toshiba. Once again, just like Dell, nothing stands out.
In the end, I'm settling down with an Asus M51Sn-B1 after some recommendations by friends. It does have its couple of things I don't actually like -- BUT I figure, I can deal with it. Asus is known for it's well built motherboards. The maximum amount of moolah I plan on dishing out is 1.2k, after tax AND shipping. So..
Laptop specifications: Clicky
Laptop assessments for this model: Click
The assessments and rating came back to be about 84%
From the very same site, I didn't really read it but the Dell Studio 15 scored highest with an 82% as compared to Dell Studio 17 with a 65% (lol). On the other hand, I don't think you should be worrying too much about the ram. The way I see it, if everything else is deemed sufficient enough for you and there's still room for upgrades, I'd totally just grab the laptop and then buy the ram for it. After that, if you're really still down for it, I would downgrade the vista to an XP -- after finding out what drivers you need. (In case one didn't exist for xp)
For whatever it's worth, IBM, the creator of the first computer, sold their pc group to Lenovo. So I guess you can technically call Lenovo, IBM.
Edit: I dont know much about laptops, being that I've never felt the need for one, but this is all based on research and some observation + experience.
But since this is all for desktops, I'm not sure how well they fare in the laptops category. I doubt anything much would change, though. I CAN say one thing for sure though: HP is currently the trend in laptop brands -- just like Apple is for mp3 players. It's nice to be wary about that.
Dell, doesn't stand out to me. lol Coincidentally, my friend told me how hot Dell is -- no really, it's seriously quite the hot stuff. That aside, nothing fancy hits me besides the fact that schools keep on using Dell systems. o_O I wouldn't put the um.. hot stuff issue against Dell though (and um, pay some attention to the bottom links too, at least). And hey, the guy at futureshop (canada; bestbuy owns futureshop) told me that Dells are built more sturdier. ... whatever that means. lol
Acers ... *tend* to look like they're made of cheap plastic and metal put together with crazy glue. And well.. we all know how much heat laptops are able to generate. :[ Sorry Alysha, but I've been laptop browsing lately too. And everytime I run across an Acer laptop, I keep finding their cases to be disappointing. But hey, feel free to stand up for Acer -- I'd love to know its good sides; I really just haven't found an Acer that didn't look like it were built of cheap stuff. =\
I can't say much about Toshiba. Once again, just like Dell, nothing stands out.
In the end, I'm settling down with an Asus M51Sn-B1 after some recommendations by friends. It does have its couple of things I don't actually like -- BUT I figure, I can deal with it. Asus is known for it's well built motherboards. The maximum amount of moolah I plan on dishing out is 1.2k, after tax AND shipping. So..
Laptop specifications: Clicky
Laptop assessments for this model: Click
The assessments and rating came back to be about 84%
From the very same site, I didn't really read it but the Dell Studio 15 scored highest with an 82% as compared to Dell Studio 17 with a 65% (lol). On the other hand, I don't think you should be worrying too much about the ram. The way I see it, if everything else is deemed sufficient enough for you and there's still room for upgrades, I'd totally just grab the laptop and then buy the ram for it. After that, if you're really still down for it, I would downgrade the vista to an XP -- after finding out what drivers you need. (In case one didn't exist for xp)
For whatever it's worth, IBM, the creator of the first computer, sold their pc group to Lenovo. So I guess you can technically call Lenovo, IBM.
Edit: I dont know much about laptops, being that I've never felt the need for one, but this is all based on research and some observation + experience.