Business laptops

[Treebeard]

I hate buying laptops for my company, but it's my job so I gotta do it!

I have purchased Dell and Toshiba in the past, but lately, Dell's service sucks, not to mention their lousy battery life on some of my recent purchases. My local favorite geek store (Memory Express) also sells Acer and Asus notebooks. Does anybody have any experiences to relate with these brands? I need to have either XP Pro or Vista Business Edition on these new notebooks.


TIA!

[Ephraim]

i recently just retired my old asus, dropped it and broke the screen. It was a work horse for me and lasted almost 3 years. And i am known in my company for being the hardest on equipment (IT hates me)

[levi1803]

I had an Acer for 5 years with no problems, so when I retired it I bought another Acer and didn't even look at any other brands. My friend has had two Dell's and has had nothing but problems with both of them (I would have learned after the 1st one) I'm sure people will have other opinions but the Acers have been good for me.

[brizzo]

My last workplace we bought 5 Acer laptops... 4 out of 5 the lcd screens failed, and Acer would not replace them ... left a bad taste.

Dell, I had an inspiron 9300 for a year or so.. Harddrive died in it, called Dell, said the harddrive was dead, no questions sent me a new one .. Not sure what they're like now.

Asus, pretty slick machines. I find some of their models they use very abnormal keyboard layours, and that really irks me when the layouts get changed.

But for business, I found Acer is still the most bang for your buck company.

[rocketlily]

I bought an Acer about 6 months ago from Memory Express and still very happy with it. I doubt that I'll ever go back to a non-laptop computer. Battery only lasts about 3 hours.

[24storm]

I just recently bought my second Gateway and both of them have been great. My old one i packed with me everywhere. Office and home everyday and anywhere i traveled. When it finally died the screen went out on it. I believe it was just over 3 years old. But it had a ton of miles on it. My new one is pretty awesome. Only problem is not many places sell Gateway i have never needed warranty so i do not know what that would be like.

Keith

[Myka]

I know two people with Acers that have had the HD kaput within the first year. They were reaplced on warranty, but that makes me ask, "Will the new one only last a year too?"

I would recommend HP. I won't buy anything else - for laptops anyway. Oh, except the Durabooks. Those are great, but you probably don't need that.

[UnderTheSea]

Have you given IBM (Lenovo) a try? I work in IT and have used nothing but IBM's since I was hired back in 99. T21, T42, T60 etc.

I haven't had one issue with any of them. I've dropped them, had my daughter think it was a spring board and nothing, not a scratch. I also like the feature of taking out the dvd drive and adding an additional battery in that bay. I pretty much only use the dvd drive on business trips, but for around work or the home I use that additional battery.

My home laptop is an HP 17" which I love as well but a little on the large size for business.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by UnderTheSea

Have you given IBM (Lenovo) a try? I work in IT and have used nothing but IBM's since I was hired back in 99. T21, T42, T60 etc.


My home laptop is an HP 17" which I love as well but a little on the large size for business.

Our shop has about 20,000 Lenovo laptops, and frankly, the move from IBM to Lenovo wasn't a good move. I just spent a couple of hours with the sales rep complaining about hardware issues, driver incompatibility, etc. While some of the new machines look nice (X200, W700), we're having "issues". We also have a limited number of high end HP, I run 2 of these at home (XP, Windows 7) and I love them.

[SeaShell]

I've been using a Panasonic Toughbook at work. The battery lasts for about 5 hours in the field and it's been performing great for me!