Windows laptops have finally got their act together

[TSE]

So in 2006 I went shopping for a new laptop and bought a 15 inch Toshiba laptop. The laptop was 500 dollars and had anything above the specifications a MacBook at the time had.

While the specs were great, everything else was terrible. The battery was terrible, the screen was terrible, the keyboard was terrible, and finally it broke down and I bought a MacBook Pro, the Penryn models because I decided to try something new.

While that experience was AMAZING, I felt that Mac OS X's premium price just wasn't worth it, and I didn't need that much of a computer. I sold it to my brother 2 months ago.

Flash forward to today, waiting for Windows 7 to come out before I buy a laptop, I just bought an HP DM3 with the specs in my signature for 500 dollars. It is amazing so far! The build quality is amazing, the speed is great, the battery is great so far, and overall I am very happy. The aluminum body is great too. The only thing I don't like about it was that the fan is kind of loud but it isn't too much of a problem.

Just wanted to recommend the HP DM3 for anyone who wants a small, but still somewhat powerful laptop.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Sounds great, enjoy your new laptop.

 

[Melrose]

I hope it works out good for you.

...all the same, I'd love to hear how it's functioning a year or two years from now.

 

[SkyBell]

HP has definitely gotten better with their build quality recently. I wouldn't touch one made before early '08 or so, but their newer stuff is decent. Loving my HP mini, hope you enjoy your laptop as much as I am.

 

[NC MacGuy]

Yeah, I heard that they were giving away laptops with some Windows 7 purchases.

Seriously, I'm thinking of getting a new Windows 7 toy and it's almost more economical to buy a whole system than just the software alone.

Did yours come with a Win. 7 DVD?

 

[wvuwhat]

I really don't mind Windows laptops/netbooks. I may actually grab one up, just for ease of finding it.

However, my main computers will be Macs.

I have nothing against MS, they make a product for mainstream computers, they do that well. My parents and friends all use Windows. I don't hold that against them, but it's a matter of getting them to give Apple a fair shake.

 

[hexonxonx]

We have only owned HP laptops besides Macs. WE have never had one go bad and the oldest one is 3 years old. It even got dropped onto a hardwood floor. The corner of the plastic on the display broke off but it has been working 100% since then. This is one of the 15" piano finish laptops. Those things are tanks and can take allot of abuse. It's a DV6000.

 

[sysiphus]

Glad to hear that you got a good one; it's worth noting that one could buy good Windows laptops for many years now, though...just buy a Thinkpad. Heck, my dad's X-series' build quality blows his old Macbook out of the water. Better than my Macbook Pro (first gen), for that matter...no warping casing, paint that degrades from hand oils, an internal metal frame that makes it nearly impossible to torque the screen...

Yeah, I'm a big fan of -certain- windows laptops. Preferably with Windows deleted and Fedora Core installed.

 

[TSE]

Yeah Thinkpads have always been there but I wouldn't really consider them a consumer item as they aren't really "out in the open" in consumer stores such as Best Buy to anyone who wants to buy one and you have to definitely pay a premium for them. I guess they are consumer laptops nowadays, but in some aspects they aren't.

I definitely like this laptop, I can just feel it's a winner. While yaeh for 500 dollars I could get a 14 inch laptop with an AMD Turion X2 processor or whatever, the build quality wasn't the same and it was much less portable. I definitely paid a premium for this one, but that premium isn't a lot at all.

 

[maflynn]

I've always had good luck with IBM, compaq and HP laptops (these were all work supplied) I had a dell laptops for personal use in the past and I've found them to be very good as well.

Its funny but I was having a discussion about the so called apple premium. My position in the discussion was that there is one, his was counter. My point there was that I was able to configure a dell laptop for 850 less then the base 15" MBP

As I stated, I've had good luck with dells in the past, though I don't know there build quality of late.

 

[0098386]

A friend of mine just bought a HP laptop, he had an older model too that was dropped (display broke, but still worked on TV via HDMI). It looks okay but I still wouldn't go for that over a Macbook Pro. This is where I think Apple really do it best, in my opinion OSX even feels better on a laptop with them brilliant trackpads.

 

[Abstract]

Several days ago, I used a quad-core Dell laptop worth like $5000. Uh.....lets just say it was good.

It happened to look nice as well. It was beautiful, but very heavy. However, it was supposed to be made for serious work (i.e., not just a shiny toy...), which means it is supposed to work and work well. A Mac would die under the circumstances in which I ran that bad boy.