What Laptop Do You Recommend?

The computer I'm currently on is a HP inspirion, which was bought when I started working here back in June of 2011, Since then the hard drive was replaced, (first on crashed, then 2 months later it was replaced again (upgraded solid state drive).

It currently gets hot and are having issues with it.

I'd give you more of the particulars but with the exception of the solid state upgrade, the tech is 5 years old.....

But,....

We just requisitioned replacements for the HP lap tops that was just recently approved of which I believe will be Dells, but I don't have the particulars, but there is normally quite a bit of investigation on the up grades. I like that I don't have to do that anymore.

As soon as I get the particulars, I'll discuss this farther.

Liked my HP also (17") but it died after several years of hard labor.

We have many here, some Apples Macbook Pros - different years

A Dell Inspiron, A Toshiba - all between 13" and 15" display.

But and believe me one is really a lot better when it come to performance, especially when wireless is involved

The ASUS running on W8.1. One detail, but had no problem yet with it is the battery that is built in inside and needs a technician to have it replaced. In use for 3 years already and bought as refurbished for $299.00. Normally priced $599.00.

They have also a top notch wireless router that leaves competition far behind.

DELLS are HELL! ----> From my own and others experiences with them.

Nothing is perfect but I have found, from my own experiences, that HP is the most satisfactory for me.

I feel that the limiting factor is not the speed or capabilities of the processor, size of the RAM, hard drive vs. solid state drive or other aspects of the machine. The machine is much faster than I can keyboard it therefor it sits and waits for me most of the time. I prefer the larger keyboard of a desktop and can use it much faster and comfortably.

Good Luck, Old Salt

In the late 80's, when I spec'd my own computer for CADD, They did not have what it takes. The company where I work, just bought 8 of the dells for CADD, and I shared them my thoughts and information that I found that which amounted to 'they were crap'. The people that spec'd them out were insulted.

I had to admit, they had a lot of options on them that amounted to no more then bells and whistles, Voice recording with a mic, a digital LED message scrolling on the case.

Well, with in the week, they started to fail, Hard Drive, Mother Board, Memory.

Within 2 months, all were replaced. But, that was the 80's (1989 I believe, maybe 1990)

But I didn't spec them out, and with Michael Dell buying and regaining control of Dell, he'd better have something. I'll give you a report after I get mine, and tried it out.

One thing you said and that is .... "The machine is much faster than I can keyboard it therefor it sits and waits for me most of the time."

Reminded me of an incident at the company that bought the dells, there is a story about that.

I was just promoted to launch a new division at the company, was was in charge of the CADD division, which consisted of 'me'.

I was required to spec out a new (Table Top) computers for Justifications, back in the late 80's The were very expensive with the 21" monitor. $25,000.00

That's were I found out about the Dells on the poor performance. Anyways, I had my justified and approved, and the bastards from the division where I left, where jealous and did everything they could to sabotage.

When they found out, one fellow when right to the VP who was in charge of the final approval and told him that New computers for me wasn't necessary, The reason he gave "You can only type so fast'.

That killed my justification, and it was canceled. Of which I was PO'd and bought my own and had it shipped to work on the basis that I wasn't home. That rattled a lot of cages, and woke the VP up that he was taken in.

One VP, gave me permission and bought a seat of software (AutoCAD) for home use.

Lets just say, the divide between divisions in the company increased drastically.

And when they purchased Dells, soon after I purchased my own (And later my justification for a new seat reinstated and bought) I hate to see bad things happen to people, but It was rather satisfying to see those Dells do what I predicted.

My wife won't ever buy another HP. She bought a nice machine for her business as an independent insurance adjuster and it worked fine for about a month or so and then it would simply shut down cold with no warning, maybe once or twice a week. There seemed to be nothing common about the sudden shut downs. Sent it back to HP and they returned it saying they couldn't find anything wrong with it. Their customer service was the suckiest I have ever dealt with. She can't risk using it for her business because if it crashes in the middle of a report preparation (hosted on software on the client's server) she loses ALL her work and must start over since there is no save before submit. For her, she has an expensive paperweight suitable for only websurfing and other 'low risk' activities. Just one data point.

It wasn't so much that she was having hardware problems, we get that. Sometimes very sophisticated machines are going to have issues. What torqued her off was how HP customer support just totally blew her off, gave her the royal run-around and she finally gave up after they wore her down when it was "costing" her more to fight with them than the laptop was worth. They lost these two customers for LIFE.

wow, when I called HP customer service back then.... I gave up because I was on hold.

Unfortunately today as mentioned before, whether its parts, quality or customer service, it seems like its cyclic.

The one-hour holds were part of that process too. Then get some boob-head who has you re-boot and a bunch of other asinine things you already did weeks ago, but they insist that you do it again with them on the phone ad nauseam. There is so much Dilbert fodder from the turds who create these customer help (?) centers that appear to be designed to get rid of you, not help you.

If not us, then who?

But answer came there none.

I've been using an HP G-60 for about 5 years, it's been good....one thing I like is the brushed aluminum finish, no fingerprints....one thing that could be better is the weight, it seems a little heavy....I just upgraded my desktop (acer aspire i5) so I'll wait a while on the laptop upgrade....both win 10....I think a laptop is a hands on decision...

http://www.laptopmag.com/best-laptops

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369981,00.asp

Scan these links

Gaming laptops often have the highest performance as to video card and high speed gpu processing ability

Those gaming laptops are so dam heavy as well as big.

I read all of the comments and a lot of you agree that I should probably look for the best gaming laptop I can afford since they tend to be pretty powerful (and heavy). I think that makes sense and don't mind getting a heavier laptop if it does the job.

I appreciate the lists you all provided too. I looked at them all and they each gave me some ideas. I'll give HP another look and see what they have and I think I'm going to look at Alienware as well. However, I'm open to all suggestions. I'm probably not gonna sit down and decide till tonight at the earliest.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far!

Roger,

You may want to give a few more of the folks here a chance to chime in, if you have the time. There are quite a few here with a broad range of experience.

I have to get it soon, but I think you're right and I'm gonna wait another day to see what people think.

For my current role as automation engineer, my employer has provided me with a HP Elitebook which has 8 x i7 cores, 32GB of ram, and a 500GB solid-state hard drive. OS is Win 7 Pro.

This has been completely reliable in all the time that I have had it, despite having to handle a large variety of often-heavy tasks and frequent trips to industrial sites.

I can't advise from experience but my gut feeling is you'll be rolling the dice no matter what, though with what look like some pretty good suggestions so far.

Maybe you could search advertising copy for " turn your astrophysics presentations from dull-and-dry to WOW!! with the new ... " (hahaha)

I am personally biased against Lenovo as I picked up information from somewhere that there are structural elements that you don't want to tolerate.

Sheldon Cooper uses Alienware.

And a wheelbarrow to haul it around?

And I have the same Alienware M14X that Sheldon Cooper has. It's 3 years old and has been lugged around the world to a variety of oilfield environments with no major issues and it hasn't been treated with kid gloves.. it's currently happily sucking in dust in the Sahara desert and handling some heavy graphics when it has to.

And since you like Dell, it is also a Dell.

For Alienware,.... They really should incorporate shoulder straps for that.

We are a small civil engineering firm. Over the past 30 years we've had Gateway, HP and Dell desktops and laptops.
We've had issues with all of them at one time or another.

The ones that seemed to last the longest and have the least issues were the Gateways.Their service was great.

Gateways are still available at box stores but they aren't built like they used to be.

Last year we just upgraded all our computers. Our IT guy and I pushed for HPs but the deciders went with the Dells. We've had some problems with them but for the most part they seem to be working well. Seems to be a hit or miss as far as quality goes with whatever brand you chose.

Simply go out to the computer shop, give them your spec and they will build the laptop to your requirements and you will get what you want. Look a Kingston, ScanDisk II and Samsung SSD drives, and currently the biggest drive I could locate is a 240MB.

Otherwise you are stuck with an off the shelf unit which you need o adapt.

My computer magazine (PC Pro) maintains an A-List, "the ultimate guide to the very best products on the market today". The top laptop is currently the Dell XPS 13, this month edging the Macbook Pro 13" from top spot.
As for irrational prejudices, have you actually looked at your core usages? Even with intensive data crunching I doubt you will fill up 4 cores, let alone 6-8. For video editing the key features are a fast processor, lots of RAM and a large solid state drive. The power of the graphics card does not contribute to the speed of the editing workflow.
Mac computers are not just beautiful, they are reliable. I am on my second MacBook Pro since 2008, having dropped the first one. The current one is the late 2011 model, upgraded with a solid-state drive. I am on my second desktop Mac Pro since 2008, upgraded because the previous model could not run Adobe CS6. I fully expect several more years out of it, while I turn the previous one into a server.
The only argument I can think of for running a Windows computer is the existence of specially written programs which have no Mac equivalent. Most of those can be dealt with by running a virtual Windows computer inside a Mac host anyway.

I caught up on the comments this morning. Thanks again for everyone's input! I especially appreciated the tip on bus speed and cache and SSD. Makes sense and I'm paying more attention to it. If anyone else has stuff to add, please do. Another day of comments and I should know exactly what to get (maybe) .

I am curious, how much is MacBook Pro 13" in the USA. The basic laptop here is approx US$1700.00 from an Apple store which is rather rare to find.

Those powerful game laptops are pretty pricy and from experience, I've been able to game on a dv7 i3 Core laptop just fine and I purchased mine off of someone used. Don't get too caught up with all that "Power" hype because for the price, they might not really be worth it. Especially if things start to go bad after about 2 years. Those $2900 gaming laptops are for people like Tim "the Toolman" Taylor. I'm sure you can find something to meet your needs for less that $1000.

I recently purchased a refurbished Dell that came with Windows 8. I was able to get the free upgrade to Windows 10, which I like a lot more than Windows 8. Windows 10 has more of the Windows 7 feel and is very reliable and fast. The price of the laptop was around $300 and came with the latest processor and 4 GB of ram. I know this might not meet your processing needs, but it seems to be working out for me.

I mostly run web browser apps and MS office apps on it. The computer boots up very quickly and I haven't had any issues with it to date. The reason I like the refurbished one is the low price point, which takes away some of the worry if something was to go wrong or get lost or stolen.

I have had high end HPs, SONYs and TOSHIBAs, i would have to recommend the TOSHIBA. If you spec your own build you can get a lot of power for your money. I just purchased a Satellite S70-B and couldn't be any happier with the machine. I would suggest that you go to the TOSHIBA web site and browse through the customizable Satellite series and build several to compare what you can get for your money.

My last two personal laptops were Toshiba.

I purchase my last one in 2010-3011, and when I got my iPad, my time diminished on it considerable and only use it for CADD and to slave my 3d Printer.

Which by the way is unbelievable reasonable.... I think I may start a thread for 3d Printers

I got my son a Toshiba laptop for Christmas about 3 years ago. He's still using it and it was a last years model at Best Buy and paid $299 for it. He uses it for gaming as well and he likes things like Battlefield 3, and the like. It could probably handle Solidworks.

Yes, it depends on your usage.

I have a Toshiba satellite 70 I believe... (can't remember) which handled Inventor (2014 Student version) and I believe I had Solidworks 10 on it when I first bought it. I was contemplating buying a upgrade laptop for CAD, but could not justify it. Until I purchased the printer.

Still its hard to justify it, I may just buy a 24" monitor.

Lenovo Z70 w/16gig Ram i7 1TB Hard drive and Nvidea 860 video card. Get for around $900 and it's all the power you need. Keyboard even lights up.

Why not build your own, or have your local computer guru build it for you? Then you're not stuck with someones junque software. Of course the OS is an issue. If you're satisfied with the OS your using, get an MS download using the code on your computer. You will have to call MS to activate it. Obviously, if you choose Linux, you may need some extra help to get started.

Good for you Roger.

When I look at upgrade for myself in the past whether its a laptop or tablet, it seems I torture myself trying to get what I need.

But after the order has been placed, its like a weight lifted off ones shoulder.

good luck with your new laptop.

Nice! Yes, you will pay more upfront getting the extra goodies, but it will be usable for a lot longer.

I think I paid ~ the same amount for my laptop 6 years ago (Lenovo Thinkpad), it has been through XP-W7-W10 now with no problems. And it still kicks ar$e compared to my wife's 2 year old ($400) laptop with W8.

No, really sir,

tanQ