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What brand makes the best affordable laptops?
I know lots of places to find cheap laptops, but what I'm really curious about is which brand makes the best quality laptop at a price that a startup can afford? I need to purchase 7 laptops to support our outside sales & executive teams, but I want to find something that will not only fit my budget, but last for 3-4 years too. We use Windows 7and the laptops would need to support MiFi cards too. What do you recommend?
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4 Answers
you typically cannot go wrong with one of the big 3 IBM, DELL, or HP. Dell is usually the least expensive, although IBM/Lenovo since they are now in China has become more affordable at a cost of reliability. You would want to buy a business class laptop as opposed to a prosumer or consumer grade. Typically the Dell Latitude series, HP Probook, and the Lenovo Thinkpads in the T series used to be the real road warriors.
Best bet is to pick the options you want build it then check Amazon.com, Newgg.com, Microcenter.com and Fryes forums and ratings to see who makes the best model for your buck, in 2-3 hours you should have a pretty good concept on what you are going to buy.
For general use: 2-4 Gigs of ram, a dual core or better CPU, 200+ GB HDD, and a 15" screen should be able to handle most road warriors and general office duties. If you doing CAD or some other high end application you'll need to spend a few more bucks and possible even get into the performance models like the Dell Precisions. That should get you started though.
Lynn,
This is the type of argument that can take hours to answer and may even come down to right out brawling !
The best answer is find out what applications your users will be using the most. Next find out which application has the LARGEST requirement, then DOUBLE it.
Your next step would be to talk with several vendors and see which of their products meet or exceed your requirements. Also see if they will let you use one for proof of concept, to load all of your applications and see what the performance is like.
Document your findings so you can provide feedback to your Managers and purchasing agents as to why you selected the vendor and model of laptop you chose. (Even if it may be a few dollars more)
But if you are looking for personal preference then my recommendation would be either Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad T or X Series, Dell Latitude or HP Probook.
At the current price of laptop computers and the power available for relatively little cost, I think it might make more sense to scale back length of time expectations and plan to replace the unit ever couple of years. The unit will come with a one year warranty, keep it for another year and it will likely be reliable. Then if there is a problem, buy a new computer rather than try to fix it.
My experience is that Dell laptops are often on the fritz. HP or Compaq are OK, but as was written earlier technical support is not great. I now have a Toshiba that is about six months old and working well, but I have not tried customer service. I do not have experience with Lenovo.
ASUS, the company that has been making very good and reliable motherboards for years, is now making laptops and desktops. The prices for what you get are lower than Dell and since they are "new" on the market they are selling many at true bargain prices. Since you want a product that is reliable, ASUS certainly has that reputation for their motherboards and that is essential.
HP/Compaq have some things that are proprietary so you can't upgrade or replace components without using their brands. Their Indian customer service is problematic at best.
Dell also has customer service out of India that can be very problematic and they seem to have a higher ratio of bad laptops than most although you can get replacements or refunds. I cannot speak to whether they have kept the quality and reliability of Alienware computers since they bought the company but those are high end, very expensive laptops.
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