The Official Overclockers.com Notebook Retailer List And Rating System -- Vote Now!!

Could you turn I love it into a number between 0 and 10, 10 being OMG AMAZING!!!


Love does not mix well with mathmatics (unless it is a love of mathmatics )
observe
http://xkcd.com/c55.html

Dell-7. This was my first laptop, decently built, but the battery was terrible. After 8 months my cpu fan went out. I put fans into it twice before getting rid of it on ebay.

Toshiba- 7.5 I havn't owned one of these, but know of friends with them. I have seen sound card problems and fan problems with these. The fan problem was mostly due to the poor build of the system. The case would keep rubbing against the fan. Fairly well priced, but as they say you get what you pay for.

Apple- 7.8 My roommate has owned 2 of these in the past year. He had problems with the usb port, and a continuing dying hard drive, replaced them a couple of times. His new one is allright, but occasionally has internet problems.

Gateway- 9.4 My school forced me to buy a laptop through them, which ment I had to buy a gateway. I was a little hesitant at first, but ended up buying a refurbished for only $700. No problems and I have had it for almost a year. Keyboards could be a little better designed, but really nothing worth complaining about. My roommate just bought one of these to potentially replace his apple. Also my brother has owned his gateway laptop for 4 years. He never had a problem.

Honestly from being a current Certified Dell and HP tech and a former Gateway tech.

Avoid Gateway at all costs for any kind of warranty work..

Dell's Full Coverage warranty is still hands down the best in the business. They are starting to crack down though so YMMV.

HP's is good for business stuff, The warranty leaves A LOT to be desired though.

Acer TravelMate TM4021WLCi

Purchased from newegg.com, which typically has great service. Notebook came with a 1 year manufacturer's warranty. The notebook is now 14 months old and hangs on the boot. It will eventually go into Windows, but it's a long wait.

I give it a 4/10 value.

HP: 4/10 - Every HP/Compaq I've ever come in contact with lasted less than 2 years and then had major errors. Their warranty is terrible as well.

Acer: 9/10 - Great value, performance, and reliability. Giving a 9 because I personally haven't had to use their support, and the unit runs rather warm.

Toshiba: 9/10

Updated...

oh crap, I forgot to include my own experiences... lol...


Ok so I purchased a Dell XPS 1210, frigging awsome laptop. I managed to pull 10 hours of battery life outta it wordprocessing/websurfing. I have never considered getting a 12 inch laptop before but this thing has blown me away.

Not to mention this thing was refurbished... supposidly a scratch and dent... I have yet to this day to find a single scratch and/or dent in this laptop. Initally dell did ship the laptop with the wrong battery but they shipped me the correct one within 3 days. The only downer I can see with this laptop is that it dosen't have DVI out and the back of it attracts fingerprints like mad.

Overall I give this one a 9/10

I have a Dell e1505. At first I was pretty pleased with it. However, lately it has not been very good. For one thing, the battery life is atrocious. If I am lucky, with the screen all the way dimmed, I get 2 hours of surfing the internet. DOing anything else causes the life to decrease even more. Beyond that, I have recently been receiving a blue screen message concerning a hardware malfunction that requires a reboot. Dell support would not help me, but the probablem does not happen enough for me to care that much.

Overall, I would give it a 6/10. It is fairly serviceable when plugged in, but has some prominent issues.

Sony 9/10
dell 9/10
winbook 7/10

They both do a good job, but when i want to install a fresh copy of windows, i have to jump through hoops sometimes. Like on my sony vaio, i have to use a hp driver for my sd/duo card reader to actually read the cards. Though i did get my winbook laptop pre-owned it was still crappy, even with a fresh install of windows, it also was made from some super cheap plastic and the battery sucked.

I have to give both Apple and Dell nine out of ten.

Apple - 9/10
Dell - 9/10

I have to give Apple a nine because every Powerbook I've ever worked on has been a very solid machine. Even my iBook G4 has been solid under heavy use, and when the AC adaptor died, after calling them up I had a new one the next day under warranty.

My experience is similar with Dell. I've had several Inspiron laptops and they have all been solid machines under moderate/average use. The only problem I had with one was when a few keys on the keyboard shorted out. Less then ten minutes on the phone with Dell support and I had a replacement keyboard the next day under warranty, along with instructions on how to install it and a tool.

I've owned an AVERATEC AV1050-EB1 (in sig) for almost a year now and I'd give it 9/10.

It's very small & light, has a nice battery life (4hrs) and is definitely fast enough to handle everything I use it for (note taking, programming, web surfing, light image processing, light gaming).

I've never had a problem with it. My only complaints are thus:
No system CD, just a proprietary system-restore program on the MBR.
The SD drive relies on software to work.

Neither of these would be an issue ff I didn't use Linux on it.

I just picked up a Acer Aspire 5570z a few days ago so I thought i would put in my initial impressions.


I give it a 7.5 / 10.

There was no system recovery CD with the laptop which was a negative for me, and the 160 GB hdd was split into 2 partitions which I wasnt too happy about.

However, for the price I paid, Im happy with everything else.

HP Pavillion dv2000

4/10

My girlfriend has had this for about a year now, and I pretty much use it all the time since Im her default tech support. This thing is horrible, Ive had nonstop problems with it. Wireless stopped working, BSOD on bootups where you cant even get into safemode, abysmal (and cranky/rude) tech support, 3rd party updaters that break the system on updates, the list goes on

Bottom line: when it works its fine. when I dosent work (which happens a lot) I regret the day my girlfriend discovered I knew how to fix computers. I will *NEVER* buy an HP, nor would I recommend it to anyone.

Any chance of getting this updated, and/or fixing the broken links?

Unstuck this one, its not exactly current or relevant at this point.