Laptop Manufacturer's - Which ones best?

Hello TBCS!

Okay so im not like a complete noob when it comes to computers - but im not so great with laptops (my main focus is on desktops). So, im thinking of buying a laptop for my college course coming up (Computer Programming course, in VB6) - but im not sure which manufacturer is best. These are the ones i know of:

• Acer
• Advent
• Asus
• Dell
• Emachine/system
• Fujitsu Siemens
• Gateway
• HP (Compaq)
• IBM
• Medion
• Packard Bell
• Sony Vaio
• Toshiba

I've had an Acer and so has my sister, and they dont stand well against alot of use to be honest (i had the 5100 with the faulty HDD controller ¬¬). I dont really want a dell, because its dell. And im not that tight on budget to only buy a tacky Medion, Advent or Emachine/system.

So what are your experiences with laptops of the above manufacturers, which one do you recommend.

HP's are only good if you get into the Elitebook range.. and they arent cheap. Stay far far away from low end HPs.

Asus is my number one pick by far... reliability is very high, costs are very good.

I have had 3 different manufacturer's laptops. Toshiba, Dell and ASUS. SO far my favorite is the ASUS, but that is because it is a high end model. The Toshiba's I have owned have also been good. No issues so far. Dell is pretty reliable, but I have only used the Inspiron models. Never had an issue with any of the Dells I have bought.

That's true I guess.. my XPS just keeps on working. The battery is toast, and a replacement is waaaaay too expensive for my budget, but the laptop itself is a trooper.

I had a toshiba for a bit, and found it to be good, but it ran a bit warm for my liking, and I started having weird audio issues with it (weird volume fluctuations).

It depends what you get. Toshiba is kinda hit-or-miss, as are the lower-end Dell and HP laptops. I would steer clear of those for that reason, but if you have to get a Dell consumer-class laptop, the Studio XPS line is good (though quite pricey). A general rule of thumb is that pretty much anyone's business line laptops will probably be good. I actually quite like Dell's newer Latitudes, though the Precisions are a little iffy, weirdly.

Personally, my favorites are Lenovo (bought IBM's computer manufacturing stuff) and Asus. Specifically, I like Lenovo's Thinkpad line, though their Ideapad line is quite well done too. Asus is more geared towards consumers, offering high-end graphics, if that's what you want, whereas Thinkpads are geared more towards business customers, so they tend to be rather aesthetically minimalistic (personally I like that), and built like rocks.

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Originally Posted by Airbozo

Dell is pretty reliable, but I have only used the Inspiron models. Never had an issue with any of the Dells I have bought.

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I've had a Dell, Inspiron 8500, for about 4 years and other then replacing the power cord because it wasn't charging the battery anymore its been dropped and attacked by the baby and it seems fine. Running Ubuntu on it right now trying to get a feel for that. My wife uses one of those Asus Netbooks and loves it. Pretty much runs all day long without rest. Had an old Compaq that I actually sold the ran pretty good so I think I've had pretty good luck with laptops. Been tempted though to unload the Dell and get a netbook because i just don't use it like I used to but I'm going to give it some time with linux and see if I can get some programs I use to run.

I know from recent experience that Acer makes Packard Bell - I bought one of each for a clients sons and when I was setting them up, the software was absolutely identical except for the names on it. Flipping them over also showed utterly identical bottom layouts.

Acer also make several other brands of laptop too - I just can't remember them right now but I know they bought out Gateway in 2007 too

Something to bear in mind is that laptop manufacturers only really make the motherboard and the outer plastics. The optical drives will almost certainly be lite-on in origin (even with a different name) - the hard disk will be from one of the big-boys too - the CPU, ram and video chipsets will also be from a third party and the screens again are likely to all come from pretty much the same place. You're probably better off comparing things like battery life and warranties than specs or brands for those reasons.

Having said all of that, I have an Acer netbook, an Acer laptop, and my last laptop was also an Acer - it's now in the care of my mother and still working perfectly after nearly 6 years. I've bought literally dozens of Acers for customers because of my postive experiences with them and only one ever went wrong - that fault was a backlight failure on the screen after about 4 months and Acer collected, repaired, and redelivered the laptop after one phone call and within 10 days so even when one DID go wrong, the backup was there - but that's my experience and no guarantee of anything.

ANY brand you choose, if you look hard enough, will have customers claiming they're useless and unreliable and others singing their praises....

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Originally Posted by slaveofconvention

Something to bear in mind is that laptop manufacturers only really make the motherboard and the outer plastics.

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This is very true. In fact, a lot of the time the manufacturer doesn't actually make anything, they just contract with companies that also tend to make stuff for plenty of other manufacturers too. One humorous one that comes to mind is that I guess because Foxconn didn't have many plants with milling capabilities, the monocoque for the Macbook Air and the Dell Adamo were made by the same company, in the same factory, probably on the same machine.

That being said, because the internals are made by other companies, the case, cooling, and overall presentation of a laptop is what I really look for, and that is why I don't like Acers. Maybe I've only seen cheap Acers, but from all the Acers I've seen, from friends, family, and people who would bring them into the computer repair shop I used to work at, every single one was built very cheaply. Sure, if you were really careful with them, I'm sure they would be fine and last a long time, but I tend to really beat up my laptops, so I need something that's actually built well and can put up with continual abuse. That's one of the reasons why I like Thinkpads. Also, the keyboards...I love me my Thinkpad keyboards. :D

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Originally Posted by slaveofconvention

ANY brand you choose, if you look hard enough, will have customers claiming they're useless and unreliable and others singing their praises....

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Very true. I remember selling computer for Circuit City and we would try to keep most people away from eMachine desktops because we kept getting them back. But there were people who would come in looking to replace an outdated eMachine and want another one because they had no issues for all the XX years they owned to other one.

I love my Dell Studio. super reliable... and good bang for my buck at the time. I have always disliked Dell, but this laptop rocks. I would recommend it to anyone.

Asus, Asus, Asus!

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Originally Posted by deadevil13

• Acer
• Advent
• Asus
• Dell
• Emachine/system
• Fujitsu Siemens
• Gateway
• HP (Compaq)
• IBM
• Medion
• Packard Bell
• Sony Vaio
• Toshiba

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Those are the laptop OEMs, vendors and brands.
The overwhelming majority of laptops are not built by the OEMs, but by only a dozen or so ODMs.

A lot of confusion is caused because most ODMs typically do not sell laptops under their own brand, and when they do they typically do so under a subsidiary brand. At the same time, almost every OEM advertises that they design and manufacture their own laptops; many attempt to rebrand the ODM parts with their own OEM designations to some extent. Everyone knows when Intel or AMD or nVidia brands are involved, but the OEMs will attempt to obscure (and claim credit for) the real origins of almost every other component used within.

A lot of wheeling and dealing goes on in the multi-billion dollar laptop industry (which is itself a subset of the computing industry in general). OEMs and ODMs constantly merge, split, partner, takeover, form, dissolve, and trade corporate subcomponents of each other ... they constantly spinoff new little specialized companies (often jointly with other ODMs, OEMs, and spinoffs) ... they own (and buy and sell and trade) shares and subsidiaries of each other, it's hard to track who owns what and who works for who. An entire corporate ecosystem exists where the big players attempt to capitalize on interrelated specialties in constantly changing technologies. Each of the major ODMs specializes in and dominates the market for least one particular laptop component; all of the major ODMs use some components built by competing ODMs to build their complete laptops.

Larger OEMs will often deal with a number of different ODMs simultaneously. Sometimes they have different ODMs produce an identical laptop model to streamline (ie, maximize profits from) their international logistics. Contrary to popular perception (and product labels), easily 98% of all laptop parts are made in Taiwan. (It's not surprising that the laptop market is complicated by the usual genius pwnage of Taiwan vertical disintegration; unregulated technological innovation and capitalism at it's finest!)

Most consumers (in North America at least) tend to think that laptops are built like cars. (This is just an illustrative example, no flames!) Ford might build - or buy from an owned subsidiary - virtually every component that goes into every vehicle that rolls off their assembly line, down to the tires and mirrors and lubricant and bolts. On the other hand, a typical Alienware laptop might use a chassis built by Compal, Foxconn fasteners and connectors, plastics by Dell, a Sony LCD, Acer BT and WiFi radio parts, Wistron battery/PSU, Quanta touchpad, Chicony keyboard and camera (plus the usual recognized brands like ASUS mobo with VIA chipset and AMD processor, Seagate HDD, etc), etc.

A very brief (and incomplete) outline for Top-tier laptop ODMs in 2009

• Quanta - Acer, Apple, Dell/Alienware, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP/Compaq, IBM/Lenovo, NEC, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba ... Cisco, Gericom, Maxdata, MPC, Sun, many others
• Compal (Wistron spinoff) - Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, HP/Compaq, Toshiba, many others
• Wistron (formerly owned by Gateway and Acer) - Acer, Dell, HP, many others
• Inventec - Dell, Fujitsu, HP/Compaq, Toshiba, others
• Pegatron (now owned by ASUS) - Apple, ASUS, Dell, HP/Compaq, Sony, others
• ECS/Elitegroup - Acer, IBM/Lenovo, Hasee, others
• Foxconn (part of Hon Hai Precision) - ASUS, Apple, Sony, many others
• CLEVO - Hasee
• Chicony, ATC, Mitac

Don't see a company you expect to see (like Dell, IBM, Acer, or ASUS) on the list above? Well, that's because they don't really belong there. Yes, indeed, they do have manufacturing plants (in Taiwan, North America, and elsewhere) which churn out laptops. But all they're really doing is manufacturing/modifying the laptop plastics with a few "corporate" touches, assembling all their ODM-made-in-Taiwan parts together (with a few extra P/N and S/N labels), and stuffing it all into a box with their logo on it. They are not actually manufacturing anything, they're just OEMs who are large enough that they can select bulk ODM parts to use.

Laptops are all semi-proprietary; that is, they do not comply to the same rigourous form factors and standard specifications present in desktop and server machines. The companies listed towards the bottom of the above list may not actually produce many complete laptops (just a few million per year), but they are still dominant players and major innovators in the laptop world and their products typically set what become de-facto standards that the other ODMs adopt. For example, a detailed look at all the models offered by CLEVO will reveal the basic design platform and model variations used in over 90% of all branded laptops sold in the world. So the aforementioned Alienware laptop could just be a typical CLEVO 17" model with a particular mobo/processor configuration and HDD parts that anyone could buy and install. True, some OEMs might offer a few ODM parts that are model-specific (chassis-integrated card readers, cameras, etc), but anyone can buy those parts online anyhow (and anyone from TBCS can mod alternative parts in). The only thing an OEM like Dell can offer that an ODM like CLEVO cannot is an astonishing variety of pretty cosmetic plastics - simply because that's the only product their "laptop" factory already builds.
[EDIT] Not entirely accurate - big OEMs also often offer best prices. The consumer cannot usually obtain all the components for an entire laptop directly from the ODMs at a better price, just as with desktop PCs.

Learn much here, here, here, here, or even here.

Because of aggressive OEM brand recognition and infinite variations in personal preference, determining the "best" laptop is very subjective.

CLEVO laptops (available under their Sager brand) and Quanta laptops (available as many different brands) are generally considered the best available. Even so, different OEMs (and retailers and vendors, ranging right down to small computer shops) all offer any number of CLEVO- and Quanta-based machines which can vary considerably in build quality and general engineering. XoticPC is probably equivalent today to what Alienware was yesterday.

Another sad realization for most North American and European consumers is that the cutting edge products of this type (laptops, cellphones, PDAs, etc) are always available first in Taiwan, China, Korea, and Japan. Many products never make it to North American markets for any number of reasons (sometimes regulatory or legal/trademark/patent problems, sometimes products just don't survive in competitive markets).