[kfr01]

I've had horrible luck with Dell and good luck with IBM.

One Dell laptop had a charging system go bad (right after the end of the 2yr warranty I bought).

The other Dell laptop had horrible stability problems (random freezes, reboots, display crashes).

I use IBM/Leveno laptops now for personal and business use.  They are stable as can be; I can now go weeks without rebooting, which, in my experience, is rare for a laptop.

[jqp]

Those are good points, jqp.  Which is puzzling re Compaq/HP, assuming they are sourcing the hard drives, screen components, disc drives, etc. from the some companies that Dell and Toshiba use.

I just read a PCMag survey from this summer that placed Mac, IBM (Lenovo) and Fujitsu at the top, Dell and Toshiba as average, and Compaq/HP as below average due to "reliability" issues. Does it have to do with motherboard and architecture maybe?  When my wife's Emachines desktop failed this fall, I had a tech look at the hard drive to try to recover some documents. He commented that EMachines uses inferior power supplies that tend to take out the motherboard (and, as a result, all other components) when they fail. When the ps went kaput, it took the hard drive with it.

A.

Yes those power supplies are one of the most underrated components, they can deliver inconsistent power, be too noisy, and blow a capacitor.

My 6 year old refurbished Dell had a screen interference issue. I was able to find a support article about reseating the video card cable, which required removing the keyboard, unplugging the cable and carefuly reseating it. After about the fourth time last year it still seems to be OK. I feel really lucky. Laptops are so much more "all or nothing".

The Gateway has shipped via Fedex - from Shanghai 

[Bemopti123]

Apple laptops, as far as I am concern are able to ROCK any other windows based machines out there.  I have a PB 12" G4, decent battery life, it never freezes and it is fairly rugged. 

My bro is into Toshibas.  Pretty much all the Toshibas that he has had, that means 2 of them in the past 6-7 years have been very stable. 

I would stay away from HP, I have had bad experience with their gear, so did my friend with her HP laptop.

DELL is fairly affordable, but you will get what you paid for in terms of reliability. 

Not to discount the person who said that his wife's company owns massive amount of Dells, but Dells are very good in outbidding other manufacturers when it comes to Corporate accounts, thus, I do believe, without looking into the purpose of the Dells in the company, that the company decided to carry them due to price and not necessarily reliability issues. 

LENOVO or the formerly IBM thinkpad line also seem to be very reliable, rock steady, although more costly.

COMPAQs have gone the way of the dinosaurs since they were acquired by HP.  It is a true shame.  A student I know has had their mother board FRIED within 3 months of getting her laptop.

[sl_1800]

I have bought two Apple Macbooks over the past couple of months, fist one for my wife about 2 months ago.  I liked it so much I had to get one for myself.  Once you learn a few tricks about the Mac OS X then it is a great machine.

[Thump553]

Rats-I just picked up one of those Back Friday $400 Compaq laptops for my daughter for Christmas-she is going out of the country, so reliability is a key factor.

[bcretty]

Check out www.notebookreview.com. I would get either an Asus or IBM (Lenovo) thinkpad. Nothing is built more solid then a Thinkpad. Asus is a close second in build quality.

Later.
Bri