Originally Posted by Gene

Guessing you've worked out what Santa Rosa platform is already . Put simply, Santa Rosa is the new Intel Centrino mobile platform, i.e. motherboard/wireless card etc. I know alot of people have been recommending Sony/HP etc. Personally I go against everyone and say Dell is the best. I know alot of people knock Dell, but for me they represent best value per performance, particularly the XPS range. I've personally owned about 15 notebooks of all brands and I've worked with lots and lots of notebooks of different brands since I work as an IT administrator at a software firm. Basically the only major notebook brand I've never owned or thoroughly tested is the Macbook.

If anyone cares to note here are my opinions of the brands:

Sony: Very good looking, generally reliable but average performance, but so overpriced for what they are.

IBM/Lenovo: Probably the most reliable, trusty, business notebook out there. Good keyboard with good performance. If I needed a trusty notebook it would be a IBM. But overpriced for what it is. Lenovo-branded notebooks are pretty good and well priced though.

Toshiba: Most of their notebooks seem to be really flimsy. They look good, with average performance. Overpriced for what they are again.

HP/Compaq: Personally I never liked HP notebooks, even though I've owned 3 of them. They don't offer anything amazing IMO, and on average they are more expensive than the equivalent Dell. For example, Dell has had the M2010 out for a while well before HP released their 20 incher. Plus most of my work HP notebooks have had issues (about 10 HP notebooks at work).

Dell: Best performance for price in my opinion. Not the most sturdy of the bunch, not the most reliable, not the fastest, not the cheapest. But the best combination of all the above, compared to the other makers. Service can be crap, but good thing is that if you know what your talking about you can trick the service again. Case in point, I spilt water all over my keyboard accidently. Obviously this isn't covered by warranty, but I tricked the service agent into believing the keyboard stopped responding. They replaced the keyboard no charge. I've over 7 Dell notebooks. My work is using Dell notebooks.

Acer: Shit.

Asus: Pretty good performance-wise, price-wise, reliability-wise. They offer a really good combination of these features. I just feel Dell offer a better combination. In particular Dell are far cheaper in New Zealand than Asus. Asus would be my next choice after Dell.

Panasonic: Bloody tough notebooks. Pretty average to low performance. But man can they take a beating.

Sharp and Samsung: Actually these notebooks are rather impressive. Too bad they are not widely sold.

Packard Bell: Haha. On paper they look good. Paper lies. Its like a car that has the same specifications as an M5, but drives like a Holden Vectra.

Fujitsu: I like Fujitsu laptops. They are quite trusty. Too bad they are expensive. They are like Sony's, just more expensive in NZ.

Well hope that helped you out. If you want a 17 incher/20 inch, I would look into getting an Dell XPS M1710 or M2010. In my country they would be the cheapest per performance.

Originally Posted by ree

Nice thread! I just notice it today!
I have a Apple Macbook since Friday and I really have to say that I'm enthralled. At the beginning the new Software was a bit confusing...but after three days it was extremely easy to handle!

But I have also to say, that I wanted to buy a DELL first! They build great Laptops with really good hardware and the offer an ideal service.
One of the biggest convenience is also that you will have no problems, when you're going to share documents, files and all the stuff - like you will have when you would go for an Apple!

Originally Posted by NarutoRamen

My reason for never buying apple...lack of upgrades unless you dish out mucho $$.

Originally Posted by Osnabrueck

What sort of upgrades are you speaking of?

Originally Posted by NarutoRamen

Hard drives, memory (given the new ones allow you to updrade this).

But when it comes to desktops...you're pretty much SOL with Apple.

Originally Posted by Osnabrueck

What you're saying about being SOL with Apple desktops is an old adage that couldn't be further from the truth. The Mac Pro desktops were designed to be mod friendly. The guts of the machine are easily accessible and HDs are wired to make swapping easy. Also, Mac Pros are ordered piecemeal - so you can pretty much spec out whatever computer you like.

As for memory and such - you can get these parts for roughly the same price as their PC counterparts.

Originally Posted by NarutoRamen

Believe me, I've wanted to switch to apple but their attitude towards modding and their overly priced crap keeps me away...and let's not even start with the games.

Originally Posted by Gene

Guessing you've worked out what Santa Rosa platform is already . Put simply, Santa Rosa is the new Intel Centrino mobile platform, i.e. motherboard/wireless card etc. I know alot of people have been recommending Sony/HP etc. Personally I go against everyone and say Dell is the best. I know alot of people knock Dell, but for me they represent best value per performance, particularly the XPS range. I've personally owned about 15 notebooks of all brands and I've worked with lots and lots of notebooks of different brands since I work as an IT administrator at a software firm. Basically the only major notebook brand I've never owned or thoroughly tested is the Macbook.

If anyone cares to note here are my opinions of the brands:

Sony: Very good looking, generally reliable but average performance, but so overpriced for what they are.

IBM/Lenovo: Probably the most reliable, trusty, business notebook out there. Good keyboard with good performance. If I needed a trusty notebook it would be a IBM. But overpriced for what it is. Lenovo-branded notebooks are pretty good and well priced though.

Toshiba: Most of their notebooks seem to be really flimsy. They look good, with average performance. Overpriced for what they are again.

HP/Compaq: Personally I never liked HP notebooks, even though I've owned 3 of them. They don't offer anything amazing IMO, and on average they are more expensive than the equivalent Dell. For example, Dell has had the M2010 out for a while well before HP released their 20 incher. Plus most of my work HP notebooks have had issues (about 10 HP notebooks at work).

Dell: Best performance for price in my opinion. Not the most sturdy of the bunch, not the most reliable, not the fastest, not the cheapest. But the best combination of all the above, compared to the other makers. Service can be crap, but good thing is that if you know what your talking about you can trick the service again. Case in point, I spilt water all over my keyboard accidently. Obviously this isn't covered by warranty, but I tricked the service agent into believing the keyboard stopped responding. They replaced the keyboard no charge. I've over 7 Dell notebooks. My work is using Dell notebooks.

Acer: Shit.

Asus: Pretty good performance-wise, price-wise, reliability-wise. They offer a really good combination of these features. I just feel Dell offer a better combination. In particular Dell are far cheaper in New Zealand than Asus. Asus would be my next choice after Dell.

Panasonic: Bloody tough notebooks. Pretty average to low performance. But man can they take a beating.

Sharp and Samsung: Actually these notebooks are rather impressive. Too bad they are not widely sold.

Packard Bell: Haha. On paper they look good. Paper lies. Its like a car that has the same specifications as an M5, but drives like a Holden Vectra.

Fujitsu: I like Fujitsu laptops. They are quite trusty. Too bad they are expensive. They are like Sony's, just more expensive in NZ.

Well hope that helped you out. If you want a 17 incher/20 inch, I would look into getting an Dell XPS M1710 or M2010. In my country they would be the cheapest per performance.