Advice on the best laptop to get?

I need a laptop and have had it drummed into me for the past 4.5 years that Dell are the ONLY way to go and that i'm the spawn of satan if i get anything else. Is this true? I only need it for the internet and iTunes so nothing too heavy but i don't want it to be slow. Anyone got any advice? I will probably end up with a Dell but i just wanted to get some external opinions. I really don't want to spend alot but i know you get what you pay for so open to suggestions.

[fizzwheel]

IMHO no its not true. There are plenty of manufacturers now so don't just look at Dell. I always say to people set yourself a budget and then buy then best thing you can afford for the budget you have and to always if you dont know about I.T. buy something from the big named Brand manufacturers of which Dell are just one. I got Liz's mum a cracking HP laptop for £400 ish a while ago. The only brand I would stay away from is Packard Bell as a few of my customers had problems with them and they were a b*stard to get upgrade parts for, and if you could they were damn expensive to repair / upgrade as well.

One thing I wouldnt scrimp on is the screen though. Some of the cheaper budget price laptops that you'll find in the sales at this time of year will IMHO have a poor quality screen on them.

Anything by HP, Dell, Compaq, Toshiba is probably going to be OK. I'd have a look at Sony to except that they recalled IIRC some of their laptops a while back because the batteries were exploding.

Have a look at the Macbooks as well if you just want itunes and internet access it might be just what your looking for.

Do you really need a laptop?

Either way Dell are pretty good, but its a bit like buying a standard family car rather than a more expensive better built bit of kit. they all do the same thing.

I have four Dell pc's at home (kids!) cheap as chips (not bought all at the same time!!) and so far - touches mock wood desk - no problems. All came with sound, speakers, TFT and printer (which is pretty good quality). We also run them on wirless internet - triffic.

went on line to 'build' what we wanted but the pricing gets confusing so we then phone up with the spec, usually get a better price than that stated online and its delivered in less than a week ready to go. Usual follow up phone calls come through.

So easy I would take some pursuading to be bothered to go eslewhere.

As said above set yourself a budget then see what you can get for the money.

www.laptopsdirect.co.uk

Are pretty good. I like Fujitsu Siemens laptops and one of my mates won;t use anything but Sony. It all depends on what you want from it. However Dell laptops are certainly not the best about. If you post a budget I don't mind having a look about.

The IBM I got from work is pretty rugged. It's worth thinking about that if you are going to carry it everywhere. There's lots of little features that make life easy too.

Macbooks are good - and they can run windows as well (either by rebooting or with something like paraelles desktop. I would go with either a macbook or macbook pro. Pricy, but very sexy and easy to use.

Dan

I wouldn't touch Dell with a bargepole myself. I've heard too many horror stories about them.

There's loads of cheap laptops about from a variety of manufacturers. I wouldn't worry about speed as they're all really fast these days, but make sure that you get *at least* 512Mb of memory (Ram). I'm a bit paranoid about security (for good reason) and don't consider Windows XP to be secure enough to be used on the internet (unless you want it to be taken over by an organised crime gang who'll use it to steal your banking details and to send spam).

If you have a bit of cash, then the Macbooks are superb. They're what I'd go for.

Dell is a double-edged sword. For businesses, great. For home users, the customer services can be lacking at times, but then, others will say they've had flawless service from them. It all depends on who's at the other end of the phone. The Irish call centre in particular is good

As for the laptop, if you only want the inter-web & iTunes, then anything with a USB socket will do ITunes & any MP3 player you like, and a processor of around 1.5Ghz would suffice. However, buying a machine like that (assuming it's running XP, you'd be wanting what? 1Gb RAM), it's outdated before it arrives on your doorstep.

You need to look at how long you want the machine to last before it's impossible to upgrade.

Don't worry too much about manufacturers, look at the features you're getting, all the manufacturers are pretty much the same.

Basically, look for something around the 1.5Ghz mark, but preferably a littler better, DVD+/-RW would obviously be a bonus, but might not be needed, extra RAM would be good. At the end of the day, it's everything static to the board that will limit you, and to a certain extent, the CPU, so look at the ability to upgrade specifics later (costs of these will drop over time anyway).

I work for a logistics company, and we ship Dell & HP worldwide, and HP have been outselling Dell hand over fist (just looking at the ordering systems from the warehousing & transportation). The masses tend to vote with their feet, so you might want to think about why HP have started to outsell Dell for the first time in a long time.

But as ever, buy whatever is appropriate for YOU, and if a sales guy is pushing you into a corner about a particular machine, make sure you keep your back to the door It's better to walk away & think about something, rather than be pushed into something far more expensive than you wanted, that does 12million things you'll never use.

EDIT [in response to wrydness]: Security is a concept. It's a constant tradeoff, security vs usability. If you want to be able to have users in a system, it can never be 100% secure. Macbooks are equally susceptible to exploits if not kept up to date, granted Windows comes with more holes switched on, but still, the key is knowledge. At the end of the day, if someone wants to get in your house, it doesn't matter how secure it is, they will get in! It just takes determination!
HTH

Originally Posted by fizzwheel

Anything by HP, Dell, Compaq, Toshiba is probably going to be OK. I'd have a look at Sony to except that they recalled IIRC some of their laptops a while back because the batteries were exploding.

Catching fire... not exploding. Still wouldn't want one on my lap though

I'd go along with what others have said... set your budget and then shop around. Using a price comparison site like Dealtime has been very useful for me. See http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xPP-pc_laptops as a starting point.

My personal opinion is that Lenovo (used to be called IBM), HP, Mac, Sony, Toshiba and Dell are OK, Packard Bell is sh*te.

As far as specs are concerned, iTunes can use up lots of disk space, so look for a hard drive at least 60-80GB, with 1GB of system RAM & 256MB of graphics RAM if you want to run Vista (lots of stores are offering a free upgrade when it's released). Built-in wireless and a DVD writer are also things you'll probably want. CPU is less important.

HTH
Terence

I'd have to echo the above advice ... set a budget and then look around at that price to see what you think is a good deal, or if your not too confident, grab a few different specs and put them under the nose of a friendly computer geek.

I've just bought myself a Mac Book Pro over christmas, and I would say, if your not tied to a windows machine then Macs are a good thing to look at. They have everything you could need out of the box, run reasonably fast, and the operating system is a joy to use. Only grumble is that they moved the @ and " on the keyboard :P Plus the design of the things is very shiny and nice to look at However they are more expensive when considered against windows laptops, so that may be a consideration.