A laptop?

[auriond]

Count me in as another Toshiba fan. My first Toshiba Satellite lasted me six (SIX!!!!) years, and was still running when the LCD slowly began to deteriorate and finally turned too brown to look at. It only really crashed (in the sense that it couldn't start up at all) once that I remember, but I simply reinstalled Windows and everything was back to normal. I'm now on my second Toshiba Satellite and it's served me well for almost 3 years now.

Incidentally, I've just gotten my first Acer too, a little 10-inch netbook. It's only a couple months old though, so I can't say much about that yet.

[GarageGothic]

I don't know if they have anything in your price range, but as for brands I can wholeheartedly recommend MSI. I just bought an MSI GX620 and I can honestly say it's the finest piece of machinery I've ever owned. The design is lovely, the build quality great, and they seem to have a very good feel for matching hardware while avoiding bottlenecks.

[matt]

i suggest eeepc

[voh]

But I ain't getting a mini-laptop either.

Eee am not what Tuomas wants, silly matt.

Also, I like HP/Compaq a little too much. *rubs laptop*

[Mozesh]

I remove my previous statement that Acer is an alright brand. It's pretty bad, my laptop died again today. It's out of warrenty and it might be the videocard, which would mean buying a new laptop since those are crazy expensive to replace.

Today I went to a shop to ask if they had any tips about fixing my laptop, to my suprise that shop refuses to sell Acer laptop because of the bad build quality and the high need-to-be-repaired rate.

They named a few brands which were reliable and had good customer-support (unlike Acer), two I remember are Toshiba (ugly but tough) and Asus.

[Trent R]

I don't know if they have anything in your price range, but as for brands I can wholeheartedly recommend MSI. I just bought an MSI GX620 and I can honestly say it's the finest piece of machinery I've ever owned. The design is lovely, the build quality great, and they seem to have a very good feel for matching hardware while avoiding bottlenecks.

Garage, that looks like an awesome computer. But I can't seem to find a price tag... how much did you pay for yours?

~Trent

[m0ds]

I have a new Toshiba laptop, sorry, notebook, which I got the other day. It was free with an 18 month contract for mobile broadband, so I walked out with it and the bb and dont pay my first bill til late March, woop!

The deal was 25 a month, the only other option in that range was 30 quid, and an ACER laptop. It took me 10 minutes to decide. With a notebook you dont get built in cd like a laptop but that really is all its missing. Neither come with Firewire, which I would've liked. And yes, I did also take note that ACER laptops are like ALBA stereos - cheap & unreliable.

This is the first mini pc ive owned, so how did I get an opinion on ACER? Just about everyone who has owned one that I know told me at some point not to get one. So I'd have to reccomend Toshiba or Dell.

Good luck!

[GarageGothic]

Trent R: Yeah it is quite awesome. After a couple of weeks' use I'm still very happy with my new notebook. Despite it having a GeForce 9600M GT video card rather than the hardcore gamer (i.e. noisy and battery consuming) 9800 version, it seems to run pretty much anything I throw at it in decent resolutions and framerates.
I paid about 1100â,¬ for it here in Denmark due to taxes, but in the U.S. it seems to retail around 1000-1150$. Be aware that there are multiple versions of the GX620 on the North American market with different CPUs, so check the specifications if you're looking up prices.

Edit: My current favorite feature is that it hooks up to my old analog Creative surround speakers, so I can get 5.1 sound instead of using headphones.

[voh]

M0ds: wouldn't that be a netbook rather than a notebook?

I had a Toshiba. Lasted me 4 good years, then sold it. That was a good laptop

[m0ds]

The salesman kept calling it a notebook voh, but I call it a mini-laptop with no CD drive

[voh]

You know what? That works for me