Which laptop manufacturer?

GetBusyLiving

GetBusyLiving

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Caroline
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I have had the same desktop for years and it is still perfect (although had to reload everything because Linux dual-boot messed it up, or I did!); I also have a 16" laptop.

My partner is using a MS Surface Pro 6 at the moment and being touchscreen only (can use a keyboard but it's not convenient) but we've agreed that they'd like a laptop again now.

I have been out of touch with new computers for some time and while I can doty out what specs I want from a laptop, I'm a bit stuck over the best manufacturer to go for. I've looked at Lenovo, HP, Dell but am open to suggestions as to others. Any good, and bad, experiences with laptop manufacturers?

I only want to spend up to about five hundred as they only look at emails, browse the web, that sort of stuff.

NB, I've always used Dell and have never had a problem, but it's always good to shop around now and again.
 
Dell is a good default - generally robust even though they lack in some areas (screens, battery life).

We have 2 Lenovos. My wife's is now 4 years old, seems fine although battery life is a little short because it's left plugged in for long periods sometimes. Mine is 2 1/2 years old, has occasional hiccup but seems OK.
 
GetBusyLiving said:
My partner is using a MS Surface Pro 6 at the moment and being touchscreen only (can use a keyboard but it's not convenient) but we've agreed that they'd like a laptop again now.
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I don’t understand this bit.
I had a surface pro for work for years and loved it so much I bought one for personal use.

I always considered the ability to use them without a keyboard as a bonus (rarely used).

Notably when using it for ‘work’ it was usually attached to a docking station with full size keyboard and mouse, with the small SP screen being used as a second screen for teams etc while the ‘main screen’ would be used to work.
As a ‘laptop’ for personal use, I generally used the attached keyboard.

And whilst I had an IPad prior to owning the SP, and I’ve bought another one since, I rarely used the SP as a traditional ’tablet’.
 
The Surface was very good and I used it myself for some years (it's a Pro 6, so quite old now). I used it with a keyboard, a separate mouse and a pen too but my partner just wants to use it on her lap to just browse [the dreaded] Facebook, write emails and surf the internet. She doesn't want to have an extra keyboard hanging off the bottom and anyway, the battery is not holding charge much any more, so it's time to move on.
 
For general company use these days we tend to look at 14" Yoga Slim 7 for general office type / browsing use.

Currys do decent offers on them from time to time (the specs vary a bit as well - Core Ultra or Ryzen - and whether they come with a pen - and battery life).

These are heavier than a Surface Pro. But lower priced, reasonably built IMO, bigger screen, and keyboard included (though I note that's not important) - and available with a x86 CPU (I'm still not convinced that the non-x86 variants with things like Snapdragon are as well supported for third party and open source software).

Bit heavier than a Surface. But I know an ex Surface Pro user who is quite happy with the 14" Yoga Slim 7 for general use and travel.
 
HP.
Outlast others, and less problems with drivers etc, easy to fit new drives and memory, and batteries.
 
GetBusyLiving said:
The Surface was very good and I used it myself for some years (it's a Pro 6, so quite old now). I used it with a keyboard, a separate mouse and a pen too but my partner just wants to use it on her lap to just browse [the dreaded] Facebook, write emails and surf the internet. She doesn't want to have an extra keyboard hanging off the bottom and anyway, the battery is not holding charge much any more, so it's time to move on.
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Her use case screams Tablet to me. I see Costco have an 11inch A16 with 256 GB for under £500.
 
I've always used HP and Asus, until recently I was using a Laptop as my main computer, that goes back 20 years. I found they generally had a 2-year life, then the keyboard had, battery, or screen, had issues. They were always getting heavy use.

Personally, I always buy when there are special offers, and have never had a problem - for photography use & processing.

Unless you are a Gamer you really don't need a top/high end Laptop. I should replace mine, it has keyboard issues, battery collapse. But an £85 Android tablet is a mind-blowing alternative, and has a keyboard.

Ian
 
I agree with @trevorbray , the use case screams tablet to me too.

My IPad is used for: non mobile internet access (I use my phone the vast majority of the time) a bit of note taking, more organised web research, emails, and loading up with tv for travelling. Sometimes some photo processing

I still have a laptop for the heavier weight tasks.
 
As someone who deploys around 500 laptops every 5 years, I can say that they're all much of a muchness. Worry more about the spec and value rather than the manufacturer, as many will use the same components internally.

As far as non-spec related things - How strong are hinges, do screens flex, batteries swell etc? Like cars, they all have their "Common issues" - In reality, these issues affect less than 1% of them, and it's not worth basing your choice on things that likely won't affect you.
 
GetBusyLiving said:
The Surface was very good and I used it myself for some years (it's a Pro 6, so quite old now). I used it with a keyboard, a separate mouse and a pen too but my partner just wants to use it on her lap to just browse [the dreaded] Facebook, write emails and surf the internet. She doesn't want to have an extra keyboard hanging off the bottom and anyway, the battery is not holding charge much any more, so it's time to move on.
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Somewhat puzzled.

I just bought two old Surface Pro 3s, to install Windows 7 for car diagnostics. £30 each.

They have attached keyboards with touch pads, so putting on your lap it is the same as using a laptop.

Just installed Feren on one of them, and is faster than W10 was, and gives me all that a normal machine need, in fact it is excellent :)

My normal bluetooth mouse works on it.

I don't know how the keyboard works on your Pro6, but these two are just th same as a laptop :)
 
I use a Surface Pro 9, but I do think you can't really use it as an 'on the lap' laptop. Because of the sharp metal bar for holding up main boy and the flexible keyboard angle it's not ideal if you want a sitting on the sofa laptop. You'd need a tea tray on your lap first of something.

Great for travel, desks etc but you do need a hard surface I find.
 
Sangoma said:
Somewhat puzzled.

I just bought two old Surface Pro 3s, to install Windows 7 for car diagnostics. £30 each.

They have attached keyboards with touch pads, so putting on your lap it is the same as using a laptop.

Just installed Feren on one of them, and is faster than W10 was, and gives me all that a normal machine need, in fact it is excellent :)

My normal bluetooth mouse works on it.

I don't know how the keyboard works on your Pro6, but these two are just th same as a laptop :)
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As KB says, it's not very convenient for sitting on the sofa, typing emails, as you have that angular support on the back digging in to your legs. I don't know if the Pro 3 was different but certainly the Pro 6 and beyond has a detachable keyboard. It works OK if you are using it on a desk, but not with it on your lap.
 
kanephotos said:
I use a Surface Pro 9, but I do think you can't really use it as an 'on the lap' laptop. Because of the sharp metal bar for holding up main boy and the flexible keyboard angle it's not ideal if you want a sitting on the sofa laptop. You'd need a tea tray on your lap first of something.

Great for travel, desks etc but you do need a hard surface I find.
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It might be that I ‘sit wrong’ but I don’t sit upright with a laptop on my lap, I can think of nothing less comfortable.
I would often sit with the SP ‘leg’ perched over my crossed leg, which is just as comfortable as perching any laptop
 
GetBusyLiving said:
As KB says, it's not very convenient for sitting on the sofa, typing emails, as you have that angular support on the back digging in to your legs. I don't know if the Pro 3 was different but certainly the Pro 6 and beyond has a detachable keyboard. It works OK if you are using it on a desk, but not with it on your lap.
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As above, I must ‘sit wrong’ cos I never found it more uncomfortable than any other form of laptop.

But we’re all different I suppose.

I’m a big fan of my current work ‘think pad’ and that can be folded to create a tablet, though I’ll add I’ve never done that, the hinges do come in handy though to enable me to fold the laptop keyboard out of the way when using it on the desk.
 
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I've taken all the comments on board and have committed to a Lenovo. It's reasonably-priced with a decent spec for what it will be used for and it's not huge (14") as she doesn't like my 16" laptop.

Personally, although I have a laptop (a Dell), I couldn't be without my desktop with its two large monitors, fancy graphics card and more peripheral slots than you can shake a stick at.
 
GetBusyLiving said:
I couldn't be without my desktop with its two large monitors, fancy graphics card and more peripheral slots than you can shake a stick at.
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That’s what docking stations are for. :D

Seriously I swore i couldn’t do without my desktop for years, nowadays I can use the same desktop setup for my work laptop, my personal laptop, my iPad or my wife’s MacBook. And a mix of the cloud and external drives gives shared access to anything important.

Also good choice with the Lenovo, my work laptop never misses a beat and the Dell’s that were deployed at the same time have all been replaced.
 
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I have a conventioanl base unit and 2 X 27" screens for photo editing, but for conventional work I have a USB-C adapter that plugs into the laptop and sends signal to those same 2 screens plus a keyboard and mouse.
 
Hi, I have had a bad experience with a LENOVO Thinkpad. The graphics failed in the warranty period. LENOVO refused support ...

Never had any problems with APPLE MACs.
 
justpix said:
Never had any problems with APPLE MACs.
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My wife had a 16 inch 2019 MacBook Pro which went haywire when she tried to update it to Sonoma from Ventura.

The local Apple Store wanted the best part of £450 just to look at it, whether they could fix it or not, so she decided she'd rather spend £2,500 on a new one (which, to be fair, has been trouble free). Rather than scrap the old one I decided to see what, if anything could be done with it. After several false starts, I eventually figured out that the T2 chip was at the heart of the problem. It then took half a dozen further false starts to get a copy of Catalina working on it, which now appears to be stable and ignoring the T2 chip.

The moral I draw from this is that Apple hardware is reliable but --- beware of the software department's promises that every upgrade is "an improvement"!
 
I think a lot of high end Laptops are more and more copying Apple's formula, with a thin unibody chassis, higher res screens, but less and less components which are upgradable (including memory, IO Cards, NVME drives and batteries).

So which ever you choose, go into it with the knowledge that what ever you choose, it needs to have the headroom for what you might need from it in 2 or 3 years time (if you plan of keeping it for a while), as due to the general non-upgradability of modern notebooks, spending a little more now on a bigger NVME or memory, should pay dividends in the future.

I have to say I've been totally Apple with my last 3 notebooks going back about 12 years, and they have all been superb and never failed me, and started up as quick after 2 years than they did when brand new. I've never had that experience with any Windows based notebook I've owned, with start-up times and general OS stability much better on Mac OS than Windows, However, I also know many that just couldn't get on with a Mac's slightly different way of operating and it's keyboard shortcuts and keys etc, so whatever you go far, try your best to demo and handle if before buying.
 
My experience with Apple hardware pre-M series chips was poor, with failed graphics chips in my own MacBook and another later model that I might otherwise have upgraded to, plus the butterfly keyboards that failed enough masse. A good friend and his wife both had MacBooks with the faulty keyboard that Apple didn't want to replace under warranty at the time. Their software of the same period could be pretty shoddy too.

Basically Apple are no more immune from poor design and hardware choices than anyone else (although for some it feels like it's intentional). But generally it seems that people who like Apple hardware will put up with much more rubbish than those using other brands.

*edit*
On another forum I'm involved in, one of the long-term Mac users has just had her M series machine become unusable after updating to Tahoe. Initially it looked a problem swapping between QWERTY and AZERTY French keyboad, but as it turns out that's not the case - cause presently unknown.
 
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ancient_mariner said:
My experience with Apple hardware pre-M series chips was poor, with failed graphics chips in my own MacBook and another later model that I might otherwise have upgraded to, plus the butterfly keyboards that failed enough masse. A good friend and his wife both had MacBooks with the faulty keyboard that Apple didn't want to replace under warranty at the time. Their software of the same period could be pretty shoddy too.

Basically Apple are no more immune from poor design and hardware choices than anyone else (although for some it feels like it's intentional). But generally it seems that people who like Apple hardware will put up with much more rubbish than those using other brands.

*edit*
On another forum I'm involved in, one of the long-term Mac users has just had her M series machine become unusable after updating to Tahoe. Initially it looked a problem swapping between QWERTY and AZERTY French keyboad, but as it turns out that's not the case - cause presently unknown.
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That doesn’t sound good, I am putting off upgrading my M1 to Tahoe am a bit nervous about some of my software not working with it , I have some more obscure stuff like upscaling and audio software for example
 
Well I can only speak to my experience. I have had a lot (and still do) of Apple Hardware (Mac Book Pros, Mac Mini's and Mac Studios), and all have been faultlessly reliable. Whilst I'm sure they have their fair share of issues, maybe I've just been lucky ? However, at work we use Dell hardware running Windows 11 (Nearly 20,000 computers globally for our company), and we (at least in the UK), have had our fair share of hardware failures (including power boards, screen failures etc).

However this does need to be taken in it's true context. Typically our Dell hardware we use for work is on and used hard for 7-9 hours a day 5 days a week, where as my Mac hardware is only used in the evenings and weekends (and then not every evening), so the typical time switched on, is considerably less.
 
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Sootchucker said:
Well I can only speak to my experience. I have had a lot (and still do) of Apple Hardware (Mac Book Pros, Mac Mini's and Mac Studios), and all have been faultlessly reliable. Whilst I'm sure they have their fair share of issues, maybe I've just been lucky ? However, at work we use Dell hardware running Windows 10 (Nearly 20,000 computers globally for our company), and we (at least in the UK), have had our fair share of hardware failures (including power boards, screen failures etc).

However this does need to be taken in it's true context. Typically our Dell hardware we use for work is on and used hard for 7-9 hours a day 5 days a week, where as my Mac hardware is only used in the evenings and weekends (and then not every evening), so the typical time switched on, is considerably less.
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Pretty much echoes my experience with Apple (since 2009). Had a number of Windows machines over the previous 20 years and had to change them every 3-4 years although no doubt they've improved since then.
 
Windows machines are often bought cheap, under-spec'd and built down to a budget. I have memories of helping a young friend reinstall windows on a £200 Toshiba laptop that was utterly horrible, computing through treacle.

A good machine is good who ever made it generally. My 2014 Dell XPS is still useful, though retired because of the flakey keyboard and W10 only limitation.
 
ancient_mariner said:
A good machine is good who ever made it generally. My 2014 Dell XPS is still useful, though retired because of the flakey keyboard and W10 only limitation.
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I think it's all down to expectations.

As someone who still remembers how impressed I was by Visicalc, on a Commodore Pet, I think my level of expectation is low enough that any modern laptop with a decent version of Windows is pretty good! ;)
 
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