Best laptop computer you have ever owned?

[eljefino]

LT2712u gateway netbook. Best buy special. Win 7. Part of it might be the competent OS. It's a total appliance but doesn't crash and goes forever on a charge.

Worst computer ever was a dell mini 9 that preceded it. 4GB SSD, I got the stripped down model. 3.2 GB were the ubuntu OS. Mouse touchpad met a price point and the buttons died nearly immediately. Had to turn off "tap" function as well, as it took random palm pressure elsewhere below the keyboard as a "tap".

More fun to rant about junk, I guess.

I like netbooks because to websites they look like real computers. Hate getting the mobile versions of stuff.

 

[wirelessF]

Best so far is my ASUS EeePC 1000HD netbook.

Worst I had was a year 2001 Toshiba laptop. It had a brittle plastic body that would crack under stress, cracked hinges, just junk plastic. Motherboard replaced once because of power issues. Top it off with Windows ME and all those .DLL errors.

 

[55Test]

I've only ever had 3 new laptops. First one was a Dell Inspiron 1501 that I traded for a diesel Jetta. Second one is my current main machine, Dell Inspiron 1720. It's been mostly reliable, even dropped it nearly 3 feet onto a hard floor and it kept working although it killed the hard drive. I almost killed the LCD panel backlight when I cleaned it with some industrial-strength glass cleaner concentrate (didn't know I was supposed to mix with water). Taking the LCD panel out of its casing and letting it sit for a few days brought it back to life.

My eMachines EM250 has been pretty reliable too. The original battery is down to about 1 hour of life under moderate usage, it was about twice that amount when it was new. The only issue I had with it was when I used a program called Uniblue registry cleaner that totally fudged the registry so badly that it wouldn't even boot into safe mode anymore. The Windows COA that was glued to the bottom of the case (real great place to put it...) had worn away and was unreadable so I couldn't use system restore. I ended up 'repurposing' another Windows XP I had, although even reinstalling the OS was a major PITA seeing as how I didn't have access to a USB dvd drive. What I ended up doing was buying a USB flash drive, install a live Linux onto it, boot into that then format the hard drive, then download a program called Flashboot that converted the XP install cd to USB flash drive format.

 

[Popinski]

I had a Gateway Laptop that was bullet proof and never let me down. This was when Gateway had their own stores. It's too bad they were shot down.

 

[ddrumman2004]

I am on a HP zv6000 laptop that was given to me. This is my first laptop and it's been a great one so far.
I have had one virus that I received from another forum I had visited on a regular basis....so I don't visit that site anymore.

I upgraded the memory to 2 gigs and boy what a difference in performance for a machine with an AMD processor and 38 GB hard drive. It's running XP Home with SP2 and for the "price" I got it for...the best I have ever had!

It sits a lot now since I use a Kindle Fire for a lot of web surfing.

 

[45ACP]

I am actually DOWNGRADING my computer at present time. Looking to get a 2nd-gen Core i3 or i5. Bought too much laptop this time.

 

[45ACP]

What are your thoughts on Toshiba?

 

[asiancivicmaniac]

For Windows, I would look at Asus.

 

[AmericaWestCMH]

Sold my old Core 2 Duo desktop and replaced it with a HP Dv6t notebook with a Core i7 2720qm a year ago. Should keep my going for at least 5 years I hope.

 

[t0ked]

My X301. Love it. With the battery slice that goes in where the optical drive was, I used to go almost 6 hours of heavy use. light and strong. Before that was my X41. I still have it but that with that slow HDD, I can't even tolerate booting it up! I've been spoiled by my SSD. Obviously, I love Thinkpads.

 

[Nick R]

Oddly enough, my Lenovo Z565. It was $380. I upgraded it to 6GB of RAM, and a better Intel Centrino Wireless Card (BIOS frustrations in the process). But it runs excellently, and boots up fast, even on the regular WD Scorpio 320GB HDD. Roughly a minute from cold boot to fully usable desktop. The worst part is the awful screen, but that's par the course, especially for lenovo laptops.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I have had a handful of laptops ...

Thinkpad T60 (GIANT PIECE OF GARBAGE)
Dell Inspiron 1520
Dell XPS M1330 (sold the thinkpad for this)
Dell Inspiron 1420 (sold the M1330 for more than I paid to get this)
Acer Aspire One D150 (sold the Inspiron 1420 for more than I paid for this).

It's definitely a tie-up between the Inspiron 1520 and the Acer netbook.

The inspiron was fun to "build". I replaced the motherboard and video card from ebay and I've been using it for games. Still on original battery. It's getting long in the tooth though; hinges are getting bad and it just can't keep up with the new games.

My Acer netbook is the most useful one I've owned. For a netbook, it can do quite a bit. I just upgraded it with a SSD and 9 cell battery.

Worst was the thinkpad. As far as I'm concerned, I will NEVER own another Lenovo product

 

[occupant]

Acer Extensa 5230E. Sure, it was a $249 Black Friday special. It was single core, 2GB of memory, a tiny 160GB hard drive. But those are things you can upgrade. What's that you say? You can't upgrade laptop processors?

http://pc-level.com/2010/07/how-to-clean-the-cooling-module-in-acer-extensa-5230/

5x30 Extensas (also I think 4320 and 4420 and a few others) have only one bottom cover piece and when you remove it you expose the memory, hard drive, wireless card, CPU, fan, heatsink, and GPU. Easy access. Easier IMO, HONESTLY, than my desktop computers!!!

These particular models use a GL40 chipset and over 2 years ago it only cost me $42 to get a T4300 Pentium dual-core on eBay. Been flying ever since. Those T4300's can be had for less than $10 now. I could spend $35 and get say, a T8300, and have more L2 cache, but really, it's fine as it is. Upgraded to 3GB and later 4GB of memory. Still have the 160GB hard drive and it's about to see a 240 or 256GB SSD replace it. My girls and mother in law have newer i3-370M Acers I bought for them for $399 each from Wal-Mart and mine is every bit as quick as theirs.

If I had to replace my laptop today, there are $599 i5 Acers and $849 i7 Acers with 17 inch screens and numeric keypads and HD7670M dedicated graphics out there and it'd be one of those two. My wife is eyeing the $849 one to replace a Dell Latitude E6410 she has liked. She just is hesitant to buy something without a backlit keyboard. I wish Acer had an i5/i7 laptop with a backlit keyboard.

 

[jrenkas]

I have a 13" Macbook pro. It has the 2.8 i7 and I've upgraded it to 8GB of RAM. It's the best laptop I've ever used.

My favorite feature: Backlit keyboard.

 

[97tbird]

I have a ThinkPad T520 on order... I hope it will be even better than my ancient ThinkPad R60 (the best so far)

 

[NJC]

Any thoughts on the ThinkPad Edge E530 - or the Edge series in general? I was considering the Thinkpad T series too, but wondering if for home use (not traveling etc) I could get away with the Edge series. Even amongst the Thinkpad line the choice is staggering.

 

[rjundi]

Every IBM/Lenovo T series(t20, t30, t42p, t60, t500) I have been beyond satisfied with for my needs. (web/application developer).

Currently using a T500 with 8GB ram and SSD Drive, two external 24" 1900x1200 displays with Win7 64bit. Very good setup with three screens.

 

[uc50ic4more]

MacBook Pro, circa 2006. It still runs like it was new, despite being used very, very heavily for a few years doing audio, video and graphics production. Now my wife uses it for school but I wouldn't hesitate to throw it back into the ring if I needed to.

 

[yucca]

I have been using a toughbook cf-31 for a while now. Been a good one. Holds up to all the abuse I accidentaly cause it.

 

[Nick R]

I'm quite happy with my couple month old Acer Aspire V3 with the AMD A8-4500M (Trinity) with a Seagate 500GB hybrid HDD and 8GB of RAM. Fast and I can play games on it.

Also, the oldest working laptop we have is my mom's old Acer Extensa 5420 that is over 4 years old. I recently slapped some more memory in it, and threw Windows 7 on it, and my friend is using it for school and surfing and it still works perfectly