I’ve had Asus and Acer; not impressed.

I’ve had good luck with HP laptop and Dell desktop, so leaning to those brands.

What is the current reputable laptop maker?
Thanks.

Apple MacBook Pro. You will most definitely be impressed.

RS

Timely topic.

Light home office use, web, photos, etc.

Also leaning to stay w PC.

This.

Do you fold it up and take it places, or just leave it stationary at home?

I trashed my old laptop in lieu of an HP All in One. Love it. Saves space, more powerful than a laptop for what it is/does.

It also lasts longer due to it cools itself better than a laptop. (Laptops cooling/fan system are responsible for lots of laptop failures.)

https://www.amazon.com/HP-20-7-inch...el+pentium&qid=1606607555&sr=8-3

HP is all we have had. Three years is the outer limit.

I like Lenovo for laptops.

T series are pretty solid. Even the older ones.

no question

I keep the laptop on a wire grill.

Lenovo

Definitely a MacBook Pro. PCs suck ass compared to Macs.

I used to get Dell, but haven't had much luck with the last couple. I've since gone to Lenovo and been happy. Just get one with a solid state hard drive for durability.

Would you guys stop it!?

Gas or charcoal? 🤣

Mac Book Pro for interweb stuff and photo processing. The one I'm typing on now is a 2013.

We use laptops mainly for gaming I have an MSI 2019 and wife has an alienware...I'd get Lenovo if I were replacing now.

Unless you're a BLM protester just taking stuff, now seems like a good time to buy with some black friday discount'n.

Have used Acer and Asus in the past, both low end and both performed great for many years. Currently I have a fairly old bottom end Toshiba and it’s worked like the others but time to replace it.

Have looked at Mac but damn they are expensive.

In my case my money is in my desktop that I built and laptops are for surfing so a 400.00 model typically does what I need.

We used Lenovo almost exclusively at work, a few of the install guys had Macs but nearly all used something like boot camp with Win10 as well. The T series boxes worked great. Good batteries and good hinges.
I'm using one of the old T-540's now, maxed out memory and SSD. Dual boot Win10 and Ubuntu. The Linux install will still get about 3 hrs run time on a 5yr old battery.

yup

Not sure if they are rock solid built as when IBM produced the ThinkPad but the Lenovo version seem solid. Years ago we had a user forgot her IBM ThinkPad laptop was on the roof of her car and drove away with it on her roof, when the wind finally caught it the unit flew off and it did cartwheels down the road. Smashed every surface and corner on the unit BUT fired up fine and the screen was usable!

We have 7000+ users using ThinkPads with very few complaints. In 40+ years working in I.T. I supported many brands of PC's plus MAC's I think the ThinkPad's are a good investment.

Macs are like Toyotas and Hondas. Pay a bit more in the beginning and less in the end. Plus the resale value

LENOVO

All will last past obsolescence.

MacBook Pro, hands down.

MacBook Air or Pro.

Lenovo lives in my backpack. Flights weekly 6 months of the year with it. Working construction sites. Current one is 3 years old. No issues with durability.

Operationally, work keeps them constantly updated with latest and greatest protection. No issues that way either.

HP Pavilion 15-inch Laptop, 11th Generation Intel Core i7-1165G7 Processor, Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB Solid State Drive, Windows 10 Pro (15-eg0021nr, Natural Silver Aluminum)

I just got this one. About $998.00 Laptop.

I just replaced my last MacAir with another one, wasn't economical to replace the battery. Six years was a good run. Plug it into a big monitor at my desk, toss it in the truck or whatever. Love the solid state memory, no hard drive to muss up by dropping it (again).

Don't care for the price, but the cost per mile is lower.

Above is good. I make Access data bases and also advanced Excel and also where Access opens Word or Excel and inserts data into Word Bookmarks and Excel cells. This can very complicated an easy to have problems. I always like it the business has HP or Toshiba. Only problem with Toshiba these days is they have gone back to like they were in the 90s and only sell the more expensive stuff like the Portege and Tecra

If you want something expensive then Microsoft Surface Book will give you Apple prices but with Windows 10.

If in doubt it is hard to go past HP with 15.6" screen. The laptops with detachable screens are good but cost a fair bit more and might at the end of the day be not much advantage to you. They can also have problems. Personally I have Toshiba Porteges and Microsoft Surface, both the Pro 7s and Surface Go. The Toshiba Porteges are detachable screens but I prefer the MS Surface range. The Surface Go are the same size as an iPad and mine are cellular.

My lack of Apple is not a reflection on the machines but the operating system. The big plus with Windows and especially with MS Office is there are so many developers that work with them. Sort of like using a Rem 700 action as the basis of an accuracy gun.

My vacation/travel laptop is a lower-end Chromebook. Frankly, one could do nicely with a higher-end one for everything. You would have to be comfortable with Google hosting all your work, but if you were, there's no cost for any software, no personal stuff on your machine (in case it gets stolen) and the machines are much less expensive.

If you absolutely want to stick with Windows, you can get a gem or a lemon with any brand, but Dell, Lenovo, and HP seem to be good in the moderate cost division. I would urge you to not pay annual subscription costs for software, however. Open source and free packages like Libre Office do everything that MS's bloated monster does - even being able to read and save in MS file formats.

I cannot help but suggest that you dump Windows altogether and run Linux Mint as your OS. But some here seem to not like that advice.

Nothing wrong with Linux especially if you don't have to work in a Windows environment. I can almost say the same for Mac. My job was integrating office machines into our customers office. Some of the equipment mfg have spotty Mac support and admittedly we were weak in that area anyway. Windows still ruled when I quit.
I've "fixed" some of my older less computer literate friends with a Linux install. Set up right its hard to break them and if they do ball it up its cheap and easy to fix. Most of these folks only use a browser and nothing else.

Lenovo or HP, hard to go wrong either way. Seem durable, I've been using an HP for the last 4 years and still working fine. Lenovo is what we use on the job site for programing the POC on the total station. They ride around in the work trucks full time and hold up well.

That is not correct for advanced stuff and especially Access. Of course 99.99999% of people are not going to make advanced Access applications or where Access links to SQL Server or advanced Excel applications, HOWEVER, they might well use something made by someone else.To make something for them in Runtimes Access costs a lot more and it won't run the Word or Excel things if they don't have MS Office or Office 365

The subscription Office 365 is a far better deal than the earlier CD ROM versions of MS Office.

I bought a refurbished Lenovo T430, rated A+ condition, new SS124G hard drive, 4G memory, came with Win10. It cost about $200. I had already made a Mint USB, I turned on the new laptop, let the windows crap run until it let me access it, inserted the Mint USB, and Win10 went to hell. My second Linux machine. I had a MacBook Pro that died, that's when I bought the Lenovo.

I am speaking to the 99.99999%, Mike. The original poster is not among the 0.00001% if he needs to ask what brand of laptop to buy. That is not a slam on the OP by any means; just an acknowledgment that he is among the vast majority of people - including me - who use a computer mainly to browse the internet and maybe do a little word processing and spreadsheet work.

Your advice is good and correct as far as I know, but it's like saying that a Toyota Highlander won't cut it on the F-1 circuit.

Way to go, Wayne.

SSD is a must with anything you buy and extra memory.

Hey Lenovo guys, thank you for subsidizing Communist China.

Regarding iMac, it took me about five minutes to learn how to use its operating system, the Windows office suite works just fine, for 99 cents/month it backs up my thousands of photos automatically and gives me free help when needed.

The helpers are Americans.

Macbook Pro with new M1 chip. Once you go Mac you'll never go back.

Rocky read again what I said. That 99.99999999% are the computer owners that developers like me makes things for. When they start to find out what can be made they are ....yeah, I want some of that ..... BUT if they have open source stuff then it is a No Go. HOWEVER, that is where the subscription Office 365 makes things real easy. Do you know if you had Office 2013 on subscription the change to 2016 has no cost.

You said "do a little word processing and spreadsheet work." Correct. Then people like me make something for him that is so much better. As I said before Windows and MS Office is like the Rem700 as basis for an accuracy gun. There are simply so many advanced developers for Windows and MS Office; That in also lets people like me get help and others get help from me etc. This stuff is a bit like a custom rifle. One blokes does wood stocks/blued steel and M70/M98 another bloke is mainly an accuracy builder but they have overlap and sometimes one helps the other.

Tomorrow is Cyber Monday. You might want to check out the deals on refurbished laptops at WOOT!

I get that, Mike. But the bulk of users neither need nor want the extra special stuff developers like you produce. Back to my car analogy: most drivers buy a car for daily use. They may know about Cobras and McLarens but neither want nor need one.

So it is with computers.

Edit to add: I am not a computer expert like Mike or others here. I am an avid computer USER. (At last count, I have seven of the darn things.) I know what works for me but not always how or why it works. I don't think I'm much different then most other users except that I have experimented with a bunch of operating systems going back to the original PC and DOS. I do not code and I do not tinker with hardware. I have never used a Mac but was a former dedicated MS user.

Hate Lenovo. The issue is the "tap to click" feature on the touchpad. On Lenovo's, you can't disable it. When I try to use the touchpsd as a mouse, thing get moved, high lighted, menus pop up, etc. If you use a Lenovo, better use a mouse.

ASUS!

Thank me later.

The OP is sour on ASUS? Wonder why?

I have been running ASUS components in my builds for years.

My first factory computer was a Lenovo laptop. It died after about a year, but it was built with an HDD and had been dropped from the coffee table to the carpet a couple times.

I found the current ASUS tough gaming model at Walmart for $300. It was new, old stock, previous year's model. SSD, plenty of memory, video capability to run a 58 in HD TV, blue tooth sound. The only caveat is, no DVD. But external DVDs are cheap.

As coincidence would have it, my wife annouced today that she is unhappy with her tablet for taking Zoom classes and wants a laptop strictly for that use. I recommended to her an ASUS 14" screen Chromebook that's "Classroom Ready" designed for Zoom, for $199.

If she doesn't like it, I'll use it as my travel 'pooter and give away my smaller Dell Chromebook.

Every maker has dogs in their lineup. On our Asus, the touch pad freezes periodically, the cursor freezes periodically, cursor disappears periodically. The drive is very s l o w. Sometimes it fails to respond for several minutes, then launches everything that has been tapped trying to get a response. Now the battery is dead and it practically requires surgery to replace it.

Not looking for the Apple tax, but they are good machines for sure. Looking for a PC that turns on and works like it is supposed to.

Wayne - source for the refurb?

Rocky - thanks for the woot link.

Thanks for the recos. I’ll be investigating.

Keep us posted, willya? You might find a smokin' deal on cyberMonday.

Drove down to Wally's Mart and bought the ASUS. I'll report...

I’ll do that.

LOL!

I use mine to surf the web and play a game on the net.

The one i got from HP said it was a gaming comp.but it is lacking in processor speed.

Other than that it is a good tool for my shop and i use a trackball mouse because the pads and i don't get along.

In the house i have a tower that i bought 5 or 6 years ago.

Let us know how you like it.

Linux conversion coming? Or leaving this one Win for the Lady of the House?

Hey Apple guys, thanks for subsidizing Communist China.
That was easy.

Lenovo Yoga, 16 MB RAM, SSD.

Thank me later,

And, friends don't let friends buy anything Apple.

I've had a pretty good run with Lenovo. A mixed bag before that, Asus, Acer, HP....the latter having the most problems.

Idaho, it's a Chromebook, not Windows. And it is specifically set up so my wife can use Zoom for her meetings and classes.

Thanks.

It wasn't cheap! However, my 2012 MacBook Pro is still running strong! I runs the very latest software with out any problems.

It somewhat slower than when it was new but still beats the socks off of an all in one HP my daughter gave me when she bought herself a new MacBook Air...

woot.com tells me:

Shipping Note: Shipping to Alaska and Hawaii is not available for this item

LOL!

Darn. Try Newegg or Overstock. Both are .com

I’ve been using $250.00 iPad Air’s, perfect for my needs.

8

Linux conversion is the only way.

Lenovo has serious security issues built in the hardware thanks to their Chicom military affiliation

After searching, I came up with a decent machine @ a decent price.



$450 @ local Chinese embassy.

Hope to get it set up today.

eta: not a great pic of the box, but you get the idea.

I hope it serves you well. If you ever get fed up with Windows, just ask.

The ASUS Chromebook we bought the other day was defective. Would not charge, would not turn on. We took it back for a refund and got an Acer Chromebook, which my wife seems to love right off the bat. She uses Chrome and Google on her Windows desktop, and all her settings, bookmarks, history and such came right over to the Chromebook as soon as she signed in. Pleased her to no end. Didn't even have to install Zoom, as it came "Classroom Ready".

Well, Rocky, I think ima try Linux on a jump drive. I’ll PM you when I’m ready to spearmint.

Meant to add, thanks to those that contributed positively ! 😎