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Just in general, should I go to Dell or HP for a laptop? Please vote based on best performance & price to performance ratio.

Thanks!

Buy a Dell dude!

Seriously, at work we bought a bunch of HP's one year and more than half of them failed within the first year. I've had 3 Dell laptops now and while parts wore out due to my (ab)use, I have no complaints.

Neither, I use a steno pad and a Bic. (Batteries not included.)

Toshiba. In my opinion, with IBM being the #1 laptop company, Toshiba is second best. If you take into account the premium you pay for an IBM laptop, Toshiba is a better value to boot. They typically have a couple models with bleeding edge technologies in it, and they work very well with Linux.

What that means to a non-Linux user is quality parts: they use parts that are well known chipsets that are widely used and accepted (otherwise, support in Linux would be slower). I've had 3 toshiba's now, all ran Linux with all the hardware supported. Laptops like the Vaio on the other hand, use a lot of proprietary stuff, so you're locked in to using their drivers, etc, which may be a problem if you decide to upgrade the OS (say from Home to Professional). But Sony is an extreme.

Dell is good..especially for on-site service in Canada. I have the D800 and it hasn't given me any issues at all in the past 2 years.

Toshiba is an excellent laptop..I have the P30 myself..but if it breaks, they have only a limited amount of service centers in Canada (and only in the major cities).

HP on the other hand...RUN (far away)

I've really been impressed with HP's recent desktops, and I actually mean their Pavilion line. I wouldn't have said that a few years ago, but they've become competetive in price, quality, and features.

I'm still a little leery of their laptops, though. If I was spending my own money, I'd probably look between Dell, and possibly Sager. Toshiba's not bad either, but they can be pricey, and I've had the best notebook support through Dell. My work laptop (a once top-of-the-line Latitude C840) is about three years old now and has been wholly reliable. The only reasons I wouldn't get Dell now aren't reliability, but pickiness. They've mostly done away with the Trackpoint eraser-head mouse, my personal choice, and they no longer make models where you can have the CD-ROM, floppy, and battery in at the same time (yes, I still need floppy disks, I work in education where they can still be highly useful).

Why Sager? Well, they offer a huge selection of features/options, and they make laptops for a lot of other big names. They have some of the more powerful laptops on the market.

Then again, a fellow tech at a nearby school loves his HP laptop, and he's someone I trust.

My boss has a Sager, and while he says it's not the most aesthetically pleasing laptop, it does what he needs and has been pretty reliable.

Yeah, Toshiba's are pricier than most, I won't deny that. I paid $2.5k for mine 3 years ago, and I have no plans on switching any time soon. Did upgrade the hard drive once though.

i work on way too many more dells then hp laptops at best buy

I'd buy Dell for price. They seem to be running the $750 off $1499 coupon every few weeks, and if you study your options a bit you can configure some really nice laptops with most of the goodies(DVD burners, better graphics, etc...) and just upgrade the memory and hard drive with top of the line replacements for lots cheaper later. That being said, I own a Gateway 7422 that I absolutely love. It is a desktop replacement model that lets me do all sorts of computer stuff ranging from Internet to fairly intense gaming (Joint Ops, CounterStrike Source, MOHPA, etc..) while my desktop is busy churning out "back-ups" and it has a decent 8x DVD burner (LG) that makes it handy when I roam, but it is hefty at 8 pounds. I have been eyeing the new Averatec 4265 though for travel. Really light, 13.3" widescreen with their version of Ultrabrite, 512 memory (only 1 bank so a 1Gb upgrade is pricey), DVD burner (Litey I think), and 80 Gb HDD all under 5 pounds and $1000 if you catch the right sales.

hoxlund wrote:i work on way too many more dells then hp laptops at best buy

More Dells sold than HP's as laptops go...and those of you at Best Buy have a much higher IQ...that's "idiot quotient" (meaning the percentage of people bringing in units to you for service that are idiots and know jack squat about the system they're bringing in and how an OS works).

Eye Bee Emm

I ordered an HP Pavilion L2000.

I got mine with:
– Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2
– AMD Turion(TM) 64 ML-30 (1.6GHz/1MB L2 Cache)
– 14.0 WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x768)
– ATI RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M w/productivity ports
– 1.0GB DDR SDRAM (2x512MB)
– 80 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
– LightScribe 8x DVD+/-RW&CD-RW Combo w/Double Layer
– 54g(TM) 802.11b/g WLAN w/ 125HSM/SpeedBooster(TM)
– Extra 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
– Microsoft(R) Works/Money
– hpshopping in-box envelope

$1,243.62 after my 6% Education Discount, Free shipping, and no sales tax.