Re: Simple solution
So. Sony's out. (Fuck you, Sony!) Lenovo's out. Acer's HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA out. That's really starting to narrow the feild...
Do let us know when you find something. The last three laptops I've bought so far:
- Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 MkII
- Lenovo B590
- Toshiba Satellite Pro L50-B.
The Panasonic is my main workhorse. Nice machine, dependable hardware that performs WELL under Linux, built like a preverbial sumou wrestler, but sheesh, didn't get much change out of AU$2500 by the time I had bought a 1TB HDD and an extra 4GB RAM for it. Ohh, and at nearly 3kg it definitely is no ultrabook!
Lenovo B590 I bought for my mother to replacing an aging Dell desktop running Windows XP. I knew it'd be doing light-duty things so didn't need to be particularly stellar, and this machine seemed to fit the bill. The machine has ran well for the last year but I'm somewhat regretting my decision now. On the TODO list is to check it over for SuperFish.
The Toshiba was the latest purchase. Always held them in high regard: the first computer I used was a Toshiba, a 286 luggable with a plasma CGA screen. The first laptop we had in the house was a Toshiba, and that continued until I got to uni, where I had a second-hand Dell which soon fell to bits. The Toshibas kept working, so that's mostly what we stuck to.
Heck, the oldest continually-running machine we have in the house is a Portégé 7010CT sporting a 300MHz Pentium II, dead battery 160MB RAM and a 160GB HDD, it still keeps chugging along (running Gentoo Linux).
Bought the L50-B to replace an aging L30-D that was starting to fail (machine would refuse to power up), and I was sorely disappointed about how much the build quality had gone backwards. Moreover, a loose screw inside the case was discovered when I finally prised the bottom panel off (11 screws and 4 hidden catches) to install a RAM module (no dedicated RAM/HDD hatches either). It felt really cheap by comparison to the other machines we've had from them. It was saddening to see how far they had regressed.
We've got two old PIII-era IBM Thinkpads in the cupboard, both with dead LCD backlight inverters and odd motherboard faults.
There's an LG P1 Express floating around the house. Will never buy again. While the hardware is nice enough but the BIOS goes into a bootloop if you install a hard drive bigger than the 100GB one it came with. LG Support don't seem to know anything about their laptops when you ring them.
While I'm mostly happy with this old Apple MacBook (2008-model), I'd never buy a modern one owing to the lack of expandability and serviceability.
Some of the Dell machines at work are shocking to work on, and lately only their high-end machines can be customised. Not that sturdy either.
I hear bad things about Acer. Not sure about ASUS although I've had many years of good service from ASUS motherboards, maybe worth a try? Someone here mentioned MSI have good build quality.
If you find a crowd that can supply a small business and offer on-site support though, I'm all ears!