Best/worst laptop you've ever owned?

[True Dough]

I started out buying Toshiba laptops. They were very reliable and I got at least 5 years out of each one before they started really slowing down.

Moved to an HP and it was a nightmare. Black screen started showing up within the warranty period. Sent it in three times for repair and then fought with HP to replace it. They gave me a higher-end gaming laptop that I gifted to a relative.

I moved on to Acer. It was fine but slowed down earlier than the Toshibas. Only kept it about 3.5 years.

I'm currently on an Asus. It's not quite 4.5 years old but it has become very unstable as of late. It came with Windows 10 Home installed. I held off on converting to Windows 11 but finally made the leap earlier this year. The download went fine. Then following an update about three weeks ago, I started getting the blue screen and crashing. I rolled back those updates in hopes that would resolve the problem. No dice.

I could format this laptop but I figure I'll just start over with a new one instead. So tomorrow I'll be out and about, trying to figure out what to buy next.

[elleng]

1. Dell, long-lasting, reliable.

[lastlib]

9. Yes, I agree.

My Dell Latitude has lasted me a decade. I don't surf the web or e-mail on it--it's just for travel, so it has fairly light demands. I bought a HP Pavilion, but it has so much crapware that interferes with my normal processes, that I don't use it unless I have to.

[Mosby]

2. My first laptop was a Quantex.

It was very reliable. I have a HP right now, it's almost ten years old, it's a core i3 and it's very slow. I think the problem is mostly the hard drive so I'm going to swap out the ata drive with a ssd one and see how that works. I don't really want to get a new laptop at this point, and these new SSDs are many factors faster than the disk drives. Whatever laptop you get make sure it has a ssd. I would probably go with a Intel chip. I just bought a Dell tower with a core i7, pretty happy with it, but it wasn't cheap.

[pat_k]

3. FWIW, I've been happy with my Lenovo Yoga

It's funny. I started with a Gateway. I think it took me into the early 2000's. The next was a Toshiba. My old Satellite is probably still in the attic. I think Windows XP Pro was the last upgrade it would support. Haven't tried, but I wouldn't be surprised if it still fired up. It just didn't have the processing power I needed. The next couple machines were Dell, supplied by the company I was under contract to, so I don't know how well they held up after going back.

Anyway, when I needed a new laptop last year I ended up buying a Lenovo Yoga, mainly because it was on sale at a good price. I don't have much time on it but I like it. The tent mode makes it handy for streaming on my bedside table. It spends most of it's time in laptop or tablet mode. The only glitchy thing is that the the touch pad occasionally fails to enable to disable as it is supposed to when transitioning between modes. Not a big deal since it has a touch screen so it's easy to check or adjust settings.

I must say, I did love that old Gateway. It served me well. The Toshiba was a 17 in. Good machine too. I loved the big screen, but it was not exactly a lightweight. The Dells were fine, but felt a bit cheap to me. I guess my favorite is the Yoga. It's powerful enough for work apps (graphics and eLearning) and flexible enough for casual use.

[usonian]

4. I don't recall any really bad ones.

Other than Apple stuff (*), I got a 17" (wow) Compaq and immediately formatted the disk and installed Linux. So nice!

It still runs but only on the power adapter.

(*) I rarely get laptops because
a. They don't fit on the music holder on most musical keyboards.
b. One bad part breaks the whole system, and
c. I am partial to Mac minis for the value ($600 for an M2 CPU) and the modularity. AND so many ports.
d. Laptop parts, no matter who makes them, give you less for the same money.
e. The G3 mac laptop, aka Patton Tank, did everything. It never failed me, and I booted up many Sun setvers via a serial port adapter. You felt safe walking the streets with it because it was a deadly weapon when not being a computer.

When salespeople weren't looking, I booted laptops with a live dvd Linux distro to see if they would play nice with Linux.

[msongs]

5. never got the hang of that finger touchy pad thing nt

[hunter]

6. I hated traveling with expensive Windows laptops.

I'm too good at losing or breaking things, or having them stolen.

I now travel with $100 "refurbished" Chromebooks. I'm on my third.

My Windows "work" laptop hasn't been used since the start of the Covid epidemic and can probably be considered obsolete at this point. My stay-at-home computers run Linux.

Apple products do not appeal to me.

[CloudWatcher]

7. MacBooks

I've gone several generations of using MacBooks until they were hopelessly old .... i.e. not even security updates from Apple. The one I'm using now is 11 years old and yeah the battery needs replacing and the paint has worn off many of the key tops, but it still works fine (*). It's about time to replace it but I'm in no hurry. I have a new battery from iFixIt on my shelf waiting for me to take the time to do the surgery on it.

Previous laptop used about as long. Note this is my personal-use laptop. I have the latest from Apple for work and building software

Worst? An IBM Thinkpad (many many years ago). Its force-stick in the middle of the keyboard wore a hole in my thumb.

(*) Ok, Turbo Tax 2023 refused to run on my older, OS. But that's seriously the biggest problem I've had with it.

[True Dough]

8. CloudWatcher?

Is that like the cirrus/cumulus type of clouds? Or are we talking the computing cloud?



I hear you on the quality of Apple products. I don't really question that. Unfortunately for me, I have never found them intuitive. I used Mac computers in university and I hated the experience. I got by, but I never wanted to be near one again. I'm a PC/Android guy through and through.

My wife, on the other hand, has an iPhone and and iWatch and she couldn't be happier with them.

[canetoad]

12. My preference is for desktop machines

But about 20 years ago I got my hands on an original MacBook from the 80s on the original OS. I MB ram - yes one megabyte! For fun I searched out all the old programs and utilities that I'd used on my first MacPlus and installed them and managed to get it online using a text based browser. Remember them?

Fun excercise but I wouldn't want to live that way.

[CloudWatcher]

13. Museum pieces..

It can be fun to revive museum pieces, but the newer hardware & software really has come a long long way. It's hard to go back to what used to be the best available

I like desktops until I travel. Then I realize I would be a lot happier with a laptop and an external monitor and keyboard so I can pick up the laptop and run out the door.

For work trips anyway ... for vacations .. it can be nice to leave it all behind!

[True Dough]

11. Wow! That sounds just like AI

I hope your second and third posts are more convincing.

If I'm wrong, please feel free to insult me. I'd actually be fine with that.