Does Lenovo make good laptops? - 1

I actually ended up writing an evaluative essay for finding the best computers for the following categories:

- Multimedia ---> MAC
- Gaming ---> Alienware
- General use ---> HP (1st)
- General use ---> DELL (2nd)
- General use ---> ACER (3rd)
- General use ---> TOSHIBA (4th)

When I bought my computer for college I use this and it really helped me narrow down my choices; however for your case it really comes down to the comparison of the processors and the HARD drive memory. My suggestion is to pick the HP, because HP really is well known for the longevity of their laptops.

~ I hope this helps

Kyle's "essay" is interesting to say the least… I'd be interested in seeing where he gets his numbers. The primary source for mine is Tom's Hardware, one of the best hardware sites in the English speaking world.

Apple makes the most reliable laptops but they also cost about 50% than a comparable Windows laptop.
Alienware is by no means the best gaming machines. The Asus ROG machines, for example, are excellent. Alienware are overpriced Dells. They are no longer the high end hardware they used to be under Dell's ownership but the name still commands a very high price point despite the decrease in value.

I'm not a fan of HP's consumer grade machines (Pavilions and such) and have actually seen some of them with an extremely high failure rate. A few years ago they had a line of DV6(000?) machines which were notorious for failure of the graphics. The graphics chip was getting too hot so that the chip would either cook or the solder holding the chip in place would melt and no longer provide proper seating/contact of the chip on the motherboard, rendering the laptop useless. There were a whole bunch of mom and power repair businesses which popped up on eBay to repair these units. Their business machines, on the other hand (EliteBooks, ProBooks, some of the Evny's and such) are rock solid machines second only to Lenovo ThinkPads. All of Lenovo's machines are premium quality other than their lower end Essentials line which I would avoid. Avoid Acer, Toshiba, and Sony at pretty much all cost.

Mainstream Windows laptop mfg ratings:
Lenovo is the number one, followed by Asus, HP, Dell, and Samsung.
At the bottom of the pile are, from the bottom up, Sony, Acer/Gateway, and Toshiba.

Purchasing a laptop is a highly personal decision. You need to decide what type of keyboard you want: do you want a full sized keyboard or are you okay with something smaller? Do you like or despise the chicklet keyboards like apple uses? Do you want a backlit keyboard? Do you want a numeric keypad? Do you want a touchpad and/or point stick? Do you want 2 mouse buttons or 3? Do you want them above or below the touchpad? How large a screen: 13"? 14"? 15.6"? 17"? If you are highly mobile, then smaller is lighter. If you don't move around much then bigger means heavier but a much more visible screen. These are all things to ponder which have a significant impact on how happy you are with your laptop experience.

Finally, you will want to be sure that whatever you choose will do the job. Not only that, but you want it to be strong enough to do everything you will need it for over the next 3-5 years. Laptops are NOT upgradeable for the most part. You can normally add RAM and HDD space, but that's it. You won't be able to upgrade to a better graphics card or CPU. Those are frozen in time when the machine is assembled.