Best Hardware Brand

[acelin]

Ok so ignore the OS the comes pre-installed- base this on quality only!

[acelin]

Go ahead and explain great experiences with your choice!

[jimrz]

ThinkPad ... 'nuff said

[acelin]

ThinkPad ... 'nuff said

Shoot! I knew I forgot someone... :(

[Patrick-Ruff]

thinkpads for me as far as laptops go

desktops: build your own

[tgalati4]

My 5-year-old G4 powerbook is still going strong.

[lisati]

I haven't voted yet due to limited exposure to the different brands - isn't Compaq part of HP these days?

[tamoneya]

ThinkPad ... 'nuff said

+1 for lenovo.

[LaRoza]

I haven't voted yet due to limited exposure to the different brands - isn't Compaq part of HP these days?

Yes, many are one company.

I would vote for Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads.

[Tyler H]

Uh doesn't Apple contract hardware makers to build there stuff?

Anyways, I'm going with IBM. Industry leaders, I think so.

[arsenic23]

Whatever is on sale. Seriously, at any given moment company X is selling the best stuff. But with laptops its kind of hard to tell who is doing it untill the product they are making has been out of over a year.

Personally if I was buying a mid range laptop right now, I'd buy an Acer. HP for the high end, and a Dell Vostro for the low. But that's right this instant and could change at any moment. As for things that arn't laptops, well I've never bought a name brand PC in my life, and always sugest that if you can't build it yourself that you should suport your local PC builder ( asuming they have a good reputation and take care of their warrenties in house ).


--------------------------
EDIT:

hmmm... I'm seeing a lot of people saying 'lenovo/IBM'. Though IBM does not make PCs anymore. In fact the only way they are affiliated with Lenovo now is that they own 6% of the companies stock. The Chinese government owns majority, and personally, I think the brand has gone downhill since it left IBMs hands. Though that last part is just my opinion.

[acelin]

Thanks to however added IBM/Lenovo.

[LaRoza]

EDIT:

hmmm... I'm seeing a lot of people saying 'lenovo/IBM'. Though IBM does not make PCs anymore. In fact the only way they are affiliated with Lenovo now is that they own 6% of the companies stock. The Chinese government owns majority, and personally, I think the brand has gone downhill since it left IBMs hands. Though that last part is just my opinion.

The Thinkpad line is the same (mostly). We are judging Thinkpads, not the company which happens to make them.


Thanks to however added IBM/Lenovo.

It wasn't me :innocent:

[acelin]

It wasn't me :innocent:

:lolflag:

[arsenic23]

The Thinkpad line is the same (mostly). We are judging Thinkpads, not the company which happens to make them.


Just thought I'd point out that they arn't IBM Thinkpads anymore. But I haven't had a terribly high opinion of the stuff coming out of Lenovo these last two years. Mostly, I don't like the way the chassis are put together on the newer Lenovo machines I've had come into the shop.

I was, however a huge fan of the Thinkpad brand back in the PIII days. Those were some of the best laptops ever made.

[zachtib]

Thinkpad... I've owned two, everything was supported out of the box (with the exception of having to install the nvidia driver, but after that it works great)

Besides their Linux support, their build quality is fantastic. Especially if you get one with the roll cage (IIRC, it's the 14" R series and all of the T series) then they'll stand the test of time... I almost didn't need this upgrade, as my old R51 was holding up strong, I just bought the T61p to get some slightly newer tech and some more CPU power / RAM.

[bufsabre666]

hp, cause on top of descent hardware at competitive prices, they have the best printer/scanner/all in one line up in terms of linux compatibility

[UniverseA7X]

my macbook has seen a hard tile floor from 5 feet in the air coming at it close.... and plenty of other mishaps, and still refuses to break. So I vote Apple out of experience many abusive factors. Not to mention it runs every OS out there... (I triple boot Leopard, Tiger, and Kubuntu Hardy.)

[LaRoza]

Just thought I'd point out that they arn't IBM Thinkpads anymore. But I haven't had a terribly high opinion of the stuff coming out of Lenovo these last two years. Mostly, I don't like the way the chassis are put together on the newer Lenovo machines I've had come into the shop.

I was, however a huge fan of the Thinkpad brand back in the PIII days. Those were some of the best laptops ever made.

I know. I like my R61i, but I haven't had an older one to compare.

[lisati]

Yes, many are one company.
Which helps explain why some of the documentation and parts on my Compaq desktop refer to HP..... I wonder how many people are baffled when they open up the pre-installed documentation on their brand ABC machine, click on a link, and get taken to a brand XYZ website. But I digress.

I'm happy with my 3-year-old Compaq desktop, its preinstalled documentation came with helpful information about upgrading and adding components and other useful stuff.

I'm also happy with my 2-year-old Toshiba laptop - although the battery's going south (probably from running on mains too much without discharging the battery) the machine's working well, and after a bit of research on these forums to help with a couple of relatively minor problems it has become my Ubuntu machine. My only complaints are that it has a DVD-reader/CD-writer combo drive, and it's slightly under-spec for satisfactory capture from the two tape-based cameras I can hook up through Firewire/i.link/IEE1394. (Can be done, but the few times I've tried it's been prone to dropping frames)

[madjr]

i would say ASUS

it makes quality products and is not afraid to support Linux directly or showoff a new linux powered product.

has done more for linux these days then all other vendors combined.

the eeePCs and splashtop on all their motherboards/laptops is just the beginning.

[jespdj]

I like Dell. Their laptops and desktops work well and contain standard components.

I do not like Sony, because they have the tendency to create proprietary stuff (like Memory Stick - who needs another proprietary kind of flash cards!?). In their first digital cameras with RAW capability, they encrypted the RAW files, so that you could only read those files with Sony's software. :evil: I hate it when companies try to control customers like that. The design of their laptops looks nice though.

Lenovo laptops are also nice, the build quality is great.

My brother has a MacBook and is not really happy with the build quality.

[acelin]

I like Dell. Their laptops and desktops work well and contain standard components.

I do not like Sony, because they have the tendency to create proprietary stuff (like Memory Stick - who needs another proprietary kind of flash cards!?). In their first digital cameras with RAW capability, they encrypted the RAW files, so that you could only read those files with Sony's software. :evil: I hate it when companies try to control customers like that. The design of their laptops looks nice though.

Lenovo laptops are also nice, the build quality is great.

My brother has a MacBook and is not really happy with the build quality.

I dont know man--- all of my friends who Asus say they overheat like crazy and crash frequently with any OS.

The iBook I am on right now is still solid as ever, and it is 5 years old. It has a 800 mhz processor, 256 ram, and a 30 GB HDD. It is way faster than my Acer Aspire 1.6 ghz, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB HDD computer was on XP, VIsta, or Ubuntu,

[SunnyRabbiera]

I say HP, a lot of linux compatible hardware included.
Dell is another good one, as is IBM... not lenovo

[3rdalbum]

My first PC (as opposed to Macintosh) was a Compaq. Such a quiet computer, still runs well, was very Ubuntu-compatible. It survived 8 months of 9-5 6-day-a-week service as a display model in the shop too, before I got my hands on it.

But yes, my Mac and my current PC are nowhere near as quiet as the Compaq, and the thing never overheated or even got noisy in summer.

[arsenic23]

Ok, I've already given my currant best three, ( Dell Vostro for low end, Acer for mid, and HP for the highend ), so if no one minds, I'm going to rant about hardware a bit.

First off, let's talk about 3-4 year old Dell Inpirons. They're rubish. Maybe you have one and it works fine, but I've had my hands on 100's of them and alot of the models that they were cranking out then have some big flaws. First off those old Inspirons are the number one culprit when it comes to having the power plug pull up off the motherboard. I hate soldering those plugs on ( I hate solding laptops period ). Second they have a tendancy to flex a bit over the years and pull the heatsink from the CPU, causing heat heat heat. Simple to fix, just reseat the heatsink and put new thermal compound on it, but still. I haven't gotten my hands on one of the new colored ones, so I can asume they are holding up pretty good so far.

Gateway, I should note, barely exists now that Acer bought them. Most of their tech suport for previous products has to be done by a 3rd party company.

Gateway® Professional and MPC®
All service and support for professional products has been transitioned to MPC.

Due to the recent acquisition of Gateway professional units, all service and support for professional products has been transitioned to MPC. Product information, downloads, installation questions, and e-mail support are being handled by MPC.
Contact MPC for support with your professional products.

Also I'd like to briefly mention Averatec. Yeah they make some real cheap crap, but they sell it as crap and they've done some really neat things with some of their products. One of my favorite things was the series of laptops they had where the motherboard was mounted upside down and you could get to everything on the inside just buy removing a single panel on the bottom. This is brilliant and I think the big name companies could learn a thing or two from these guys. I wouldn't buy or recomend their laptops, but I still think that was bloody brilliant.

That brings me to Toshiba, my least favorite tech company all the way around. Surprisingly though, my one and only notebook is a Toshiba. Not because I once thought they made good notebooks, or anything. What happened was I got a chance to get a 10 month old high end notebook for 25 dollars. So I have a Toshiba. Everything that I've ever touched from these guys has broken almost right away, all the way down to a DVD player my mother bought herself a few years ago. Over the few years I've had this thing I've had to replace the antenna, solder a new power plug into it, replace the keyboard, reseat the CPU twice, and a few things I more then likely can't think of right now. It's been a good laptop other then that, but I don't think people want to deal with that kind of fuss, specifically with the horrid state of Toshiba's tech support. Now that I think of it, I should sell that thing while its still working and buy a little Vostro. I'm not much of a laptop user anyway and really only need one for work. ( I supose I should also point out I used to do home warrenty repair for a company that managed repair calls for Toshiba. Even though that was money, I got so frusterated with their incompetent dainosis, and unwillingness to send the right parts that I told them to stick it up theirs and take their work somewhere else. )

While Acer was one of my top 3, I do think I should mention that I don't include the older 3000 series notebooks when I say that. I'm a 'certified Acer reseller', which doesn't really count for anything if your wondering, and I stopped selling these things I had so many problems with them. All the other notebooks that went out my door seemed to be well recepted by their respective owners, but out of the 11 of these old single core 3000 series laptops I sold, I had 5 returned. Half of them either stopped working, or just plain annouyed their owners to ends.

I'm not even going to talk about Sony or Apple, as I think that both companies sell at a price way over the worth of their products.

hmm... Well that's all I can think of now - I need to get started on the day and stop reading the forums.

[acelin]

Hmm I dont think Apple's are very overpriced, except for maybe the numbers of their hardware ( such as ghz rate, amount of ram, etc...)
Their quality is top notch. I have been using several older macs here lately, and they are all 5+ years old. They are able to run at much faster rates than any windows laptop I have seen in the last 3 years, even though they often have horrible specs.

[DM was on fire!]

Compaq's been with HP near to forever.

The first computer our family owned was an old Windows 98 SE EMachine. We had three of them. They all ran like crap. One had a noisy as hell fan, and two were so freaking slow we could order pizza and have it brought out to our house by the time a window loaded.
Oh...and did I mention that when we had the EMachine, we lived in the mountains of North Carolina, where civilization was atleast fifteen to twenty miles away?

Then we bought a Windows ME Hewlett-Packard (because ME had just come out) and it ran great. Infact, it ran about four years between my parents and I.

All in all, we've owned three HPs. Two were ME, one was XP (that was my dad's). The last one (which lead us to the XP) had a disk boot failure (I believe) and they sent my dad the XP machine free of charge...and my dad still hates XP to this day. XD
But I've had about seven years worth of HP computers (the two ME machines), and we still own two Photosmart 215s (I believe that's the number) and two HP printers. They all still work fine.

All our computers are homebuilt now, though, but if I ever got a laptop, I'd get an HP and install Ubuntu on it.

EDIT - This is a crazy question, but has anyone tried to dual-boot Mac and Linux?
I know it's possible with Windows, but I'm just curious if it's the same with Linux.
If it is, then that would be the best computer ever created. XD

[acelin]

Compaq's been with HP near to forever.

The first computer our family owned was an old Windows 98 SE EMachine. We had three of them. They all ran like crap. One had a noisy as hell fan, and two were so freaking slow we could order pizza and have it brought out to our house by the time a window loaded.
Oh...and did I mention that when we had the EMachine, we lived in the mountains of North Carolina, where civilization was atleast fifteen to twenty miles away?

Then we bought a Windows ME Hewlett-Packard (because ME had just come out) and it ran great. Infact, it ran about four years between my parents and I.

All in all, we've owned three HPs. Two were ME, one was XP (that was my dad's). The last one (which lead us to the XP) had a disk boot failure (I believe) and they sent my dad the XP machine free of charge...and my dad still hates XP to this day. XD
But I've had about seven years worth of HP computers (the two ME machines), and we still own two Photosmart 215s (I believe that's the number) and two HP printers. They all still work fine.

All our computers are homebuilt now, though, but if I ever got a laptop, I'd get an HP and install Ubuntu on it.

EDIT - This is a crazy question, but has anyone tried to dual-boot Mac and Linux?
I know it's possible with Windows, but I'm just curious if it's the same with Linux.
If it is, then that would be the best computer ever created. XD

I have it triple booted, within bootcamp, with OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows Vista. You just go through the usual setting it up, then make sure you know how to set grub to be the boot manager of that partition, not the entire drive.

[DM was on fire!]

O RLY? :O
Screw getting an HP laptop. I'm getting a Mac when I get enough money.

Although, I must say...HOW FREAKING BIG IS YOUR HARD DRIVE? O_O If I remember right, Vista takes 25g minimum, and I don't know about OS X.

Thank you, though, acelin! ^^

[acelin]

O RLY? :O
Screw getting an HP laptop. I'm getting a Mac when I get enough money.

Although, I must say...HOW FREAKING BIG IS YOUR HARD DRIVE? O_O If I remember right, Vista takes 25g minimum, and I don't know about OS X.

Thank you, though, acelin! ^^

No, Vista is a 15 GB installation, OS X is 9 GB, and Ubuntu is 6?
750 GB with a 500 GB external.

[acelin]

O RLY? :O
Screw getting an HP laptop. I'm getting a Mac when I get enough money.

Although, I must say...HOW FREAKING BIG IS YOUR HARD DRIVE? O_O If I remember right, Vista takes 25g minimum, and I don't know about OS X.

Thank you, though, acelin! ^^

You could triple boot it on a MacBook even- you just might want to upgrade the HD to the max just to make sure you have enough room for programs.

[DM was on fire!]

No, Vista is a 15 GB installation, OS X is 9 GB, and Ubuntu is 6?
750 GB with a 500 GB external.

*looks at her puny 15g her Ubuntu machine's running on*
If I sprinke water on it, I wonder if it'll grow. XD

[bufsabre666]

*looks at her puny 15g her Ubuntu machine's running on*
If I sprinke water on it, I wonder if it'll grow. XD

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT

peer pressure peer pressure peer pressure

thats the hardware equivalent of sudo rm -rf

[Don S]

Thinkpads. Although I don't have one - I am the happy owner of a Znote, which works brilliantly compared to its price, but I expect it not to last as long as other laptops.

[melrom]

thinkpads are pretty much superior. even though i own a dell xps. lol.

when this said hardware brands, i was expecting something a bit different.

[jespdj]

No, Vista is a 15 GB installation, OS X is 9 GB, and Ubuntu is 6?
A fresh install of Ubuntu 8.04 is less than 3 GB.

[alwiap]

I've had a lot of trouble with my Compaq laptop, that's just me though, but all the Thinkpad's I've used have been really solid machines. As far as desktops, building your own has to be the way to go.

[elmer_42]

I voted Gateway because "Elmer Technologies" was not on the list. Yes, I just gave my self-built computer a manufacturer. :)

[cardinals_fan]

Thinkpads are exceptional.

[karellen]

Alienware

[harcesis]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Dell Latitudes, I'd put the build quality on par with Thinkpads.