What should I do?

[Robert_R]

First off: I'm not sure if this belongs in this forum or help and advice lol

 

My laptop just broke so I brought it to the geek squad at best buy and they ran some test on it and found that the ram and hardrive were both broken and needed to be replaced. My mom said that since she bought me the laptop she would buy me a new one because the cost to replace those would be close enough to just buying a new laptop, but this is were I don't know what I should do. I was thinking about just getting either new cheap laptop for school or selling my desktop and getting a good laptop to use as my main computer. My desktop is semi old which is why I'm considering this. Also, I'm considering doing this because my desktop runs on windows xp and most of the new laptops run on windows 7 and the good ones have just about the same memory if not better then my desktop along with either the same or better processor.

 

Should I just get a cheap one or a good one and sell the desktop? I've already looked into how much people are paying for desktops similar to mine.

 

P.S. I'm never buying a dell laptop again.... :thumbdown:

[Sbrideau]

I agree with your P.S. Dell does suck a lot, you should've went with another company :).

 

If we want to be able to tell you what the good choice might be, we will need computer specs of the desktop and the laptop you plan to buy and also the cheap new laptop.

[Robert_R]

Well my mom got me the laptop as a gift for my birthday. Neither of us were aware that dell laptops sucked lol. It broke in under a year <_<

 

My desktop now is Dell (ya I know another dell but this one actually works well) Dimension E510.

Processor- Intel® Pentium® D CPU 2.80GHz

Processor Speed- 2.73 GHz

Memory (RAM)- 1024 MB

Operating System- Microsoft Windows XP Professional

 

That's all the specs I could find if you need more I'll try to find them.

 

I was looking at this laptop for one to replace the desktop. But I'm not very good at shopping for laptops because I'm not sure what's good or not lol

 

 

It's a gateway laptop I don't know if they're good or bad I've never owned one.

Here are the specs

Processor- Intel® Core™2 Duo

Processor Speed- 2.2GHz

System Memory (RAM)- 4GB

Operating System- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

 

I like this laptop because it's fairly cheap(only $599) and the specs are about the same as the desktop.

 

If you need more I could post the link to the specs page but it's on best buy and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post links to sites that sell things(am I?)

I have no idea what I would get as a cheap laptop but it would be just a basic laptop for every day things.

[ClareJonsson]

In the grand scheme of notebooks Dell are no better or worse than anyone else, you simply had some bad luck. We repair notebooks and Dell are not on the high list of failures. They are annoying to service though, but then again so are Sony!

 

Our preference is Toshiba as they are not too expensive, great to service and they have a pretty low failure rate!

 

P.S. Do NOT go for a Gateway, I shudder at the sight of them.

[Nadril]

In the grand scheme of notebooks Dell are no better or worse than anyone else, you simply had some bad luck. We repair notebooks and Dell are not on the high list of failures. They are annoying to service though, but then again so are Sony!

 

Our preference is Toshiba as they are not too expensive, great to service and they have a pretty low failure rate!

 

P.S. Do NOT go for a Gateway, I shudder at the sight of them.

 

I'm going to have to disagree with Gateway here from personal Experience. I'm using a Gateway FX laptop (can't remember exact model) and it's a beast. I've had no hardware issues with it so far with the exception of the VGA port being too close to the battery (but I just use the HDMI port). I've had it for a bit over a year now I think.

 

 

@OP: what are you using this laptop for? Do you want something that is portable, or a replacement desktop for gaming? What's your budget at?

[stonewall337]

I agree with your P.S. Dell does suck a lot, you should've went with another company :).

 

If we want to be able to tell you what the good choice might be, we will need computer specs of the desktop and the laptop you plan to buy and also the cheap new laptop.

 

 

I've been happy with my dell, but honestly, I would recommend a toshiba. Reliable, but not very customizable, unlike dells or macs. Gateways suck, stay away. At least their low to mid end computers+laptops. I am not quite sure about their upper end laptops.

 

BTW, GET MORE RAM!!!! Get at least 3 or 4 gig. I would also advise a dedicated video card.

[ClareJonsson]

 

I'm going to have to disagree with Gateway here from personal Experience. I'm using a Gateway FX laptop (can't remember exact model) and it's a beast. I've had no hardware issues with it so far with the exception of the VGA port being too close to the battery (but I just use the HDMI port). I've had it for a bit over a year now I think.

 

I don't base my views on a users point of view, most makes are okay if they do not fail. I'm talking from the point of view of a technician who has had to repair them when they do go wrong. Believe me, Gateway are pretty bad when it comes to maintaining their hardware. Oddly enough, Sony fall into this group too, and so do IBM Thinkpads to name a few. Some manufacturers have a really good design and easy access to a lot of the hardware. I worked on one Sony once that was under warranty and had a dead motherboard, I had to half dismantle the system to remove the hard drive simply to backup the users data before sending it back to our supplier for repair! That was simply unacceptable, and this is the type of thing users never experience!

[Mirror]

Yeah, the question is what will these computers serve purposes for. A 1 GB to 4 GB RAM upgrade is much needed in my eyes. :) But it depends on the uses for each and then a better decision could be made.