Thread: Laptops

I've had several of them (probably had twenty or so machines in total), various brands including HP, Dell, Compaq and one Toshiba.

Had three of them go bad, two HPs and the single Toshiba, two after about 2 years, one after 18 months, and that one still had a HP warranty, which I used.

And they mostly are refurbished retail returns, a number of them have had the test reports and other documents in with them, Grays seem to have their own workshop rebuilding, refurbishing or repairing for several brands.

My work recently bought about 500 Dells for about $600 each I think, but the deal includes a service contract and I can't be specific about the figures. If they can survive being mistreated by students they are pretty rugged. It really depends on what you want to do with it.

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Originally Posted by LandyAndy

Went into JB HiFi today looking to replace my ageing Laptop,its a Toshiba Sattelite,around 10 years old.
We have bought Lindsay several Toshibas and he bought a better one still,he needed bigger and better as he is a geek and programs he runs for uni were taxing his.
The only issue I had with mine was a battery a couple of years back.Nowdays it has trouble waking up and I fear its ready to die.
Anyhow,Mr JBHiFi tells me Toshiba dont market into Australia any more,is this true as I want another Toshi
He was trying to sell me a HP or an Isuzu(Isus???)
What are the better brands to buy if I cant get a Toshi????
Cheers
Andrew

Hi Landy Andy,
Both OO.com.au and Harris Technology currently have Toshiba laptops for sale.

Best Wishes,
Peter

Originally Posted by Bytemrk

..... - SSD's also tend to die very suddenly when they go - so everything I have on SSD's is well backed up elsewhere.

....

LOL! been there too.
Had one die(thankfully under warranty) and you can't use some of the old mechanical drive tricks to get it running to copy stuff over to a safe drive.

That's why I prefer to get my own lappie with mechanical drive, + my own SSD and image the mechanical drive onto the SSD and place the SSD in the lappie from new.
The mechanical drive serves as an emergency backup of the OS plus whatever software you install and serves as a quick and easy fresh install when the time comes later on.

I think most SSD's used in laptops will be of the cheapest kind, rather than the best performance/$ type.
So I prefer to choose which SSD I want to use rather than use the one that came with the machine.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

.... If they can survive being mistreated by students they are pretty rugged. It really depends on what you want to do with it.

...

My kids are both in secondary school.
They get some nice looking but extremely fragile DELL convertible laptop/tablet devices.
They work nice when they work, but if I were any of the techs at the school trying to keep up with my sons ability to break them, I'd have quit, resigned, asked for a doubled up pay rise, or hung myself if all that failed.
He has an incredible ability to destroy his tablet!
My daughter is typical soft/sweet thing, and surely treats her stuff equally, but she's two issues with hers too(but no destructive episodes yet!)

Originally Posted by LandyAndy

Does anybody know much about the "re-furbished" lap tops Greys online sell????
Are they just wiped office machines,or are they modified??? I see some list having a SSD fitted.
Andrew

I have bought 2 of the refurbished Toshibas in the last 3 months from Greys Online, the first one went to my son and hasn't been an issue, for $420 and $480 (30% and 20% off EBay specials), they are:

Core i7
8GB Ram
1TB HDD
12 Month Warranty

Mine has a slightly faster processor and a touch screen.

They look as new even though they say they could have minor blemishes.

I will upgrade to SSD's when I get around to and put the drives into external caddies for backup devices.

If you get the toshiba, burn the recovery disc to a usb stick and as i did made an iso of that on my desktop.

Richard

Dells have proprietary screens, so when they get damaged cost a lot more to replace. My daughter's screen just cracked one day when she was just using the laptop, about 2 minutes after opening it. Very poor construction design.
Dell support indicated they would treat it as user damage as it happens to a lot of their laptops. When I replaced the screen all hinge screws were loose, creating residual stress to the screen. Poor assembly and the user pays.

Originally Posted by AK83

My kids are both in secondary school.
They get some nice looking but extremely fragile DELL convertible laptop/tablet devices.
They work nice when they work, but if I were any of the techs at the school trying to keep up with my sons ability to break them, I'd have quit, resigned, asked for a doubled up pay rise, or hung myself if all that failed.
He has an incredible ability to destroy his tablet!
My daughter is typical soft/sweet thing, and surely treats her stuff equally, but she's two issues with hers too(but no destructive episodes yet!)

My work had a batch of Surface tablets, but they never worked properly (I think they ordered too low a spec. model) and broke too easily, so they've gone to back to laptops, in rugged cases and with bags.
The biggest problem we seem to have is not physical damage, but kids try to change the proxy server to avoid the limits which have been placed on their ability to play games on school laptops. Then they find the laptop won't work on the school system with a different proxy. But they don't know how to fix it, so they have to go off and grovel to the school IT people and admit they did the wrong thing, and get growled at and made to wait long enough for it to be a problem for their school work, in the hope that will deter them from stuffing around with it in the future. It's funny to watch.