He’s been using a macbook air from his old work, but he had to give it back. He was happy with it, but hated OSX (only used it because is work wanted him to).
So now I’m trying to pick a new laptop for him, portability is important but it doesn’t need to be ultrabook portable. I’m thinking maybe a MBP and I’ll just bootcamp Win8 for him (but unfortunately I ran out of free copies of windows from my uni ) , seems like the easiest choice. The most important thing for him is reliability. He wants to have as few problems as possible because he’s not capable of handling them.
What recommendations do you guys have? Anything good from the Lenovo camp? I’ve been pretty impressed with their y series, but I’m not going to get my dad a gaming laptop. What about their business oriented stuff?
The Lenovo Thinkpads are very nice, dependable laptops, or at least they used to be. I don’t know anyone who’s had a model made after 2007. I’ve been very satisfied with my HP Elitebook 8460p though, especially paired with an SSD it is still a quick machine, and I’ve never had a single problem with it even though it was purchased used.
Surprisingly, I’ve also been very satisfied with HP lately, it’s the only one apart from IBM(pre-lenovo) that I’ve been consistently able to resurrect from water damage with symptoms like “won’t power on, totally dead” or “when I plug it in, smoke and sparks come out of the keyboard and all the lights in the house shut off” state to fully working using just a toothbrush and some 99.9% rubbing alcohol. Mine still works and I’ve fixed 2 more at my work.
On all the non-ultrabook models, the hinges are weakly supported and too tight, they need to be loosened before/after it cracks open the bottom frame.
I’m highly against HP laptops. I had one for 8 months - GPU burned-out. It had a 1 year warranty. HP refused to honor it. Had very similar experiences with 2 other HP laptops.
correction: don’t ever buy any laptop with Nvidia GPU’s, they all have the XBOX red ring of death due to lead-free rohs solder balls. My HP has a discrete AMD GPU(radeon 5650/6550 1GB), is almost 5 years old, is a 1st gen i7 (produces extreme heat) has been dropped and water damaged many times, I use it 24/7 overclocked from 500 to 700Mhz and it still works perfectly with no stability issues on AC or battery power.
On one of my HP laptops there was a discrete nvidia card, the 8400GS. It died within 6 months of purchase, almost brand new. HP said I tried to mess with the BIOS and refused to fix it. I also have many many PCI-e desktop nvidia cards all dead due to the same issue. a 8800GT, an 8600GTS and, surprisingly, older and newer models have the same fucking issue: a 7300, a 7600, a dual-slot 7950gx2 and a GT210(according to nvidia these are not even part of the series that have the problem). Microsoft and Sony have both learned their lesson, their consoles all moved from Nvidia to AMD from last-gen. Nintendo hasn’t experienced any major recalls due to using AMD graphics since the gamecube.
Same here, my HP laptop is an older model with discrete AMD graphics and I’ve never had trouble with it. Even used it to play games like Mass Effect 3.
Honestly, I’ve never really had a problem with HP except with their consumer level stuff. It’s filled with bloatware and crap. Their workstations have worked great for my clients though. Their xw series have scarcely had any issues during their 5+ years of daily use and the few they did have HP fixed, or were easy to fix ourselves. Not to say HP has never treated their customers poorly, but if you heed the warnings of everyone who’s had a bad customer service experience with a company, there’d be no one left to buy from.
Are you sure you’re not talking about an ASUS Laptop? Because I have that exact same laptop. First-gen i7-740QM correct? Mine also has the radeon 5650/6550 1GB Radeon. The card that they renamed 6550 because it was much more powerful than 5650 should have been…?
Only difference is, my CPU burned out on that laptop because of the fact that they advertised (originally) that it could be used with Intel Turbo Boost. However, ASUS disabled that feature due to the fact that it was… well… burning out CPU’s.
I overrode the ASUS drivers with the Intel drivers because the ASUS drivers wouldn’t allow me to turn on Turbo Boost (which again was advertized on the box my laptop came in), but there was no indication from ASUS that they disabled it because it was causing the computer to run too hot.
And thus… my amazing laptop that I had for 3 years is now gone… Only laptop I’ve ever had that long that didn’t fuck out after a year.
Anyways, If your ‘HP’ with that same combo is still running - I would imagine that it’s using the same hardware. Probably not HP designed. That’s why it’s still running.
Haha I wish, no it’s not an ASUS, It’s an HP DV7 with an i7 920QM stock 1.6Ghz. I run it turbo’d to the max so 1 core = 2.8Ghz, 2 cores = 2.6ghz and 4 cores = 2.4ghz. Of course I had to apply aviation-grade thermal paste, but it never overheated since then.
Btw, if he wants Mac OS back - just hackintosh it. Ever since Clover EFI came out, it’s much easier to do.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
, seems like the easiest choice. The most important thing for him is reliability. He wants to have as few problems as possible because he’s not capable of handling them.