Harlan,

There are tons of really good options to even more bad one. My
recommendation to everyone is not to be cheap. It may seem like a deal now,
but you will pay for it in a few years, either buy having to replace it
early, or spend money and time on repairs.

The Lenova Thinkpad line of laptops are generally of a higher quality than
most mainstream laptops and range in price from reasonable to expensive.
They are not my preferred laptop, but I know a lot of people that swear by
them. If your will to shell out a little extra money for some of the
sharpest looking, and most reliable laptops on the market, I would look at
the macbook air (11' and 13') and macbook pro (13', 15') laptops. Macbooks
are proven to have better hardware reliably than most any other laptop
manufacturer and their support (apple care) is by far the best in the
industry. Meaning if something goes wrong, they will often offer to just
give you a new/refurbished one if they can't fix it for you at your local
Apple store.

Another good brand to look at is System 76. Their laptops are solid and
pretty easy on the eyes. They come pre-loaded with Ubuntu Linux though they
can run Windows and Mac if you really want to go that route (hackintosh).
They give you some of the best performance bang for the buck at mid range
prices with high end specs. Their support team has a good track record as
far as actually helping with you call/email.


Hope that helps!


On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 7:48 AM, Max Shinn <max at bernsteinforpresident.com>wrote:

> > In my experience… a computer that is used daily costs about $300-$400
> > per year of service.
>
> $300-$400/year of service?!  I'm currently running a 4+ year old
> Dell that cost $500 new, and haven't put in a dime to repair it.  It
> gets at least 4-5 hours of use per day.  I usually keep computers
> around 5-6 years, and the only repairs I've ever had to do were
> replacing a keyboard (on a ThinkPad) and a backlight (on an older
> Dell).
>
> >   For the PC-compatible laptops, who makes the most reliable
> > consumer-class systems?  Which of their product lines are more
> > reliable?
>
> I think I'm going to have to suggest ThinkPads just because the repairs
> are so easy to do.  It's also one of the few laptops on the market
> available without a glossy screen (if that is important to her).  It
> also seems much better put together than the Dells I've had.
>
> > Mostly she uses her computer for web browsing, email, word processing
> > and spreadsheets.  She would like something faster than she has right
> > now, or at least better response times.  Her current computer has an
> > AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 2.0 GHz cpu, 3GB RAM.
>
> Thanks for reminding me how much I love Bodhi/E17. ;)
>
> -Max
>
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>


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