Your Recommended Laptop

I'm not after an Apple V everyone else debate. I see in the latest Dick Smith that they have Samsung laptops at a decent price. Are they any good? I've had HP's which overheat, An asus in which the Hard-drive died, and my step daughter had a Toshiba that blew up. So which brand do you recommend and why and also back to my original question. Are Samsung laptops any good?

Personally, I would go Dell. The 3 brands you have named are ones I would avoid. In terms of ordering what you want and support, Dell are 2nd to none

I concur. We have had our Dell Inspiron for well over 5 years now and its been awesome!

just got a new acer . touch screen , very fast i5 , $1400 , 750g hard drive .really neat laptop

and windows 8

I'm just weighing this debate up. I've been a long time Mac disliker. But I've been playing with a MacBook Air for the last week or so and I do really like it.

The 'portable' Mac SE or SE/30.

Sex in a cube.

With a handy carry case.

After a long time Mac denier... I went Mac a few years back after working for an Aussie company that sold them and they are pretty easy to use. When I came home last year my Mac died (through my doing - it fell off a third floor balcony) and had a very limited budget so got an HP 14" win8 machine. Pretty basic little thing but isn't too bad especially for the five hundy odd I paid at JB.

Having said that; finances are healthier now so next year I can see me going back to an MBA - perfect wee thing for home (and a little work as reuired).

All brands have issues (ELF/DOA's etc) and like cars/footy boots/telly's or whatever people stick with what they know if they've not been burned... if you have no brand loyalties (yet?) then look at the other features, values, service, etc both from the laptop you buy and where you buy it. These days you can't really go to far wrong. Just go with what/who feels right .

Edited for: Win8 touchscreens are a wank.

Windows touch screens are manky

We used to have touch screens at my work. Till one day a co-worker decided to clean them with Jiff!!! @ $2k per screen back then and there were 4 screens, she was wondering why we all nutted off.

My windows touch screen is amazing . you don't know what your talking about

Just getting in late on the Dell feedback. I actually had a really bad experience ordering one on-line from them a few years back. After about a month it still hadn't arrived (due to a shortage of monitors which were an extra in the package) and it was a nightmare to get accurate info on when it was arriving. As by that stage I needed a computer ASAP, I ended up cancelling the order and buying a VAIO from JB HiFi (which has been good). Long story short, it then actually arrived, they denied that I had cancelled the order, and it took me about 6 months, countless phonecalls to a call-centre in Asia somewhere, and several official complaints before I finally got my money back.

Just a one-off I guess, but definitely not a fun one.

Actually you're right about it being a nightmare to track the order. Can imagine how bad that'd be if something went wrong. 

Dell ugh. Over heating heap

Macbook pro all the way!

Dell used to have an extremely bad reputation for 'support'. To find nice comments on here did surprise me. Everything at my work is Dell and to be honest they perform adequately & get the job done.

Just found this on Stuff ....

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/9352135/Dell-to-fix-laptops-that-smell-like-cat-urine

Everyone knows the internet is all about cats, but Dell may have taken that too literally with one of its new computers.

The Texas company has issued one of the funniest customer service notes in the world of tech when it offered to replace customers' laptops that smell like cat urine.

For months users have taken to Dell's community forum to complain that the Dell Latitude 6430u laptop smells like it was assembled near a litter box.

Many in the thread point out that they have had to apologise to their clients when they take out their laptop in front of them while others expressed their frustration with Dell because they have scolded their cats for the odour.

"I have been blaming a new kitten who I swore was creeping into my closed back pack at night and magically only hitting the PC with a concentrated urine stream which then magically evaporated," one user said.

"Glad to hear I am not alone (people see me smelling my PC and think I am insane!) and my apologies to the cat."

"If I leave my laptop out over the weekend the smell permeates the whole office," another user said.

Fortunately for affected users, Dell responded to the complaints this week.

The company said users whose computers have the odour can contact the company to have their device's palm rest replaced. The smell appears to be the result of a manufacturing process related to the computer's palm rest.

"We would like to reassure customers that the odour was not related to biological contamination nor did it present a health hazard," the company said online.

"The manufacturing process has subsequently been amended and newly purchased Latitude 6430us are not affected by the issue.

Key thing to ask - is what is it to be used for?

If it's just for emails/web use/Office environment then anything pretty much will do.

If you need it for graphic/video work then you need to consider RAM and the processor i3/i5/i7 etc (the higher the better in both).

I have just bought a new one last week. I decided on the HP Envy i5 15.6" which was on sale at Dick Smith's last week for $998.

I did a reasonable amount of research and in addition pretty much each salesman I spoke to Noel Leeming/Dick Smith/HN etc, and a couple of small computer specialists stores said there's really no one or two brands to stay away from anymore, they're all much of a muchness. Couple of them said Toshiba and HP have excellent support.

I replaced my 3 1/2 year old Dell, which about 8-9 months ago started to heat up, to the point where i needed a cooling pad under it if i was going to use if for any longer than about an hour. But had a Dell before that and it was excellent, although getting a replacement battery for it was bloody hard, lots of email/phone calls, and in the end I just gave up and plugged it in each time.

I don't know a hell of lot about laptops, other than in a 'hobbyist' sense, but this is my experience and is very recent...

I was looking at one with a 2 gig video card so I can use it for gaming as well as my website work.

How many problems in older laptops are caused by bad capacitors?Quite easy to spot when you open them up and fairly easy to replace (and cheap)as long as you have a soldering iron.Plenty of you tube videos to explain this problem.

Scored a great samsung monitor this way.The thing was in standby all the time.Opened it up fairly simple.Sure enough one  bad capicitor.Now it works great.

I have a toshiba it works ok.Just needs a new battery.Had a problem with one of the buttons after a couple of months which came loose. Toshiba told me to take it to a local repair shop who fixed it under the warranty.

So are Samsung Laptops any good?