Laptops haven't changed much in past five years, why buy a new one?

I bought a the Blackshark Pro V2 headphones within the last month, arrived and the right ear didn't work wirelessly, everything worked fine wired. After having a week or so long ticket back and forth about typical debugging stuff that I knew wasn't the problem but every company forces you through they just paid for all the shipping to replace them and shipped the new ones out next day air after receiving the broken ones. I'm sure if I would have contacted them over chat or phone I could have gotten it done really fast but I wanted to just do it async as I was super busy at the time. I also had a 2014 Razer Blade 14 a long time ago (I beat the crap out of that thing with 1000s of hours of gaming and it never skipped a beat) and wanted a USB drive to reinstall windows and they just shipped it out for free after asking once. So I've only had good experiences the two times I had to use it. Just like every company it can be hit or miss though. The blackshark pro v2 is super light and comfy, recommend it.

 

Cool, It's great to hear good stories about customer service. All I have heard is the horror stories. I do love their gear. Understated gaming machines, they don't look like a 5 year old designed them.

 

I definitely had to have some patience with the headphone support, it took quite some time to finally get to where I got them replaced but once that conversation finally started they were extremely apologetic. I suppose if I had nothing else going on in my life and I wasn't a patient person I could see someone getting super frustrated with the entire turnaround time. Usually when something someone has spent a lot of money on doesn't work isn't the best time for them to be rational. People in that situation are definitely the loudest and tend to be the most critical. Add to that the OCD a lot of us have about our machines being perfect and you get a confluence of the worst when something goes wrong and it's not being fixed immediately.

 

At least you got it fixed up. More than I can say about Asus and my three devices. Purchased all together and after about 3 or 4 months the touchscreens on all three failed. Asus told me to pound rocks. NEVER buying an asus device or tell others to do so either. That company is the worst for customer service and product quality as well come to mention it.

 

Have you seen Linus' latest PC Secret Shopper? Oof on Dell..

(The whole series is great should take a look at part 1 as well..)

 

I was just reading through this and I think it just depends on your needs. I switched a couple of years ago to laptop only and I love it. All the bulk of all those peripherals needed for a desktop are gone, all the dust in and around the tower, moving is a lot easier lol, etc. I can reasonably take a laptop on the road, game anywhere with a plug, be mobile for work contracts with my secondary cad box laptop and etc

My main uses are general like office, browsing, some pdf editing etc which any laptop in the last 8+ years could do, 3d/2d cad which any decent computer within the last 6 years could do but gaming is where I really need something that can at least give me decent 720 to 1080p near 60 fps. I don't have ultimate huge needs afa gaming, even when I had a desktop the top card I ever had was a 970 and 1060 the last one. So I do need a decent rig but not anything mind blowing and when laptop gpus were very close to desktops like 980m-1080 it was really awesome. It's kinda like TV's, I don't really care that much about uhd/qhd but the big plus with newer stuff is the bulk, remember when TV's were huge and heavy beasts?

Without gaming my ancient m4600 would be all that I need tbh. The one thing I like for gaming is a 17.3" size screen so I have an m6700 as well. The risk of laptop failure is split between 2 laptops for the same price as one newer used one. One of the best investments I ever made afa laptops is a usb to msata cable lol. Install games and software on 2.5 hdd/ssd and I can just carry those in the laptop bag separately, when I need any of that stuff just plug it in on demand. OS goes on the small internal msata and with newer ones the nvme. All that heat from the ssd/hdd is external to the laptop. And with the advancements even a newer used laptop with a 1060/1070/1650/1660ti would be a huge step up but not that much for general and CAD use. And it wouldn't cost that much. I can get similar perf on my m6700 with a 980m when they are available for decent prices. Even a 970m would be fine for me. Eventually I'll get a newer large gaming laptop like an Omen 17, Alienware etc

But if a very old laptop works for you then don't upgrade until it's absolutely necessary, vanity and marketing driven buying is just a waste. Put that money into savings, investments, mortgage payment, car payment, much better use.

 

Good for linus. I never had a problem with them since I have been buying computers from them. Back in the days of the pentium III dell with the blue case. The other company I have never had an issue with was acer. everything worked awesome and they were extremely reliable. Asus, the devices were POS'es with all three failing after appox. 3 months of use and customer service was non existent, telling me to essentially to pound rocks.

 

They literally sold her the warranty when she denied it, and on top of that sold her TWO conflicting warranties. That shouldn't even be possible. It's pretty clear Dell is still putting tons of pressure on their phone agents to sell warranties at all costs, just super customer hostile.

 

I finally decided it was time to upgrade and bought me a mint
Dell XPS 13 9360 Intel Core i7-7660U 2.5GHz 16GB RAM 512GB SSD QHD+ Touch laptop off eBay for $500. Hopefully this one will last me another five years like my former Dell XPS 13 L322x did

I'll never buy new. Usually I get one that's 3-5 years old. The tech is still good and don't have to pay the high $$$ for it either. This one is a early 2017 laptop.