Rate your brand

I know the specs and features that I'm after when I buy my laptop, so now I just need to know who I can trust. I'd like to invite you all to state the brand of every laptop you've owned in the past 3 years, and how you'd rate them in terms of build quality, technical support, and customer service, if a fault or need for repair ever occured. Any and all relevant anecdotes welcome, thank you.

 

Brand: Fujitsu

Build: 5 stars. However, I notice that there's a couple of paint scuffs on the bottom corners even though I don't carry it around a lot, and there's a hairline crack on the side of the keyboard area. It did travel a lot between repairs, getting painted, etc, so the scuffing may have happened that way.

Tech Support: Haven't dealt with them directly. Spilled coffee all over the place and messed up the mobo so the battery wouldn't charge. Mailed it in to Portable One, and when they stopped servicing Fujitsu, to T3. I think I detailed what happened elsewhere, but bottom line, I'm happy with both. When I called T3, even the receptionist knew who I was, so it's not like I talked to a new person where I had to tell them what was going on each time.

Customer Service: The only time I had to contact them was to find out how much they'd charge for a new mobo, since it would've been out of warranty. It actually would've been $5 more than I paid T3 it turned out. Anyway, I don't remember if someone picked up right away or if I had to wait a couple of minutes, but it definitely wasn't like calling Dell and what not. The person who picked up the phone didn't have an accent and had no problem answering my question. So that was all good. Oh and the number's easy to remember: 1-800-FUJITSU

I think you'll find everyone in the Fujitsu forum happy with their purchases, which is part of why the forum is so slow

Malia

 

(I could've sworn I posted this in the "What Notebook Should I Buy" forum. If a moderator moved it here, could he or she confirm that for me? If not, could I request to have it moved there? Thank you)

edit: The WSIB forum is for WSIB topics, and this doesn't necessarily reflect or is close to that, thus I moved it. However, I couldn't really find another forum where this was applicable, so I kinda hesitated. If you think it should be moved back, feel free to PM me why. Thanks!

reply: Okay. Who am I PM'ing?

 

Brand: ASUS ENSEMBLE Unit - V6va

Build: 5 Stars. I'd give more if it was possible. The magnesium lid is like a rock protecting the LCD backing, the ionized Brushed Aluminum wristrest and keyboard surrounding area not only gives a sleek touch, but it also guarantees that the resting area will never fade. Carbon fibre composite material used in the base of the notebook as well as the LCD's frame just adds on to the total build quality of the notebook. I can't say anything less about the IPS screen, as it eliminates ALL bad angles while providing a crisp, vivid screen viewing. The only complaint, while I totally understand, is the heat on the right side, where the CPU and HD is, since this Pentium M 1.86, x700 128mb machine is only 1 INCH thick, I wouldn't expect it to be totally cool.

Tech/Customer Support: From the dealers such as ProPortable, BTOTech and MileStonePC, 10 out of 5 stars. They are an incredible help, whether in person or online, and they are always of aid in the forums. For ASUS support, It's a 4 out of 5 stars, only because they have a lack of support depots, 1-2 per country is fine, but I'd expect more(Note most brands have 1 per country area, like all of UK, all of Scandanavia, Eastern Asia, etc.). I'd call in to test a few times about heat issues, and so far they were no more knowledgable then I was. As well, they have a 30 day no dead pixel guarantee on all units, so if a dead pixel appears, anyone can freely send it back for a new one. With a default 2 year worldwide warranty, I'm quite happy on this.

*However there has been mediocre support overseas(out of N.A.) so my comments only reflect on North American Support.

 

Brand: Evesham (MSI, I think)

Build - 4.5 stars. Very solid and sturdy, nice looking. Keyboard is excellent when you get used to it. Not too thick. Nice size. Great screen, although the viewing angles could possibly be better. Can get quite warm on the right hand side, because the processor and GPU are there. All the ports are easily accessible, but the sound card in the PCMCIA slot blocks the Expresscard slot, plus the monitor cable gets in the way of my mouse.

Tech support - 4 stars. I've only had 2 problems, one of which solved itself. Th other required me to send it to them. They paid postage etc, and sent it back within a week, reformatted and fresh installed. The only reason they don't get 5 stars is that they are sometimes a little slow to respond to email requests.

Overall - 4.5 stars. Very happy with this laptop.

 

Brand: Dell

Build: 4/5: The Dell Inspiron is quite good, but 2 of the screws on the bottom of the laptop were missing, and I had to improvise by using screws the wrong size to make my laptop boot up However, I bought my laptop second hand so I cant really comment on this. The cooling system is very good. I leave my notebook on for 12 hours sometimes without any worries.

However, my mother's Inspiron 8100 has never has a "build quality issue" in 6 years of heavy usage.

Tech Support: I've only had to contact Dell support once, but they were propmt in sending me a replacement Optical Drive that I needed together with some very useful installation instructions. They also have a very good support site. 5/5.

Overall: 4.5 / 5 Excellent company

 

Brand: Sager

Build: 4.5/5. The build quality on my laptop is simply awesome. The plastic is not cheap at all, and the case does not flex - period. The lid is aluminum and very durable, and also looks very nice. The hinges holding the display are robust and sturdy. The keyboard is so-so, not my favorite, but it is quite usable and sometimes enjoyable (it seems like when the notebook heats up a bit more, the keyboard feels better).

Customer Support: Haven't needed to contact them save for one time in the year and . . ah yes, 2 months that I have owned it. I contacted them once because I wanted them to send me a BIOS update, which they did. My email was promptly answered and it was sent from a real person. So, I'm happy.

Overall: 4.2/5 Phenomenal. The Sager NP5320 is the best notebook I have owned so far and I think it was worth the extra I paid for it over a mainstream model. You're not going to find this combination of unique features in a mainstream machine. I have an older Centrino platform notebook with a Pentium M - it has a SATA hard drive, which only appeared in mainstream notebooks in the newer Centrino Duo platform, dual-channel DDR2 RAM, a built-in webcam - which again, only recently became a trend in mainstream models -, a modular bay which can be swapped for a hard drive or extra battery, and the beastly 256MB X700 in a 15.4", which I have overclocked significantly and now get over 3,300 points in 3DMark05 and can run most of the latest games at max settings.
My cons? It runs warm, the keyboard isn't my style (needs to be softer/bouncier, this one is a bit hard and clickety). On a neutral note, this notebook is extremely heavy for a 15.4" @ 7.5 lbs, probably because of the beefed-up build quality and the cooling system.
My review is here:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2594