Challenge: Most reliable Laptop that isnt a Thinkpad.

I did not say sony is incapable of making good products. Sony just use to be a "premium" brand in a more general sense. Sony has a lot of mass market junk and still tries to leverage the brand name. I am just saying Sony doesn't inherently mean quality.

I also shoot with sony slr systems so that isn't to say im anti-sony, but the products should be judged on merit. The name means little to me by itself.

 

Sony Vaio FE21s!

4 years of having coke spilt all over it (and the hardware)
Being dropped
Overclocked senseless
dropped (did i say that?)
Travelled with everywhere

It is still running as it did day 1, with no cosmetic damage except the fact that the mousepad is burnt (due to heavy usage) and that the power cord input needs the pin bending up a bit so that the adapter and sony input make contact.

Other then that, i have never had such a durable, well built machine.

You can actually see the northbridge is staind with juice haha.

(so none of this new sony crap, im ol' school )

 

Lenovo C100

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2855&review=Lenovo+3000+C100+Review

Its first week was downloading TV shows for 3 days straight on vacation in Cape Cod during the hottest recorded summer. Only casualty was the wireless card that died about 2 weeks later. That thing is still chugging along smoothly with ~3-4 hours as my mom's laptop.

My sister has already managed to ruin her T61 after 2 years . I think I am going to have her buy one of the G530's since the plastic seems to be more durable than the ThinkPads and it is cheaper so if it breaks she isnt out as much. (she has gone through a few HD's from dropping the notebook, carryies it by holding the open display, etc)

 

Sounds like you shouldn't be buying her things? If she breaks it, it is her fault and she should be more responsible <.<.

Edit: Oh wait you said have her buy it. But maybe she should get accidental coverage.