PCTech Forums

I need to replace my daughter's Vaio laptop with a newer model that can handle some of the games she plays. I'm looking for opinions on different brands, ones that give good service and ones to avoid. For instance, Dells seems to have better prices than Sonys and seem to be quite popular. I have an eMachine desktop unit that I'm very happy with but heard bad reports about their notebooks...also believe they aren't making them anymore either.

And speaking of that, I've not kept up on who now owns who, or what replaced what. This eMachine unit is the first desktop I haven't put together myself, so I have little knowledge about brands and picked the Sony laptop believing I would get good service from it...and have, but they are a bit too pricey. Oh, and I'll probably be buying whatever I get from eBay, so I'm only looking at used machines.

Thanks,

PS I'm only interested in info on brands for the most part, not for suggestions on configuration, but specific model info is welcome.

I like Toshiba also, look for something in the add that say Xbright or something to that fact that points to the new screen brightness. Its noticable and quite nice to view. Centrino is another word that means "fast." There is 2Meg of L2 cache on board.

I take issue with Liljm on the Celerons, especially the new D ones. The Price is right on them at about $550. Think back two years, top of the line then can't even touch a Celeron D.

For Xp you need 512 of memory, 40 gig drive and maybe a cdrw and dvd.

The real thing to consider, is if you drop it or it is stolen--$500 loss won't choke you as much as buying that real nice Sony Viao for $2200

P.S. IBM and Dell do not make their laptops, somebody in China does. Dell rhyms with hell and IBM told Bill Gates to take a walk. Cavete Emptor

I know that with Dell, you get very good customer support. They sometimes have deals on as well, which you could take advantage of if you bought from them.

So that's something to think about.

The trick to gaming with a notebook is cooling. Notebooks tend to get warm in a short time so a notebook cooler is a wise investment. Alot of the newer notebooks indeed have pretty good video and if you know the game requirements im sure you can find one with the video to support it.