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[jough]

Hey kids,

Well, my laptop died on me... AGAIN.  It's still under warranty, but I'm fed up with this thing.

Now I'm looking around online for something decent but reasonably inexpensive and it looks like the same PCs are the same price everywhere.

I remember there used to be places to find deals posted and stuff, but I'm kinda out of the loop these days.

Does anyone know of a decent place to find good deals on PCs?

[AugustWest]

I like the Dell Outlet.  It's there returns and refurbs.  Prices seem good to me.

[jough]

Also, while I guess price is a factor since I don't have that much money saved up, I use my PC every dang day and need to love to use it.

I really hate the IBM/Lenovo laptops, and Sony seems out of my price range.

I've never seen a Dell laptop.  Are they any good?  They seem to get good reviews, but their desktops sure do suck.

I've actually liked the HPs and Compaqs that I've owned, other than having to send this one in for service three times now.

I was just hoping maybe there was some w00t-esque site that featured this week's specials on laptops and stuff.  I'm trying to maximize my bang-for-the-buck here.

[misterqueue]

I still use www.pricewatch.com for all my purchases (but it usually leads me back to newegg.com again).

Mind you this is for parts for my towers, but they list laptops there too.

[CortJstr]

gottadeal.com lists coupon codes and free shipping offers and such. You can filter by device, retailer or price. I heard about it from OhGizmo!

[acoxcae]

I have a Dell laptop, and I hate it.  It does nothing but break and be slow, and the fan has to be on at full speed for these things to happen - it is Not Good.  I also hated IBM/Lenovo laptops for the longest time, because they were overpriced and overhyped and not that great - until I was given an X41 convertible tablet to use for a semester.  This thing is a dream - I have absolutely no complaints, aside from some bugs in Windows Tablet Edition.  It's solid, (relatively) reasonably priced, light as can be, and fast as you'll need.  I love it.

I have also had bad experiences with HP laptops, as I used to work for one of my school's technology departments, which owned about 100 HP laptops.  Of these, I personally sent 10 back for various reasons, and had to replace numerous hard drives and Cd drives myself, without sending them in - that kind of failure rate is unacceptable, even when they're being used by brainless students.

[jough]

Thanks.

I'll check out those deal sites for deals.

As far as deciding on what brand/model to buy, I don't know what the hell to get.  They seem to ALL suck in varying degrees.  The Gateway notebooks look nice, and I like their keyboards (I do a lot of typing) but I don't know anyone who's ever owned one and reviews seem rare for them.

I'll probably get another frigging HP because the good thing about them is that their service is good.  The bad thing is that you'll NEED to rely on that good service, because I've not owned an HP/Compaq in the past three years that hasn't had to go in for service at least once.

But I've never had one fail before just five weeks after getting it back from having its motherboard and hard drive replaced.  This is ridiculous.  When it comes back from service it will become my backup PC.

[acoxcae]

I forgot to attest to Gateway - my brother has a Gateway, and though I haven't used it extensively, it feels solid, and he's never had to send it in (in 3 years.)  He did have to call support once, because he's an idiot, but apparently they were helpful and like that.

My last Gateway was a Pentium 90 tower in 1994, so I haven't spoken to them in a while.

[wombat]

I have a Fujitsu laptop that doesn't suck at all.  I could type on it all day.  Um, I actually do sometimes, come to think of it. 

[misterqueue]

A number of years ago when I was starting my techie career I actually worked for Gateway.  I, strangely enough, worked in their corporate laptop division.  I haven't kept up as much as I should've (my current company uses Dell laptops, and I don't recommend those), but with Gateway you get what you pay for.  Their top of the line was always reliable but under that was utter messes. 

[pmcd9]

I have a Fujitsu.  I haven't had it very long.  It seems to operate properly.  The keyboard sucks, but that's just a laptop thing (it's my first) so I don't have a comparison.

~Paul

[slink]

I have a Compaq of some description, which isn't too bad, but also isn't great.
What I was tempted by was a Toshiba tablet/laptop I saw recently, not expensive and a surprisingly respectable spec too. Everyone around me has recently gone for Toshiba laptops and they do seem quite nice it has to be said. The Vaio is quite nice just for the screens (the X-black TFT stuff) but they're prohibitively expensive.

[V-Adore]

I'm typing this on a Compaq laptop, and while it's a big piece of machinery, it's also been reliable for the year+ I've had it. The only thing it's ever had a problem with is MMOs, and I'm led to understand that that's a function of the graphics card sucking.

I'm not sure if this is just me, but I would urge you away from refurbers. My last desktop was a Compaq refurb job, and it had ridiculous problems for about its first three months, ran tolerably for a couple more years, and then messily shat itself. I'm not sure how representative a WinME machine really is, but it was Trouble. The SO also has had some refurbished-laptop problems, mostly dealing with screen quality.

[V-Adore]

I kinda agree with you regarding avoinding the refurb crapshoot, but it seems Jough is value conscious so I was reticent to throw the ol' 'you get what you pay for' out there. IIRC, he's trying to replace a refurb machine so's maybe steering towards new w/ rebate action is a better course.

That's fair. I mean, not all refurb machines explode, and I'm convinced half my desktop's problems can be summed up with "WinME." If Jough's willing to take the risk and looking at cost as a primary focus, refurbs are at least worth considering.

[jough]

My past two laptops were refurbs, and they were decent deals and served me well.  This one just keeps failing.  I do tend to run my computer all the time, doing lots of video compressing and such, which is about as CPU-intensive as it gets.

I've been researching online and the refurb + extended warranty (required since the refurbs tend to only come with 60 or 90 days of warranty) is only slightly cheaper (well, $100-300) than a decent mid-range new laptop that's a current model.

So I'm not necessarily looking for the cheapest laptop I can get.  I did that with this one, getting the most PC I could for under $1000, but I use this thing every day, for many hours a day for both business and leisure, so I think I deserve to get something decent.

Having said that, if I can find a deal on the PC that I want I'd rather get the deal than throw away a couple few hundred dollars when I could've gotten it for less if I just knew where to look.  So I figured I'd ask around and see if anyone knew of a forum or site that posted PC deals regularly, whether it be a discount or coupon or whatever.  I pretty much hate rebates so I don't even consider them deals.

I was looking around today trying to decide on a computer as if money were no object and while I really like the Sony Vaios I just can't see dropping an extra $1000 for style.  Plus, from past experience Sony's warranty service sucks.  And when you use a laptop like I do a good service plan is essential.  It's not that I abuse the thing - it hardly ever leaves my desk - but I tend to really use it.

I have a very small space to work (the rest of my workspace is a bit crowded with books, other equipment and stuff, etc.) but I'm also considering a small footprint desktop PC as an alternative.  If I could get a non-tower desktop PC like they used to make I could stick an LCD monitor on top of it and be set.  But nowadays all they seem to sell are towers and I wouldn't have anywhere to put one.  Keeping your PC on the floor is the fastest way to kill it.

It's just a pain in the ass to shop around, find something I like, re-install everything, etc.