Grah, evil laptops

[dangermousie]

Just had to restore my laptop to factory settings as the sole way left of fixing it. Luckily, I had everything backed up on external hd.

Word of advice - never ever have an HP. I have had this laptop for just over a year and the amount of issues I have had with it is five times greater than with every other computer I ever owned, combined. We have a 10 year old laptop that works better than this. I envy my husband's shiny Dell as well.

I have got his OK to buy myself a new laptop for New Year's. Any advice? I have had decent luck with Dell before. Not a Mac person - iPad is as far as I am willing to go (though if I could find Mac compatible versions of gom, combined community codec pack and hjsplit, I might be tempted).

Comments

[walkwithheroes.livejournal.com]

I've had a Dell for about four or five years now. It's my first laptop, and I've had very few issues with it. I had some issues about a year into ownership, but those were easily fixed. I hear that Sony Vaio is very good,too.

[hollyxu.livejournal.com]

I've had a Mac for 3+ years, so I can't talk about laptops with any reliable degree of accuracy. However, my tower/desktop is a Dell, so that seems like a safe bet, as it is 7 years old (back when XP was new and shiny, ha) and still chugging along.

The only problem I really relish avoiding on a Mac is the viruses, honestly.

[vert-gazon.livejournal.com]

YES to this. I had an HP and it was the worst computer I've ever owned/used.

Pity you're not a Mac person because there are comparable versions to Hjsplit and Mac is amazing. I'm using a MacBook Pro and I love it. Beautiful screen quality as well.

Hjsplit --> MacHacha (actually I find MacHacha faster)
Rar --> UnRarX
Gom --> I find that VLC works fine for everything
Codec --> I don't remember if I downloaded a codec or not but all my .srt files work fine. There should be plenty of help on jdramas if you're thinking of switching to Mac

Hope this helps!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I have never been able to make caps on VLC and just generally am a huge GOM afficionado (I have 5 players installed but it's the only one I use).

HP was a present or else I'd be more pissed off at the waste of money.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

We have a 10yr old dell that still works fine and a new dell that also works fine, so I might get another dell :P

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Sony Vaio sounds especially up my alley because I like having different brands so they have different bugs :P

[birdofpray09.livejournal.com]

I have a Toshiba Satellite right now (from the A505 series), which I like a lot. The battery life is comparable to a Mac and the only problems I've had with it in two years is it slowing down just a bit due to my hard drive being overcrowded. Besides that, I tend to bang my laptop around quite a bit and I've had absolutely no problems with a loss of performance or with malfunctioning parts of any of that. So I highly recommend it!

[kycoo.livejournal.com]

lol I would be reading this on an HP.... haha. Noisiest laptop ever. But anyway, my family all have Dell or Acer. I feel like Dell's battery life dwindles after a while. I'd go for an Acer, but if you're comfortable with Dell, it's a good choice too.

[ladysaotome.livejournal.com]

Have you ever thought of checking Consumer Reports?

*runs & checks* My Dad has a paid account he lets me mooch off of. Let's see - depending on what size monitor you're looking for, they recommend; (**=a Consumer Reports Best Buy)

13":
Samsung 900X3A-A03 Score: 81
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch MC503LL/A Score: 76
Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch MC700LL/A Score: 72
Asus U36JC-B1 Score: 70
Apple MacBook MC516LL/A Score: 67
Sony VAIO VPCS134GX/B Score: 63
Asus U33JC-A1 Score: 62

14":
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420 Score: 65
HP Pavilion dv4t Score: 65
Dell Inspiron 14R-2nd Gen i5 Score: 64
HP Pavilion dm4-2050us Score: 64
HP Pavilion dm4-1265dx Score: 63
Samsung NP-Q430-JS03US Score; 63
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 0578N6U Score: 62
Dell Inspiron 14R-2nd Gen i3 Score: 61

15-16":
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch MC372LL/A Score: 78
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch MC721LL/A Score: 77
Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch ZOLZ Score: 74
Samsung NP-RF511-S02US Score: 74
Dell XPS 15 Score: 73
Dell XPS 15z Score: 72
Dell XPS 15z HD Display Score: 71
Toshiba Satellite A655-3DV11x Score: 69
Asus N53SV-B1 Score: 67
Dell Inspiron 15R-2nd Gen i5 Score: 67
HP Pavilion dv6-3250us Score: 65
**Gateway NV59C70u Score: 64
**Dell Inspiron 15R-2nd Gen i3 Score; 63
**Acer Aspire AS5742-6814 Score: 63
Asus U52JC-BBG6 Score: 62
**HP G6-1A69US Score; 62
HP Pavilion dv6-3257sb Score: 62

17-18:"
Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch MC725LL/A Score: 81
HP ENVY 17-2070nr Score: 80
Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch MC024LL/A Score: 79
HP dv7-4295us Score: 78
Dell XPS 17 3D Score: 74
Samsung NP-RF711-S01US Score: 72
Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q8104 Score: 71
Dell XPS 17 Score; 71
HP Pavilion dv7-6175us Score; 71
Dell Inspiron 17R-2nd Gen i5 Score; 67
Gateway NV79C54u Score; 61
Dell Inspiron 17R-2nd Gen i3 Score; 61

(Yes, I research everything to death. How'd you know? ^_^)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!! Though seeing HP mentioned in there...hmmm.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

Yeah, this thing's fan is insanely loud.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I am pretty much open to anything but HP and being tough on bangs is certainly a plus in my house :)

[allbloomedout.livejournal.com]

I've been through many PC laptops (Toshiba, Sony Vaio, Fujitsu) and then i finally switch to Mac 3 years ago. Been more than happy ever since. :D I found that they have GOM for mac now http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/38445/gom-player ! As for codec pretty much everything plays on VLC or MplayerX. Though i did download Perian which has sub support and codecs. As for hjsplit i use split&contac.

[quaggy]

Wow that's the complete opposite of my experience. Had loads of problem with my Dell laptop (though it did last four years thanks to the warranty). My HP laptop is two years old and still going strong. *knocking on wood because I'm superstitious like that* (It's a Pavilion if you were wondering.)

waving from Mac-land

[momosan.livejournal.com]

Well, having been in the computer business for ::cough:: years, I live in Mac-land by choice. When it went Unix, I followed.

Split & Concat works better than hjsplit. I've never liked GOM myself.

VLC can play 95% of what you can throw at it, although it HATES files with the \a6 superscript command. For those, Perian is installed to make Quicktime play nice with more files.

Apples are used for some serious heavyweight graphics and video editing. Even just free programs can make pretty much anything sing and dance. I think I must have 10 different video programs to do various things - one does nothing but incredibly fast formatting of videos for iPods, and another does nothing but hardsub files.

On that note, I have a MacBook Pro. I previously had an iBook. It lasted 9 years, and would still be running if the battery hadn't gone kaput and I determined that a new battery was ridiculously expensive.

The only bash I've had against recent Apples is some quality control in the iMacs. Also, if you HAVE to, you can run Windows on it - you install Parallels, install your OS and run. I run XP in a Parallels VM so that I can run some design software.

Go to an Apple store and testdrive one. They are fast, they are very very sturdy, and while you pay more $ up front, you end up paying less for the rest of the life of the computer.

[ladysaotome.livejournal.com]

I know. I wondered about that. lol

[corlee1289.livejournal.com]

I have different PCs at my house.

Both of the desktops are Acers (one being 10 years old and the other being 2 years old), they're both in working conditions and are fine :3

My dad has a 17" HP and I have a 13" HP and neither of us have had any problems with either of them... So maybe we're lucky?

Mom has an Acer laptop as well :3

My friend had a Dell laptop, but the adapter wire was always faulty and bad. So she had to change it five times...

[corlee1289.livejournal.com]

O______________o;;

THIS IS AMAZING!!

[moraitika1.livejournal.com]

I had a kid qualified at a national programming competition when his HP Pavillion died on me and him...using Microshit Visual Studio C# 2010. The funny thing is that before county competition another pupil of mine lost his desktop(only the RAM) to the same evil application but he lost the competition itself too

I have an MSI 15" who still works just fine ... the wireless died once and we change it with an intel
My sister has a 14"MSI and bad luck with it: the case of the screen cracks at 6 months as she keeps the laptop in her lap a lot and my cat loves her laptop (aka scratching her head on it or more fun to jump over her laptop)
My brother in law has a low-end DELL and it works well without problems, but he isn't computer addicted as the rest of the family so I bet he doesn't overuse his toy
My sis had a room mate with a HP PAV and 4 years ago she said HP are evil

My laptop now is a 13" Toshiba Satellite L635 +DVD(at that moment 13" with DVD were rare around here) - it is a year old ... I keep it in my bed while I watch dramas so I wonder if it is my fault that since 2 weeks ago started to reboot without notice- 3 times until now and a blue screen of death last night - it has a core i3 on it and 6GB ram ( I mention I have installed oracle+Microsoft SQL and other kinky things that I need only for work) beside that I have utorrent, firefox with a bazillion of tabs opened and over the top smplayer

I love smplayer coz it opens even corrupted files or files 80% downloaded ( I can have my sneak peak before or sometimes after 92% the torrent stops and I don't have the patience to wait for it _ I can't imagine my life without an app that opens unfinished files

coz of the smplayer I wouldn't change the operating system... it was pretty hard for me to change XP for Windows 7 even though it is supposed that I'm a professional about it. It took me a month to get over the change, so in this direction you should think about it - if u can adapt to a new OS

on the other side Apple is imagery and graphics oriented so it could be a better deal than Windows, but you should think if the investment deserves it or is better to change the computer once in a while (like 2-3 years) because technology is changing and what is ultimate thing now, after 2 years will be low end and obsolete: over the years video players and browsers demand more and more calculating power aka processor, video card and RAM - I bought more ram coz firefox can't handle well his temp and even I use in the same time other browsers like Opera or Google Chrome: firefox is a must

about speed I still use my 7 years old desktop Pentium IV and I can see the difference between my old PC and the laptops: I can upgrade it by myself anything I want on my PC ( I upgraded a HDD, RAM twice,twice the videocard, 2 LANs that still works or I can change the monitor on a whim - first it had a CRT, after that a 20" LCD that I plan to change with a 24" LED)-downside - I can't keep my desktop at 3AM in my bed

I wish I could be a bit more neat about things on my laptop : if this one dies I only have 80% of the infos on my external HDD... and even less the drama of the day

so when u buy a laptop u should consider what do u want to do with it, how much money brings to u and wanted lifespan for it : frankly I wouldn't pay for a MAC coz I give to this laptop no more than 4 years from now and I payed for it + Win7 almost 1000$

[smothered-pith.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally my HP is dying on me too. And I've only had mine since January. And my files aren't backed up because my external is back home and I'm in Antigua. And I'm in the middle of exams. It's all very lovely. I've wasted so much time trying to get my files stored online.
So I figured I'm going Mac. I've always been a PC person but I've got such a bad history with computers dying on my that I don't even want to deal anymore.
I did win a Toshiba Satellite that I know works really well. I couldn't tell you daily use though because I left that back home too.
:|

[fivil.livejournal.com]

Well, damn.

I'm typing this on a HP Pavilion that's been kicking it okay since 2006, at which point it was already an oldish model.

But it's been very slow for like 6 months now so I'm going to buy a new one soon. And I was going to go HP because this one's been SO good to me. And now that no laptop's have the Evil that is Vista, I can safely upgrade to Win7 which I hear is quite good.

Hmmm. Was your HP one of their budget laptops or a more expensive model?

[moraitika1.livejournal.com]

try to upgrade ur operating system to win7 or better format c: and reinstall ur Vista.(not before saving ur infos). It might be just an overloaded windows and that's why is so slow.(I know that is my problem) Try to install only the things u use ... my guess is that u have unnecessary apps on it. Increase the virtual memory for your C drive
this would take an hour maybe 2 of your time.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

The thing is, Macs are more expensive too plus I am so used to pcs. Toooorn

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I believe mine is a pavilion too. I am not that in love with Dell tbh - I might get Sony or toshiba next time.

Re: waving from Mac-land

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I just like GOM because I like the way it caps and files look crisper on it than on mpcplayer (which is my play-anything player)

Plus, I am such a creature of habit and will have to learn a lot of new stuff for Mac. Hmmmm. Otoh no viruses ever.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Yeah, we had a faulty Dell once too. You never know.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Oooooooh thanks for all the info!!!!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Can you buy an external somewhere??? That sucks :(

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Pavilion, 2010 version. If it's slow, check your CPU usage and see if any updates are screwing it up.

[smothered-pith.livejournal.com]

Everything here is overpriced here so it'd be a bad idea. I found a place online that I can upload my files onto so it's a little less sucky now.

[smothered-pith.livejournal.com]

Conidering my HP Pavilion scores in the lower end of this list, I wish I'd known this before buying one :\

[ladysaotome.livejournal.com]

You should see all the detail I can't include - you can click on each computer and read their analysis of it specifically. I <3 Consumer Reports.

[ladysaotome.livejournal.com]

Youch - I'm sorry!