Reliability Issues, Which Laptop?

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EdF
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Location: Inverness-shire

Reliability Issues, Which Laptop?

Postby EdF » Sun Jul 22, 2007 21:18

I'd like to buy a laptop after having 4 desktops but I am bemused by the problem of which make to buy. Several come with friends recommendations, such as Toshiba and HP but looking through customers reviews on different online sites, all seem to have reliability and maintenance issues. I was plumping for an Evesham, made in UK with a 3 year warranty, until I found two reviews slating them.. Or is it that the silent majority have no problems and are - silent? How does Fujitsu rate? Is it pot luck, are they all plagued by occasional problems? Looking for a medium to top-end model about £1,000. Thanks in advance for any advice.

TheConfidant
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Postby TheConfidant » Mon Jul 23, 2007 9:52

what you are looking for? bussiness use or privat use?
For business the Lifebook or Celsius mobile are very reliable but often they are not ready for gaming.
For privat use with gaming (3D shooter and so on) you better buy a amilo xi or xa series. The power is pretty good but be carefull, they have big differences in warranty.

theconfidant

EdF
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Location: Inverness-shire

Postby EdF » Mon Jul 23, 2007 13:13

Thanks for your reply. My main concern is 'how reliable' will whatever I buy be? I don't do any 'shoot-em' type gaming, although I would like to be able to run MS Flight Simulator - the latest version for Vista - which my desktop struggles with. Other than that, I use Photoshop for manipulating photos in a straightforward way and I need to use a laptop as a display for my wifes artwork - she paints watercolours of animals to commission, which don't scan and print very well but look good on a screen, so a 17" screen would be good. I'd like a good separate graphics chip, not integrated. The question of which make and ease of any subsequent maintenance is my most important concern.

TheConfidant
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Postby TheConfidant » Mon Jul 23, 2007 14:38

then you should buy a amilo xi series (17inch) notebook. i heared the new one will be released within the next month, so i would wait because they have the new chipset and new graphics adapter build in. the reliability of the xi series seems quite good, but try to search via google for other attitudes.

rgds
theconfidant

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lesinlondon
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Postby lesinlondon » Mon Jul 23, 2007 16:47

Go here and have a read around - look in the various manufacturers forums for comments.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/index.p ... 68765dd6e2

I have had no problems with my Amilo, which I bought recently.

ChrisChris
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Location: France

Postby ChrisChris » Mon Jul 23, 2007 18:52

Hello EdF,
Your approach is correct : go to forums and make your own opinion.
You'll obviously find people happy with their Fujitsu-Siemens computer and some unhappy.
I'm of these last category.
Getting nervous by -for the moment- small issues that FSC don't even acknowledge. Disappointed by their really poor responsiveness (I really DO NOT ACCEPT that a company just don't reply to emails).
When you browse the forums, you'll see that some problems looks like true design issues as they appear on more than one model (overheating is certainly n° 1, but also bad management of I/O, IRQ, memory, hence lagging issues or bad communication between components, inverters issue, power connector issues, ...).
Just two examples of poor design :
- my Pa1538 cannot work "by design" at full speed (the µp is limited to half speed) on battery
- I experienced a MAJOR issue when going to "suspend" mode : the notebook did not trully go suspend and some components were still working. By chance, the computer did not burn as I went back a few minutes after putting it on sleep but it is sure that it would have been damage otherwhise. It was more than hot ! And power cycling has been necessary to wake it up (the usual wake-up button did not work). I've never been able to reproduce this but for sure it happened once and I'll never use again the suspend to ram feature !
- on some other notebook with design issues, FSC proposed the following workaround : "decrease the graphic hardware acceleration and it will work fine". Is that serious ?

FSC know how to reach me so I'm still waiting for them to become customer oriented :twisted:

I don't know about other manufacturers (except IBM, but this is not the same class) so the lesson I learned from this buy : never, never again a notebook. If you don't really need a notebook, buy a desktop (or better : DIY). If you really need a notebook, spend your money nor for features but for reliability. They just cannot produce the same quality as the others with all these features they put in some products (DVI, express pci, card readers, 2GB ram, 4 USB, spidf, ...). Not possible !
Chris

PS : again, FSC know me, they have my problems in their files (well, I hope). I'm waiting ...

EdF
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Location: Inverness-shire

Postby EdF » Mon Jul 23, 2007 19:04

Thanks to all. No, Chris, I don't really need a notebook, just thought it'd be useful. I'm on my fourth desktop, which took two years and a pet retired computer engineer to get right. It had a very short warranty and had a faulty HDD from new. That's what you get for buying bankrupt stock (from Multivision via Carrera). Thanks for the link Les, but as it was an American site, it didn't have the UK models I was interested in, Fujitsu Xi and Evesham.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of complaints seem to be about breakdowns and trying to get them fixed by makers and suppliers who are not interested. That costs them money, they're only really interested in MAKING it, i.e SALES!
Chris, I think you're right, it isn't (yet) possible to get all that top-end sophisticated hardware into that little box without problems.
It may well be better to load everything my wife wants to show to customers onto a DVD or CD and take that, almost everyone has a PC these days, or just buy a cheapie notebook that's adequate.


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