Notebook longevity ?

[rg32]

I know there is no definitive answer to my question but I’m on year five of owning my “low end” HP ze4210 laptop bought new for $349.. It is a daily user and other than worn port contacts and letters missing on some of the keys it has performed flawlessly for me with everything still factory original. Headed back to college next fall I would hate to have the screen or HD, ETC. fail on me in the middle of a semester.
It doesn’t owe me a cent and while I have time to scare up a good deal, what is your best guess!

Thanks and have a great New Year.
Ron

[Stytooner]

My vote is an IBM think pad. It's a tank.

[Kristofor]

I would guess that about 75% of the laptops used at my work need service during their 3 year lifespan. HDD failures are by far the most common, but it's hit or miss on when that happens, sometimes fairly new, sometimes toward the end. The other failures are "everything else" and I think the vast majority of those are user induced (dropped, spilled in, yanked in and out of docks, etc.) so I suspect those would be less common with a laptop you actually own


How's that for a non-definitive answer!


Kristofor.

[maxparot]

I'd say that you got your moneys worth out of it. Sell it off and get a new HP. HP is rated well for customer service if something should go wrong.

My wife is issued IBM T series laptops from work. They are not the tanks they were in the past. I don't think they are worth the price.

I myself have a 3 year old Dell Inspiron that I am satisfied with. Dells seem to be worth the price when on sale. The customer service that they built their business on isn't what it was in the past. Consumer tech support is provided from india while corporate is still US based.

I had a Toshiba issued on the job that worked without failure for the 2 years I had it. It was a lot of laptop for a budget model.

[jerrye]

Similar conversation as below:
http://www.bt3central.com/showthread.php?t=25975
I have the Acer and am more than pleased with it. Mine is a lower-end model but still has LOTS of features for the money.

My .02

[parnelli]

[quote=Kristofor;232681... I suspect those would be less common with a laptop you actually own [/quote]


Shhhhh! Don't tell my boss that!

Back to your question though, unless you really just want to get a new one, you don't necessarily HAVE to just because it's 5yrs old.

Like Kristofor said, HD's are typically the most often thing, so if you have a backup, it's not difficult to replace/restore if it died.

If you do need a new one, IBM/Lenovo's are great but $$$. I've got one for work but would never buy for myself. I've always just kept an eye on sales and/or coupons since laptop prices fluctuate soooo much.

[LCHIEN]

the attached graph is from consumer reports and represents 50,000+ responses and is adjusted for age of the laptops.
Looks to me like there's not a huge difference between makes.

Now my IT guy at work swears by the Lenovo Think pad T-series but my son's has had 2 MoBo replacements in his and is looking at another with some flakey operation it its third year, and has lost some keytops, but I think he has hard use, carrying his to campus everyday on the bus in a backpack.

Batteries, says the IT guy, on laptops at the office in daily use, last 1.5 years.

My 5-yr old dell I use a few times a week and have dragged on countless business trips abroad runs OK, but the plastic parts are heck - cracked and sometimes the touchpad goes off on its own.

Basically, electronics are not "wear-out" items, except for mechanical /moving parts. If the CPU, memory/LCD are fine then there's no reason to think they may go out.
Disks are another matter - sometimes they fail but in general the heads are supposed to fly above the disk on air bearings and so really have theoretical lifespans in many years if you use it a few hours per day. Keyboards are designed for heavy use, more than most of us will do.
I think if your laptop is mechanically OK and runs well then you are good to go for years more use, if its been trouble free, most likely it will continue to be that way if you use the same care.

The only thing that would give me pause, is, a 5-year old low-end laptop will be miles off even present econo-laptops in terms of speed, memory, disk space, screen resolution and even power usage. You may be having trouble running old browsers and handling new websites. New browsers may make too many demands on your computer so its hard to imagine that 2-5 years from now you can comfortably use the same machine. OTOH, if you simply use simple spreadhseets and wordprocessors and other undated tasks, then your machine may well do you fine.

[rg32]

the attached graph is from consumer reports and represents 50,000+

The only thing that would give me pause, is, a 5-year old low-end laptop will be miles off even present econo-laptops in terms of speed, memory, disk space, screen resolution and even power usage. You may be having trouble running old browsers and handling new websites. New browsers may make too many demands on your computer so its hard to imagine that 2-5 years from now you can comfortably use the same machine. OTOH, if you simply use simple spreadhseets and wordprocessors and other undated tasks, then your machine may well do you fine.

What is the minimum Horse Power and disk space I should have or be in the market for?
My Hp Laptop is certainly no powerhouse or has great screen resolution with only 256 Megs of memory, a 1.6 GHz celeron R processor with an 18 gig HDD.
One of the big draw backs with my Hp is it has 1.1 USB
Thanks

[radhak]

--- minor gloat here :
Way back in Jan 1999, while waiting for the lift going home, i noticed a colleague ( he was part of the networking/administration group) rolling a cart with a bunch of broken and generally run down computer parts and peripherals. tells me all that was headed for 'the basement warehouse', which meant throw-it-in-and-forget-about-it. i noticed a notebook in all that. dug it out, and he says 'yeah, that too - we are unable to revive it'. i asked if i try tweaking with it. he just says, take it, and forget you got it here - i don't want to keep track of it.

well, long story short - it was a thinkpad 390 (Pentium II). i had to put new memory and battery in, and it worked. still got it, and it still works fine. I chose to change the hdd some time ago for more space (the old one still works). I have it running on windows 2K with corresponding MS Office and other stuff. Talk about bang for the buck
--- gloat over

But if you want to buy a new one now, there are two serious choices - you could go Mac, or stay with Wintel. (Linux would be a whole different species, and a different discussion ).

Now that Apple is also on Intel chips, its a serious option you should not shy away from (I have both at home, and am not biased against either camp ). And there's a large 'cool' factor to their notebooks...

But if you want windows, I'd advise you to hold on for a few more months. MS has announced Jan 31 as the date of launch for Vista, so we can assume that it would surely be out by March, hopefully . While all purchases now carry a 'free upgrade to Vista', you would be much better off with a machine that comes pre-installed with the OS.

Mark your calendar for a notebook purchase sometime in April/May, sufficiently in time for your college in fall, and time enough to save for the one with the biggest oomph...

[cgallery]

the attached graph is from consumer reports and represents 50,000+ responses and is adjusted for age of the laptops.

Interesting graph, but I think it actually represents the carelessness of the average laptop user. That is, Sony laptop users are more careful with their notebooks than HP laptop users. Business users that didn't personally purchase the machine they use are notoriously rough with them. Seeing as Sony machines are much more heavily sold via consumer channels than any of the others listed, I'm somewhat suspicious.

Did CR break-out respondents by whether they personally paid for the machine?

[leehljp]

CG,

I am somewhat suspicious of that too. ALL the charts and comparisons that I have seen in the past two or three years (and recently too) nowhere put Gateway near the rest of those listed as "18". Dell Business laptops work well here but those who buy the consumer versions have far more problems. And here in Japan, the Sony users that I know here have more problems than Toshiba by a long shot. IBM / Lenovo are rock solid. I just gave my 2 year old Thinkpad to my oldest daughter and she is a happy camper.

Concerning Apple being in the same company as the "18" list, something is skewed in that department too.

By the way, the Intel Mac laptops can run more software than any other laptop, bar none.

[LCHIEN]

Interesting graph, but I think it actually represents the carelessness of the average laptop user. That is, Sony laptop users are more careful with their notebooks than HP laptop users. Business users that didn't personally purchase the machine they use are notoriously rough with them. Seeing as Sony machines are much more heavily sold via consumer channels than any of the others listed, I'm somewhat suspicious.

Did CR break-out respondents by whether they personally paid for the machine?

That may be and I doubt they broke it out as to whether they were individually or company owend machines but I think you are missing the
real point here; its not that Sony "won" but that the overall failure rate ranged from 15 to 18% and that there was not really a significant difference whose machine you bought.
Consumer Reports stated: Based upon laptops bought from 2002-2006. 50,100 responses to the survey. Differences of 3% are not meaningful. Data adjusted for age and usage. Models within a brand may differ, however, choosing a brand based upon good repair history can improve your odds.
Incidentally here is their data for Desktops (less than 4% difference is not significant):

[JSUPreston]

Okay, gotta give my opinion on the only laptop I have owned since around '98.

We were given a Macintosh "Pismo" 3 years ago by our former church. It was a donation to the church, and it wasn't up to the task the church wanted, so they gave it to me. When I got it, it had 192MB RAM, 10GB hard drive, no cd/dvd drive and no operating system. Had 400MHz G3 processor.

My wife is in graphic design at school and needed a Mac, so I set about buying stuff from eBay, etc. Bought a new DVD drive, got the OS discs off eBay at a steal, and upgraded the hard drive and maxed out the RAM. Wife used the machine until two weeks ago without a hardware problem. We burned out the video controller on the motherboard.

Bought wife a slightly used eMac, since she needed a faster machine anyway. While waiting on the eMac, I decided to spend the $50 on eBay to get a replacement motherboard. It worked, and the guy I got the motherboard from has offered a competitive price to buy this machine used.

I don't know about the newer Apple laptops, but if they are as well built as this one is, they are darn good. Wife nearly cried when she saw her baby in a gazillion parts in the study. She nearly cried again when she saw it running again. She wasn't sure I could fix it. Told her I've been doing this kind of stuff for years, and as long as I could find the instructions for the laptop, I could do. Ya gotta admit, replacing a laptop motherboard is a lot harder than a standard ATX board.

[cwsmith]

I think the dependability of any computer is entirely relative to the independance that you place upon it. I'm sure there is some "law" that applies to this, but can't put my finger on it. But from my 20 plus years of experience, the moment you start feeling overly confident is the when the something will fail.

Seriously though, most electronic failures will occur within the first few weeks of operation. I've known certain people that should never touch anything electrical or mechanical... as anything they touch seems to fail within a rather short time. Similarly, there are people who constantly have to upgrade, just because!

HP, IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads, and Toshiba are probably the most durable lap tops that I've seen. But I agree that small percentage difference is almost negligible and might fluctuate a bit as the sampling increases or decreases. I have an old Toshiba Techra laptop that still is quite reliable despite it's 10 years. Don't use it for much more than portable wordprocessing and database applications, but it hasn't failed me yet.

CWS