[Leoshashi]

Originally Posted by GTO

Am hearing lots of good things about HP .

Yes I'm also very happy with them.

-Apple's product quality is flawless. No Dell or HP comes closer. In terms of lesser downtime, Apple will serve you best IMO.

-Aftersales wise, HP is best IMO. Apple has very less failures so I've never seen anyone experiencing aftersales during warranty period.

-If anything happens to an Apple post warranty period, repair is most expensive.

Regards,
Shashi

[extreme_torque]

Originally Posted by GTO

Am hearing lots of good things about HP . My sister is senior management @ Deloitte and had a lot of trouble with her Dells, even though she gets a new laptop from the company every 2 - 3 years. She is on her 2nd HP (HP Elitebook X360 1030 G4) and loves it.

The recent HP's are pretty good machines. If you are going to buy a Windows laptop, make sure you get one with AMD Ryzen 7 CPU. AMD these days is kicking Intel's veritable ar$e all around.

For e.g. https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Ry....456068.0.html

[Pontiac]

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

More pixels dont always mean a better display.

It does not. But it makes life a lot easier.

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

I am not sure if get you. The laptop display has got nothing to do with the connected display.

Pixels play a bit more important part than just making a text bigger or smaller. Let me give an example. In my scenario, I run a VNC that is resized to 3440x1440 on a 32” monitor as majority of the time I spend on the large monitor. At home also I have a similar setup that supports similar resolution – although on a 13” monitor. So, I can get the full coverage of 3440x1440 (same span) but with smaller texts as it fits on to a 13” monitor. This works fine as the only difference is that the text is small, but I can view the same content without it getting cropped.

But when I don’t have any of these monitors with me, while I am travelling or attending some meetings elsewhere, I end up using the MacBook pro’s monitor which has a smaller resolution than any of these monitors. Meaning, the content is cropped. Imagine same content as 3440x1440 but with larger texts. It just can’t fit in. You cannot display the entire content of a 3440x1440 with the bigger text. The resolution has to be finer to display the entire content. I end up having a scroll bar which is a pain.

I was on a DELL before and this was much simpler as the DELL had a 4K display. But it would often break down. This was the main reason I moved to Mac. Figured not using MacBook pro’s monitor and using external monitors is the way to go rather than dealing with the pain of dealing with a DELL.

[headbanger]

Originally Posted by GTO

Am hearing lots of good things about HP . My sister is senior management @ Deloitte and had a lot of trouble with her Dells, even though she gets a new laptop from the company every 2 - 3 years. She is on her 2nd HP (HP Elitebook X360 1030 G4) and loves it.

HP laptops are good. My official laptop is an Elitebook while I also happen to have 2 personal ones from HP as well. But their service is a kind of hit or a miss. Just for example, I had to wait 3 weeks for just a plastic bezel getting changed on a warranty claim and the new laptop had multiple scratches all around when the service center returned it. It's like the new age Tata- great products but the service may be appalling or great depending on your location.

If you compare with Dell, it's definitely better but if you compare with the likes of Apple, their service beats HP hands down. Yes, we may argue that the last Gen Macs had some niggles. But if serious service is one of the criterion, I will favor Apple. I call Apple and book an appointment with dedicated slot for my Mac.

To date, my Mac Pro is a beast on steroids even if I compare it all 3 HPs including the newer Elitebook that I have currently. My vote goes to Apple and I am not even getting the snob value factored in here.

My thoughts with electronic gadgets is simple. Invest upfront. The extra investment never hurts if it saves you going to service center along with extra provision of power.
If you have managed to get me to the service center, give me a time line and don't damage my machine. It's like getting your primary car serviced. I am open to charges for superior and transparent service experience.

Any situation apart from the above listed ones is going to challenge my peace.

If it's a beater, get a HP. If you are going to drive/use her, get a Mac. Good luck!!!

[Turbohead]

Did someone say HP Elitebook is reliable?

I got a brand new one from the company during the pandemic. 2 months later and the laptop refused to start. Went straight to my company IT team and they diagnosed it as a motherboard failure.

Turns out it was a common issue with all the Elitebooks the company had purchased. They unanimously agreed that Lenovo ThinkPad is the way to go.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by Turbohead

I got a brand new one from the company during the pandemic. 2 months later and the laptop refused to start. Went straight to my company IT team and they diagnosed it as a motherboard failure.

Quite sad to hear. Which particular model was it from the EliteBook family?

[Turbohead]

Originally Posted by GTO

Quite sad to hear. Which particular model was it from the EliteBook family?

It was the HP Elitebook 745 G6. It had an AMD Ryzen 5 processor.

The build quality and finish was really good though. In fact there was no sign that it was going to drop dead. Everything was smooth and seamless.

[shishir333]

I have a macbook pro 16 top of the line as my work laptop. Costs a bomb @ 2.39 lakhs

After about 6 months of purchase, one fine day the laptop refused to boot. Went to the service center; the guy says its because of the voltage fluctuations that the motherboard is gone kaput. Left it to be repaired, the motherboard arrived in 20 days and then they figured that the touch ID has to be replaced as well (as it is unique to every motherboard)
Got the laptop back after almost 40 days with a dent on the machine.

Now few points to note

• Voltage issue, seriously! There is an adapter between the AC and the machine, I have stabilizer for the house and all other appliances work perfectly fine
• You (service center) didnt order the touch ID along with motherboard when you knew that both had to be replaced together
• 40 days for repair
• All data lost as the SSD is soldered on the machine

For all those swearing by the macbook reliability, I agree. I owned 5 macbook pros in the last 8 years. But once something goes wrong with your machine, be ready to pay exorbitant amount for your repairs. I remember the screen on my macbook pro 13 retina stopped working and I was asked around 50K for replacement of screen and the shell

[RavSam]

Originally Posted by shishir333

I have a....remember the screen on my macbook pro 13 retina stopped working and I was asked around 50K for replacement of screen and the shell

Tell me about it! I got a 13 inch MacBook Pro from my new office and one fine day I closed the lid with 'God knows how' the headphone pin resting slantly on the keyboard edge touched the rubber portion of the screen bezel.

One dot of impact point on the rubberized edge and the entire screen went blank and my heart sank! It took me a lot of courage to report it to my manager who thankfully told me not to worry and just be. Then I received the cost estimate as 45k from the IT department and they told me to be a little careful next time

I use all my devices with utmost care and with this one dent incident left a dent in my mind about owning one of these.

Also one other issue is the cooling. If you are editing something heavy without plugging the laptop i, it will shut down near 30-35% of battery if you are not in an air conditioned room. Will work fine if plugged in again or in AC room.

So a Macbook is DEFINITELY great if a company owns it so you can have less of sleepless nights. Works flawlessly when it does and nothing when it doesn't. No "lag"

[Amien]

Originally Posted by GTO

Guys, please share the make + model names of Windows laptops you recommend. Am sure there are many others in the same dilemma who are looking for a high quality, reliable laptop. Your answers will help all of us . Thank you!

Why? Do people really base their buying decision solely on reliability? If that's the case, feel free to pick from one of the first options here:-
https://nextpc.co/2020/08/29/workstation/

Recommendations are only valid in a snapshot of time and must made according to the end use-case while allowing room for a bit of subjectivity. After all, the PC is being purchased to accomplish something, not to just sit there and last forever. There is a base-level of performance that we've come to expect at the high-end of the market. However, every budget will not be able to accommodate great build quality without compromising on function or expansion. The market for long-lasting, slow laptops is 0.

Reliability, while important cannot be the prioritized over all else because of, among other things, its fickle nature. To have any objectivity in the matter, you would only be able to recommend last year's machines that have generated enough data points.

There are of-course, a few things that can be assessed from a technical perspective. A good electrical layout, quality of board components such as chokes/capacitors etc. Soldered parts are generally better than those that are glued together for example. Even then, things can change, sometimes within the same generation of products.

Each chassis needs to be evaluated individually, making the older, time tested ones valuable. This doesn't make them the best, just makes them a known quantity. Even a good chassis can be messed up by improper part selection. Manufacturers love stuffing high power parts into things that have no business being there. Margins for those products (especially high-end Intel CPUs) are huge and people with fewer budget constraints just pick the top spec.:-

A good example of this is the OLED Zenbook Pro Duo, a laptop that makes the Macbook Pro look pedestrian by comparison. By all accounts a fine computer in its i7 configuration (some issues with its dual-screen software notwithstanding|EVERY machine has its issues). Add an i9 though and you've essentially paid good money to heat up your chassis, after which the CPU throttles down to performance worse than the base version. Picking a spec that corresponds to your needs is always a good idea.

Heat kills. As modern hardware fabrication gets finer and more power-efficient, it is more and more susceptible to degradation due to heat/radiation, along with many other environmental factors. This is the primary reason for electronics not lasting as long as before, more so than poor build or anything along those lines. Consumer demand keeps insisting on engineers finding new ways around the laws of thermodynamics. You need heft to be able to absorb and disperse heat. Add user error, individual behavior to the mix and you have a cocktail of never ending anecdotes.

In summary, if you somehow acquired a mythical, immortal laptop, you would get rid of it as soon as you could get your hands on something faster/sleeker.
Now for the sake of anyone reading this, I should probably recommend some products that you might actually buy:-

Lenovo ThinkPad T490/P53 = Mobile workstation

Acer Swift 5 SF514-54T = Ultralight

Acer ConceptD Series = For Studio/colour sensitive work/content creation

MSI Creator A10SE-467IN = Gaming, content creation

Asus Zephyrus/Zenbook series = General purpose performance/portability

HP Envy/Spectre x360 series = Digital art/touch/pen input (Although you should probably get a regular laptop plus an iPad/Wacom tablet instead)

By all means, get the Macbook Pro once you're convinced that it is worth twice as much as most of these. You're welcome

[1:1]

I am finding it strange that Dell can actually produce a Lemon like that.

Would still suggest to have a look at Dell XPS 13 or 15 which is one of the best laptops out there and it has everything you need. I have been a Windows user fore more than 20 years and used an iMac for a year in for official work.

My previous laptop was a HP with Intel Core2 Duo which lasted me for 10 years (upgrading to a ssd added 4 years to its life), I actually exchanged the old laptop it for a new laptop as it was working perfectly. I currently own a Dell Inspiron 7000 series which is working flawlessly for the past 3 years. I was able to swap out old hard drive for a much faster M.2 SSD and upgrade RAM as well.

I have used iMac in my first job and let me tell you even apple isn’t fault free. You need to also factor in the cost of repair and service once warranty is over. Plus there is no way you can upgrade your ram or hard drive (both of them are soldered to the motherboard) once its full only option is to use an external drive.

[tejus.s]

I am lucky enough to have high end machines on both platforms - a MacBook Pro 16 inch with core i9 given at work and a Surface Pro 5 I use personally.

In terms of durability and service, I would recommend the X series of Thinkpad laptops since money is not a concern. The T470, which was my previous office laptop held up brilliantly for 3 years. Strict no to Microsoft products in India.

As per the MacBook, well, yes, there are upsides in terms of design etc., but you need to factor in the dongle life especially since you’re a professional who’s on the move most of the times. Also, all new MacBooks are not upgradable at all. Need more RAM, storage or replace battery? Sorry, you’re out of luck. Apple authorised service centres are insanely expensive and third party ones may not be that reliable.

For sheer versatility and ease of finding software, I would recommend Windows. Also, Microsoft 365 on Mac is not as good as Windows. Hope that helps!

[vjbox]

I am someone who uses both Mac and Windows on a daily basis (a high end gaming spec PC at work since I am into game development) and a Macbook Air/Pro at home where I attend to general business and reviews. While the spec difference are night and day between the two machines, what amazes me every-time is how efficient and responsive Macs run. No matter after how many days you open the lid back, the system resumes in a jiffy and is ready to go. I also use a HP Omen laptop (32 gig memory, 512 nvme SSD) but the Macbook with a much lesser spec easily outruns the Omen when it comes to efficiency and responsiveness. Got to give it to the MacOS! If regular software programming is your business, you can very well get the Macbook Pro. If its generic use, a Macbook air would suffice well.

[amit1agrawal]

HP EliteBook (840G) are one of the worst laptops around. It's provided by the company to me & for the first one year I thought they wanted to save money so provided a mid-range laptop. Recently came to know they cost $2k apiece! Heat sink was recently replaced, screen is very sensitive to angle changes, have issues with home Wi-Fi connection, heats up like a pan & many other issues. This is my 8th laptop. IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad's, Dell & MacBook pro are/were my other laptops. I am also have ThinkPad 470 currently and it performs fantastic. Reliability, performance, efficiency, screen quality etc. is much better than HP & costs $800 cheaper than HP.
My colleagues also face similar issues with HP laptops. One had a sudden crash so IT dept. got it reformatted. He lost all his data.

Originally Posted by Turbohead

Did someone say HP Elitebook is reliable?

I got a brand new one from the company during the pandemic. 2 months later and the laptop refused to start. Went straight to my company IT team and they diagnosed it as a motherboard failure.

Turns out it was a common issue with all the Elitebooks the company had purchased. They unanimously agreed that Lenovo ThinkPad is the way to go.

[Amien]

Originally Posted by amit1agrawal

HP EliteBook (840G) are one of the worst laptops around. It's provided by the company to me & for the first one year I thought they wanted to save money so provided a mid-range laptop. Recently came to know they cost $2k apiece! Heat sink was recently replaced, screen is very sensitive to angle changes, have issues with home Wi-Fi connection, heats up like a pan & many other issues. This is my 8th laptop. IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad's, Dell & MacBook pro are/were my other laptops. I am also have ThinkPad 470 currently and it performs fantastic. Reliability, performance, efficiency, screen quality etc. is much better than HP & costs $800 cheaper than HP.
My colleagues also face similar issues with HP laptops. One had a sudden crash so IT dept. got it reformatted. He lost all his data.

If you want reliability from HP, the Zbooks are the way to go. Most of the other series have been hit-or-miss lately, just like most stuff from Dell.