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Hi guys

I'm considering a 50k notebook - will be primarily used for coding, photoshopping, ,light gaming and other stuff.

I had shortlisted a few models. It'd be great if you could recommend me one in the list or not in the list. Budget is a bit flexible - upto 65k if required, but I'd like to keep it as close to 50k as possible.

1. Samsung series 3

i7 2630QM, GeForce 520M - Rs. 46,500

2. Samsung series RC

i7 2630QM, GeForce 540M - Rs. 54,000

3. Dell XPS 15

i7 2670QM, GeForce 540M - Rs. 55,000-Rs. 65,000

4. HP dv6-6121tx

i7 2630QM, Radeon 6770M - Rs. 55,000 (probably lower)

5. Asus K53SV

i7 2630QM, GeForce 540M - Rs. 47,000

6. Lenovo Y570

i7 2630QM, Nvidia N12P-GT (It's just another name for some standard Nvidia GPU - 525M/540M/555M, dunno which :P)

Problem with XPS is that it's too expensive compared to others, problem with Asus and Samsung is that I don't know how good their after-sales support is for laptops, and problem with HP is that its service is not as good as Dell, and Radeon switchable graphics implementation is buggy.

I'm totally confused between these models. What I need is a combination of a reliable laptop and good after-sales support (configuration-wise all of these are fine, I guess). I'm also open to other models not on this list. Any recommendations?

Thanks

If you are going to use the laptop for lugging it around college everyday, forget about the models you have listed and go with your previous thought of going for a netbook + desktop combo.

Netbooks are best for portability and with the new generation AMD processors, they are >= 14 inch laptops. Gone are the days of poorly powered Intel Atom netbooks.

In fact if the usage is as highlighted in bold above, you can make do with just a 11 inch powerful netbook for about 30K tops and you will also get a portable DVD writer included in the price. You can leave the DVD writer at home and make do with USB ports when lugging it around and shift the data to DVD as and when you please once you are back home.

If you are not lugging it around and using it as a desktop replacement, then go with any brand offering the best bang for the buck. In the models listed, Dell, HP and Samsung seem to be good. See if you can haggle for more with the festive season offers etc.

Samsung laptops/netbooks are very good. Have been using 2 netbooks from Samsung. One is 2 years old and another is 1 yr 5 months and both are working fine without any hiccups so far. Battery has lasted well on them as well and still gives a back up of about 4.5 hrs of browsing and 3 hrs of movie viewing at 50% brightness.

Hope this helps and happy choosing. :thumbs up

Cannot say much about the Samsung offerings but I did buy a XPS15 laptop last month from Dell for 61K (5% discount). I did see the Y570 too but in my opinion, it did not look the price. Perhaps one more thing in XPS favour is 7200 rpm HDD compared with 5400 rpm HDD in the others. That obviously makes the difference as AIDA64 puts the read speed for the Seagate Momentus 750 GB in my laptop at around 128 MB/s in the beginning. Another thing in Dell XPS is the possibility of upgrading to 15.6 FHD 1920x1080 display for around Rs. 6.2K.

I bought my laptop on the day (6-7 Sep) that Dell upgraded the i7 cpu from 2630 to 2670/2760. On that day, I opted for 2760qm which was being offered at the same price as 2670qm. However that changed the next day, and from then on, the i7-2760qm is dearer by around Rs. 7.5K on the Dell site. However, my order was confirmed and I got the 2760qm at the price of 2670qm.

The GT525m 1GB GPU is ordinary but suffices.

So anyway, for 61K, I got this:
core i7-2760qm, 750 GB 7200rpm HDD, 6GB DDR3-1333, Nvidia GT525M 1 GB, 15.6 FHD display.

The windows 7 home premium preinstalled was deleted the day after purchase. I just deleted all partitions, made 4 partitions, installed windows 7 enterprise +office pro plus+other software on one of these, and rid the laptop of all the crap from Dell.

If you really need the Dell XPS, I suggest going with core i7-2670qm, but adding the FHD display, and perhaps 6-8GB of RAM, and maybe the 2GB Nvidia card.

I've thought about it and desktop+netbook, although a good combination, would complicate matters for me. Would have to go through trouble of syncing files between both, and make do with a netbook for some time, as I don't want to buy two items at once, for various reasons.

A decently powered notebook seems to be a much simpler option. I don't have to lug it around that often, I think.

Your review on Samsung was assuring. With the value it's offering, maybe I'll go for Samsung. :)

The thing with XPS is that if I go for it, I have to have the FHD screen, because it's beyond awesome, from what I've read in reviews online. And if I go for i7 2670QM + FHD + 540M (need a decent GPU for gaming), the price shoots up a bit. I'll try haggling for discounts though - I can easily get a 5% student discount. I'll see if I can get more.

Thanks for the advice.

BTW, another model added to the list is MSI GE620DX (with i7 2630QM and Nvidia GT 555M). If anyone has any experience with MSI laptops, I'd love to know. :)

I'd highly recommend a Lenovo Thinkpad because every Thinkpad I've had was able to stand up to my daily usage while other brands that I have tried did not. The Thinkpad T520 is what you ought to be looking for. It may not be pretty or colorful but it's built for reliability.

No matter what you buy, you should definitely put top priority in not going for the standard 5400 rpm HDD found on most laptops. Get at least a 7200 rpm HDD, if not a SSD. Even at the same spin speeds, laptop hard disks are anyway compromised compared with desktops.

I have seen most reviews of 5400 rpm laptop HDD going at 75-90 MB/s at the beginning (where your OS should be) and going down at the end. 7200 rpm laptops go at 100-120 MB/s. By comparison, any decent Seagate/WDC (non green) desktop 7200 rpm easily goes at 120-130 MB/s. Caviar Blacks go at >150 MB/s even though they are 7200 rpm. Plus, there is the lower access times of 7200 desktops versus 7200 laptops, and of course 7200 laptops versus 5400 laptops.

If your OEM does not offer 7200 rpm as an optional fitting, then either you stick to 5400 or go for WD Scorpio Black. That seems to be somewhat better than the Seagate Momentus on the Dell XPS15 (at least that is what I got).

Yeah, reliability of Thinkpads is awesome, but they also extend beyond my budget, or I'll have to settle for a mediocre configuration. I could really use a good graphics card here, and Thinkpad doesn't give me that option.


Oh, two out of the three options I've listed come with a 5400 rpm drive. I'll ask the dealers for an upgrade, but processor and graphics card, being non-upgradeable, are higher on my priority list. Sometime in the future, I could swap the drive with a 7200rpm drive and use the 5400 rpm drive as an external drive, using a case. But wouldn't swapping HDDs void warranty?

I have been using the Lenovo 3000 Y410 775787Q since August 2008 without a single problem. Couple of days, the machine went dead while I was browsing. Completely dead, no lights, no fan, no charging indication, nothing! Since the machine was out of warranty, I checked with a technician friend who said that the power circuit on the motherboard is gone. The only way out it is to find a similar board and cannibalize the parts. He tried for a few days but gave up. The other option is to replace the whole board for about 9-10K.

1. Is it worth repairing this machine for a price of 10K?
2. If I don't repair and sell the parts like screen, HDD, DVD drive, RAM, battery etc, how much can i expect?
3. Does anyone know of a laptop which has an additional bay for HDD? I have a lot of data on my current disk and would like to use it with the new laptop. I can copy the data using an external enclosure, but still exploring the option of a second drive.
4. What's the most economical laptop one can buy for an i3, 4GB, 500GB config?

1. No it is not worth repairing the machine at 10k
2. The best bet is to approach those who repair Lenovo and sell it to them
3. You do not need a laptop. Find out if your HDD is ATA or SATA. Then buy a USB enclosure of appropriate interface. It should be between 200-600. Connect the HDD to any other computer's USB port and your disk is accessible.
4. Get a Dell or Thinkpad. For price and configuration go to their site and select what suits you. You can get upto 10% off if you negotiate well.

Swapping HDDs will only be a warranty problem when not done at the authorized dealer or the workshop. If you can settle for a lower capacity, get an SSD and you won't have to worry about rpms :D

I have a 2008 made Dell Studio 15. Its battery stopped holding full charge long time ago. Since, it was always used at home, I never bothered to change the battery and used it like a desktop. Battery at most gives a back of 5-8 minutes. Is there any harm in using the laptop like this?

Last when I had inquired about it, I guess a year ago, I was quoted 4k if I remember correctly. Is there a cheaper alternative?

Usually there's no risk in using Laptop on AC power only.
however for battery, don't risk yourself by falling for cheaper batteries, they are not SAFE, may not perform or even explode for some reasons like power surge etc etc.
Best option would be to buy a new batt. from company store, or you van even try Letsbuy.com they have long list of original laptop batteries.

I don't work for letsbuy but I am amazed with the Discounts we get, I've done a lot of mouth publicity for them, of course for free and many of my friends have bought laptops from them at much cheaper price, recently one of very old comp. vendor called me and asked why I am not recommending anyone to his shop recently, I said you cannot match those pricing and as i never took a penny from you I don't want my friends to see that 1k-2k difference as commission to me, which i never took from you.
He slammed the phone.

Back in this thread - I mentioned that I bought a gateway laptop around 6 months back. Gateway is an Acer brand - it belongs to Acer & they share the same service network.

Let me tell you my experience with Gateway. The product isn't as sturdy as a Dell or Lenovo or HP. The after sales service isn't as good as Dell (I haven't had any experience with Lenovo or HP A S S). I wouldn't buy a Gateway or Acer again.

It depends. If the Laptop HDD comes with pre installed OS in a separate service partition, as in IBM Thinkpad, then yes it will create problems if done out side. If you have the OS media, then it is not much of a problem.

Any way I am a proponent of keeping my data separate from the OS. That way my data is portable across systems. With external HDD prices extremely reasonable, I see no reason for having a large HDD as the primary disk. Keep the HDD as small as you can, and use second HDD if there is a provision, else get an external USB HDD. If the laptop supports USB3 standard, then get a USB3 HDD as it is faster than most internal SATA implementations (data transfer to external USB3 is faster than internally on my SATA HDDs in the Desktop)

I'd also suggest using a full-sized external disk drive (some even have their own network controller so they can be accessed from multiple computers on your network) instead of a passport external disk drive if you have a desktop PC because those drives are faster. However, if you have a laptop, the convenience of a passport drive is worth the reduced performance.