best place to buy laptop?

[Digimer]

On 10-02-25 10:42 PM, Thomas Milne wrote:
> Someone asked me about what laptop to buy, and I don't know laptops,
> so I checked here :-)
>
> Going through the 'laptop recommendation' threads, I saw that Lennart
> was very keen on Lenovo and also Asus, esp with the Core 2 Duo, so
> that's what I recommended. However, one thing I'm not sure of at all
> is what is the best way to buy one.
>
> Are the best deals online? To my thinking, it's more likely you are
> going to get _exactly_ what you want if you order online, as opposed
> to buying whatever Store X has in stock, but does anyone have any
> experiences with this?
>

I've gotten to the point where I buy directly from the OEM. It takes a 
bit longer, but you get exactly what you want with no middle-men. Also, 
get the extended warranty, no matter who you go with. Modern laptops, 
all of them, suck from a quality point of view. I've seen *way* too many 
new laptops die just outside of their warranty these days.

As for which specific models; ASUS and Lenovo are decent. I've owned 
both, and I've had to RMA both, but in both cases it was fixed. I have 
to say, ASUS was by far the easiest and fastest to deal with, and I'd 
have no hesitation recommending them. Bonus points for ASUS; Their depot 
is in Markham and they let you drop off/pick up your RMA. Their turn 
around for me was 24 hours.

Lenovo was more of a hassle to deal with, but their T400s is probably 
the best business laptop on the market. Very powerful processor, 
excellent screen and up to 8GB RAM. They've also got pretty good deals 
going on fairly often (25~35% off) and you can customize your machine 
quite a bit.

Keep an eye on Red Flag Deals for the really good promo codes.

Madi
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