<p>Disclaimer: I haven’t had a chance to read all the posts in this thread. Pardon me if I repeat someone else’s ideas here.</p>
<p>I won’t specify brands here because in my limited experience, laptops have become a commodity. Laptops of similar price seem to have similar features and quality. I, or the people I help, use HP, Sony, Dell, Toshiba, … I can’t generally tell which one is necessarily better.</p>
<p>This is what I recommend: Buy a laptop with a magnetic hardisk, and an SSD (e.g. Samsung 840 pro, about $1/GB). Replace the stock magnetic harddisk inside the laptop with the SSD, and use the magnetic harddisk as an external backup disk.</p>
<p>This is the way I do backup: assuming you have only 1 external backup disk (2 is better of course), clone the internal harddisk to the external disk, then each night, back up data (e.g. c:\users) from the internal harddisk to the external disk. Each month (or each week, clone the internal harddisk to the external disk.</p>
<p>This way, if the internal harddisk fails, you won’t have to load OS, all the programs, and updates (that can easily take a day or two). Swapping the disks should not take more than 15 minutes.</p>
<p>Pentaprism - that’s a lovely idea, but after discussing with my D, I didn’t bother with an external drive. I realized computer backups wouldn’t ever happen if they involved my kid plugging something in and being proactive about it. In fact, even after having reformatted more HDD’s than I care to think about (anybody else remember when that was Gateway’s sole tech support suggestion?), I wouldn’t trust myself with a backup that wasn’t automated.</p>
<p>I should look into a networked backup in the office for my Mac. At the moment, I plug in my Mac to a USB hub so that it can charge my iPod and do automatic backup. It might be one less step in the morning to have the Mac do automatic backup to another computer.</p>
<p>I backup in my office. If there’s a fire in the office, I take my laptop with me.</p>
<p>A fire here is unlikely though. The office was designed to be extremely survivable. We have sprinklers and the core of the building is designed to withstand the entire building burning down. It’s concrete, steel, aluminum and glass. The building is almost 20 years old and we haven’t had any incidents.</p>
<p>And the fire station is about a quarter-mile away.</p>
<p>>> I realized computer backups wouldn’t ever happen if they involved my kid plugging something in and being proactive about it…</p>
<p>The way I set up is that nightly data backup (e.g. C:\users) is automated. The disk cloning requires human intervention, but it happens only once a month.</p>
<p>>> It’s not a backup unless it is to another building - what if there was a fire?</p>
<p>It’s not a car unless it is a Lexus!</p>
<p>I haven’t had a (house/office) fire for the last 60 years, but seen more harddisk crashes than I can count.</p>
<p>Since we are talking about laptops for college students, there is a good chance that the laptop and the backup disk are at two different locations when there is a fire.</p>
<p>You’re right. I was hasty with that cliche about another location. But there are free (for small amounts of data) online backup systems like mozy that can add a layer of off-site reassurance.</p>
<p>Pentaprism - I don’t understand. You said you’re using an external HDD for all yor backups. That’s not automated inasmuch as the external drive has to be plugged in, and most students are taking their laptops with them, so they’d have to remember to hook up the laptop for backups to happen, no? My D uses Dropbox, which also communicates with our home computer (with her permission), so the files are in three places without her needing to do anything. They’re also backed up to a fourth, non- dropbox folder, so even if her Dropbox account were hacked and wiped out, she’d still have the files. I don’t generally like cloud backups, but I think it’s the safest route for a student who may lose or spill coffee on a laptop just before a crucial deadline.</p>
<p>From my experiences in the IT field working/maintaining such laptops for work, moonlighting gigs, and for friends…I wouldn’t recommend HP or Sony at all considering all the hardware problems and build quality issues I’ve observed from them over the years. I also feel the same about the current state of consumer-lines of most notebook OEMs such as Dell(Inspiron/Vostro) or Toshiba(Satellite series). </p>
<p>HP has gone downhill…especially after buying up Compaq which was a once reputable PC manufacturer whose reputation toward the end was approaching that of the lowest-end brands like Packard-Bell. Unreliable, problem-ridden, and cheaply built computer systems. </p>
<p>They started the commodization of PC desktop/notebooks to the point they became disposable in less than the 5 or even 3-year use cycles…especially at the lower end budget consumer-line models. </p>
<p>Sad considering some of the consumer-line notebooks built in the mid-late '90s like the Toshiba Tecra I bought at a discount courtesy of a summer job or Satellite I was given at one of my earlier jobs are both still running strong today in hands of new owners.</p>
<p>Not sure why the HP hatred. The facts are, laptops from most major companies come of assembly lines at busineses you’ve never heard of like Quanta and Compal. By and large they use the same components across a price point. A $500 laptop from brand A probably uses the same processor/mother board and hard drive as one from brand B. The same is true at $700 and $1000.</p>
<p>Apple stuff is nice but, expensve. For me, too expensive to send off with a college kid. They also lock you into an expensive ecosystem that people love or hate.</p>
<p>For Windows based machines - To a large extent, you get what you pay for. With laptops, you are paying for light weight, screen, battery life and performance. Almost across the board, pay more, get more.</p>
<p>Start with size - For me, the sweet spot seems to be 14. Bigger is heavy and bulky while smaller units have cramped keyboards and tiny screens. There are good 15.6 and 13.3 units too, check some out at Best Buy.</p>
<p>For a Windows laptop, buy an Intel i3 or i5 processor. They are much better with battery life than the competing AMD units. i7 is overkill for all but the most demanding. </p>
<p>There are design differences so, the features, look, feel and controls on a laptop should probably guide your purchase more than the brand. Some have really cramped (to my hands) keyboard. </p>
<p>The HP Envy 4t seems to be a great balance of price/performance/size. As an Untrabook, it is light, compact and has an i5 and partial SSD so it boots very quickly. With Win8, the touch screen is also real plus. I’ve seen them on the Best Buy site for around $650.</p>
<p>Agree with NcalRent. My first HP laptop is 7 years old and works fine; the second is almost 4. I’m sure the manufacturers would love to have more hardware failures, but so far the only laptop I’ve had any hardware problems ( other than drive crashes) with was a cheap Acer… knock on wood, as my D has an HP ultrabook.</p>
<p>My D borrowed an old Macbook Air from my brother-in-law to use some mac-only software. The power cord’s a little frayed. Turns out it would cost $80 to replace it. That’s a little rich for my blood.</p>
<p>^^^^you can go to Amazon, and find 3rd party replacements for a fraction of $80. And that high price for an adapter is par for the course. Dell will, for example, charge the equivalent for theirs.</p>
<p>>> You said you’re using an external HDD for all yor backups.</p>
<p>I didn’t. I wrote, “…assuming you have only 1 external backup disk (2 is better of course),…”</p>
<p>>> so they’d have to remember to hook up the laptop for backups to happen, …</p>
<p>If you have 1 external backup disk, after cloning, just plug the external disk into a (wireless) network hub. Nightly backup (e.g. c:\users, or whatever you want) is automated. When you need to clone the harddisk again, unplug the external disk and plug it to the computer. This is as I wrote, “The way I set up is that nightly data backup (e.g. C:\users) is automated. The disk cloning requires human intervention, but it happens only once a month.”</p>
<p>Of course if you have more than 1 backup copy, it’s even better.</p>
<p>My point is that most people backup just the data, and don’t think of the OS, programs, setup, … When the harddisk crashes, even when you have a replacement disk at hand, it still takes a few days to load OS, programs, … With that cloned disk, you’ll have the computer up and running in a few minutes.</p>
<p>On backup - I have been messing with a private cloud and may make that available. My home PCs and laptop are imaged weekly to the NAS in my den. I keep a portable hard drive in a drawer at my office. About once a month I back up all data, photos etc to that drive.</p>
<p>I am willing to live with the redundancy that provides.</p>
<p>From Win8, you can make a system image onto a USB stick. I gave my son 2 of them and kindly suggested he refresh the image monthly on one and store a back-up copy of his data on the other. The can stay in his dorm desk drawer. If he looses one, it is cheaply replaced.</p>
<p>Public cloud space is so available these days, it might be even easier than a flash drive.</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t think he’ll use them until he looses some data. Nobody does.</p>