<p>I think all laptops are reliable and durable, as long as you’re not an idiot with them. Macbooks, Dells, Asus, Lenovo, Sony, Acer etc… They’re all about the same, with a couple of exceptions of course. Non-pro Macbooks have problems with their flimsy plastic case like no other. Dell ac/dc power adapters are rubbish that can last for as little as weeks.
Personally, I’ve had good experience with Acer’s ultraportable series.</p>
<p>^I have had a bad experience with Acer, and I know quite some people who have too.</p>
<p>What do you guys think of HP?</p>
<p>^I’ve used one of their netbooks and pavilion series laptops in the past and they held up pretty well. On par with Dell i’d say. I’ve heard nothing but good things about their Envy series though.</p>
<p>I use my early 2008 MacBook Pro and it’s still running fine with all of the performance that I need from it. It’s a hybird system with an ExpressCard SSD with the operating system and applications and data stored on the HDD. It also has a Windows Virtual Machine, an Ubuntu Virtual Machine and a Windows Bootcamp Partition. I can boot Mac OS X off either the SSD or the HDD so the machine is still usable even if one of the disks fail.</p>
<p>I have a 2 TB MyBook that should arrive tomorrow for backup. I also have a backup MacBook Pro should anyone in the household have a problem with theirs. The nice thing about Macs is that the operating system isn’t tied to the hardware so that you can just restore an operating system to another Mac if yours has a problem. Windows does not allow you to do this unless the hardware is near identical. That means that I can take my ExpressCard from on Mac to another and just boot from it.</p>
<p>Reliability implies backup and redundancy as your laptop can get stolen, dropped or experience a technical failure (hard drive dies).</p>
<p>The Dell Lattitude series tend to be more durable but specs tend to be lower than products in the consumer division - they don’t go bleeding edge on the Lattitude line. Dell is also very good at supporting their products many, many years after they stop selling them.</p>
<p>Lenovo is coming out with a new ideapad, the Y470. Does anyone have experience with lenovo ideapads in general? I want a laptop that will last me a long time, has space to play a few games (Starcraft 2), but is also one that is portable for college and what not. Any ideas on the Y470 that will come out soon?</p>
<p>I ended up buying a refurbished Latitude Dell from the Dell outlet website. Through a google search, I found a 20% off coupon code on another site, which is offered periodically. It came with a stainless steel hard drive, which I read is much more durable because it has no moving parts. </p>
<p>There was also free shipping. It worked out to about 45% cheaper than a new laptop.</p>
<p>I read that many people have had good experience with factory-refurbished laptops. Some are returns, that are then tested to correct a minor problem before they are resold. Many people say that the extra level of testing means that they are more reliable in the end. It came with a 3 year warranty.</p>
<p>It also came with Windows 7 Professional, instead of the Home version. </p>
<p>As noted above, Latitutes (which are designed for business travelers) are designed to be much more durable than consumer Dells, including a metal instead of a plastic case, and a keyboard designed to withstand spills.</p>
<p>I have had a regular MacBook (not pro) for the past four years. I had to get the CD drive replaced and that was it–cost maybe 70-80 dollars. Oh, and they replaced my keyboard for free, just because it was kind of dirty! I’ve never had any viruses or any problems like that, and lord knows I make my computer susceptible to them all the time.</p>