Well, Mr. SK thought he would wait a bit, but now his laptop is acting up again, so he's pretty much ready to buy. And he's decided not to get a Toshiba, but now we're agonizing over what to buy, and also/especially where to buy it.

He knows that he wants: 32 ram, 1TB SSD, intel i7

He also would prefer not to have a touchscreen... other than that he's pretty open.

I'm most familiar with Dell and HP (but the Dell machines that seem reasonable are too expensive). I don't know why but I'm hesitant about Asus, Acer. And definitely about MSI, which I have never heard of before...

Most of the laptops that we're seeing with those specs are super expensive, but there are some HPs on Amazon that more in the range of $900-1100. Best Buy doesn't have anything under $2000 with those specs. Costco also was surprisingly expensive.

Mr. SK wants to know why those Amazon HP options are so cheap compared to the Dell and Lenovo ones which are easily $500-800 more expensive for similar specs. My guess is build quality? And also that maybe that's not a concern since he's not throwing it in a backpack every day??

Any thoughts about that?

And also, does anyone have any advice regarding where to buy?

TIA!!!

I have this one:

https://www.costco.com/lg-gram...oduct.100794680.html

I don't know if it meets his specs beyond the three things you mentioned. I love it because it's incredibly thin and light.

Thanks!! I'll take a closer look (the SSD drive and ram are the specs he wants).

Similar model but not currently on sale.

https://www.costco.com/lg-gram...oduct.100986110.html

I went for a 17" screen, but they make smaller ones, too.

I think he doesn't want an LG -_-

Here are some he's interested in but I'm a little hesitant about buying from Amazon, for some reason. But one benefit is they have a lot more options for selecting higher ram and SSD than Best Buy, which surprises me.

I think he likes the idea of being able to choose 64 ram on this one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L...lv_ov_lig_dp_it&th=1


https://www.amazon.com/Dell-In...f1-1e5b3de13370&th=1

Both of those units you show on Amazon come from a third party who sells on Amazon. Not sold by Amazon itself. I've gotten burned on smaller purchases from third parties and wouldn't risk it for something like a computer.

Maybe tigerdirect or bhphotovideo are options?

quote:

Both of those units you show on Amazon come from a third party who sells on Amazon

Yikes! I did not notice that, thanks! So, is that part of why those are less expensive?

I'll pay more attention to the "ships and sold by".

quote:

tigerdirect or bhphotovideo

I've never heard of either of these places, but IIRC Ax recommended them as well. I'll take a look.

We are also now including Dell Latitude in the search (and the upper end of the budget is going up :P

My work laptop is a Dell Latitude and so was my previous one, they are very reliable, so that's a plus....

Hmm, sort far most of the Dells we're seeing on Amazon are ships and sold by PCOnline... Or OEMGENUINE.

If you want to buy a Dell, just buy directly from dell.com , don’t mess around with 3rd party websites.

Directly from Dell is super expensive.

He’s still debating brands etc.

We bought a gaming machine for Liam from Tiger Direct and had a very good experience, for what it’s worth.

Thanks, that’s good to know.

Ah, shipping to Canada though?

Having bought a few laptops in the past year, I was surprised how much more expensive things have gotten than when I bought my previous laptop about 4-5 years ago. I am used to computers getting ever cheaper for ever more power but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. 4-5 years ago, I bought a pretty top of the line lenovo for about $700 on sale. This time around, I could barely crack $1000 for basically the same model (same size screen, etc) and that was only with using sales and coupon codes and waiting to pounce for weeks until the sale was right. Same for the laptop we just bought for LL#2 to take to college - it was pushing $1000 on a great sale that we waited weeks for. Seems like $1000 is the new low-end for a decent work laptop anymore and it goes up FAST from there. I do love my Lenovos (as a household, we now own 3) but they do not have a lot of custom options and their inventory has kinda sucked lately even for their in stock stuff. You can customize but supposedly it takes months. I agree with not chancing the 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Honestly, I think the safest bet is to go to Best Buy and buy something there. Better selection than costco and if you hit their sales right, the prices are competitive. And you get 15 days to return it if something is wrong ....and returns are as easy as walking in the store with the broken one and walking out with the new one. (the backspace key was flakey on my very first lenovo years ago and I had to exchange it - it was that easy.) We tried to get a price adjustment for one of the laptops we ordered online directly from Lenovo (it went on an even better sale the day after we ordered it) and after dealing with their customer service for that, I can't imagine they will be very helpful with returns -- they were pretty awful, honestly.

Don't know if it matters, but before I had my Lenovos, I had a few HPs and Dells. The dells were fine, the HPs always ran really hot and were kind of flakey - random blue screens of death once in a while. I don't think those experiences are enough to judge a whole brand on but out of the 3 brands, my Lenovos have been the most solid and reliable. The only reason I replaced the one I bought 5 years ago was that years of typing had worn a hole through the space bar and I was about to break through the S key as well. The thing still ran perfectly. Also, my husband has a Dell right now for work and it has issues. Their in home service has been dicking us around for months....and this is a big money contract plan that his work pays for that covers the equipment of tens of thousands of employees. I think they can't get the part they need but they won't come out and say that, they just keep not showing up for appointments etc. Dells in home service used to be top notch (he's had work Dells for years) so I think crappy customer service and lack of parts is probably an industry-wide issue.

Anyhow, good luck!

Dell has had horrific customer service for my hubby’s work as well. He’s the IT manager there. They pay for some fancy 1 Day guarantee service and Dell has literally never met that guarantee.


Shiro - Tiger Direct used to have a Canadian branch but I see it closed in 2019.