I wasn't impling you were, just expanding on how crazy expensive they are in comparison ;)
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I've never owned a Toshiba laptop, but I have worked with people that did and the rest of us always gave them a bad time about how it sounded like a jet engine when the fans were on. One fella even had a separate platform with fans it in that he would set his laptop on to keep it from overheating. This seems contrary to what others have posted here, but since that is what I saw you can be sure I'll never buy a Toshiba.
I've had an HP laptop at work that I couldn't wait to get rid of. It just wasn't very mechanically sound and there were tons of issues related to docking and un-docking that was a huge pain. My wife had an HP laptop that was about 5 years old and one day it just turned off while she was using it and wouldn't turn back on.
I jumped at the opportunity to get a Lenovo as a replacement for my work laptop as I find them well suited for work use. I doubt I would ever get a Lenovo for personal use though.
My Dell laptop is 6 years old and still chugging along fine with Linux, but does a face plant with the same WinXP that it was shipped with. Can't blame the laptop for that, it's bloating of the OS and software over the years that has done it. After a year of ownership I upgraded the RAM as it had become dirt cheap and a few years later dropped in a much larger hard drive. At about the 5 year point I replaced the battery with a $35 aftermarket one and just recently have been having to repair the cords on the power supplies. This is a laptop that is usually running 24/7 and gets used every day. For the first 3 years it traveled to and from my office every day in a backpack. If I was to be looking for a replacement I would probably get a Dell with the fastest hardware that I could afford, focusing first on the CPU and video as those can't be upgraded later, and upgrading the RAM and adding a solid state drive if the budget allowed it. If I didn't get a Dell then it would be because I got a...
MacBook. I've never owned one, but when the wife's HP died we went to the Apple store and came home with a 13" MacBook Air. She really likes it and it works well for her purposes. Thanks to the solid state drive it starts up very quickly and goes into and comes out of sleep in just a second or two. Nothing opens your eyes quite like seeing someone reach over and grab their laptop that is powered down, flip open the lid, and start typing immediately. Now that I have a time capsule providing our wireless I don't have to worry about backing up her data and have even used it once to restore a document that she messed up and was unable to undo the changes to it. If I had to describe her laptop in one sentence it would be "It just works." The price is a big issue for me on the bigger MacBook laptops, but if they come out in a smaller form factor and with Intel Sandybridge processors at the end of April as rumored then they just might win me over.
The Dell I bought in November I immediately upgraded to an 80GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. The SSD and RAM were less than $150. Very fast machine and the battery meter shows over 9 hours although I have my doubts on the battery lasting 9 hours.
Wanted to thank everyone for their input - it sure helped. I said I would update this once we made a purchase... and today we picked up a Toshiba Satellite P755-S5387 Laptop from Officemax. Colleen has really enjoyed the laptop so far but that mouse thing sure is a little different than the desktops we are used to!
Once again - Thanks to everyone for voicing their suggestions! I am sure Colleen will be very happy with her new laptop!
I carry a real mouse with me even when I travel.
I also use a wireless mouse with my laptop. Target always seems to have a good sale on them.
Thanks guys! I will check into that option!
I think you'll be happy with your Toshiba. They've have a pretty good rep for durability I believe.