Shoutbox

for those lazy people like me (and also thinking why not just repost rather than link )

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Hello,

I'm pretty new here (read a lot of the threads and news but just signed up to answer this thread).
Working in both consumer and corporate markets, I totally agree on what has been mentioned earlier about the consumer vs. business laptop, and would like to add a few things:

All major brands will have their own technology, Lenovo Thinkpads have their roll cage, and spill proof keyboards, HP's EliteBook will have their hard drive protection etc.
The thing is, that these technology are not put into the consumer level notebooks. The reason is simple; people want the cheapest computers possible, so it's impossible to offer that without impacting quality.

Business laptops (from all brands really, Dell Vostros, Lenovo Thinkpads, Hp EliteBooks, Toshiba Tecras) are made to be a lot more solid.
They integrate each company's technologies and allow them to last longer while also having some more power efficient processors.

A few years ago, the price difference between a consumer and a business laptop was huge (over 500 or 600$ for the same configuration), making it a hard choice to make.
Nowadays, the price gap has gone down in major way, and the 200 or 300$ price difference is basically the price of an extended warranty that I highly recommend when buying a consumer market laptop.

A lot of people will state that their old HP or Toshiba's lasted them over 10 years without a problem. Keep in mind that this was 10 years ago.
The laptops then cost a fortune to produce, quality was higher and the specs were so minimal that there was barely any modules that could break.
Today, a simple laptop has a webcam, microphone, SD card reader, WiFi, CD/DVD burner as a base model, all cramped up, making all of the small pieces not only turning faster, but also being produced a lot cheaper.

My advice is exactly what I did: get a business laptop, spend the 200$ difference (in my case it was 150$) and get a laptop that will truly last you longer.
Keep in mind that having a business notebook, as mentioned previously will also give you better and faster technical support in case anything happens.

That is my two cents.
A proud Thinkpad T400 owner.

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