On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:01:45 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

My wife's Dell computer has died, according to our son who is a
computer expert.

You might consider getting a 2nd opinion. Your son probably doesn't
want to fix it for free. Also, if the unspecified model Dell is
fairly current, it might be possible to get Nvidia to fix it for free:
http://www.nvidiasettlement.com

I am looking for suggestions on brands to buy and to
avoid, when we go out looking tomorrow.

It doesn't work like that. Every brand of laptops has their winner
and losers. Often, if a manufacturer has a winning line of machines,
they will recycle the name and model number series on their latest
models in the vain hope that maybe some of the good karma will rub off
on the new models, or that the customers won't notice that they're
totally different models. In other words, it's really difficult to
shop by brand name or even product line.

Most laptops are made by a collection of Chinese and Korean OEM
manufacturers. Just about all the brands have at least one product
line made by Quanta, Compal, or Wistron/Acer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manufacturers#ODM_Laptop _Units_sold_and_Market_Shares
I've gone down this list and attempted to correlate the OEM
manufacturer with my observed failure rate, and failed. They all seem
to have similar problems.

If you as a repairman what should your buy, you'll get a list of
machines with which they have had experience. That's fine if you want
to know which machines break and need repair. However, a better
question would be which machine do they *NOT* see coming in for
repair. As a hint, I see large numbers of HP, Compaq, Dell, and Asus
late model laptops. I see a few Toshibas. I rarely see Lenovo,
Panasonic, or Acer.

She is looking at PC World
and Consumer's Reports for info, but I thought some opinions from the
trenches was also important. Suggestions to buy and/or to avoid.

Avoid generalizations, Consumer Report, and PC World reviews. One
size/type laptop does not fit all applications and budgets. If you
must read reviews, I suggest CNET.
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/

First, some questions:
1. How much does she want to spend? If your budget is unlimited, I
have some nice $3,000+ W701ds Lenovo or Toughbook CF-31 machines for
her. If she doesn't want to spend that much, she can do quite will
with referbished and last years models.
2. How paranoid is she? 1 year warranty, or extend it to 3 years. 3
years is all most of the manufacturers will offer. That also doesn't
include breakage warranty, which is covered seperately.
3. What is she going to do with it? If it's just general purpose web
crawling, email, and some productivity apps, almost anything will
work. However, if she's doing video, YouTube, Netflix, CAD, number
crunching, simulations, Photoshop, or high end games, it's going to
take some real horsepower.
4. Of course, some techy details like size of screen, max weight,
necessary options, BlueGoof, Blue-ray, etc?


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558