Discussions

I will be starting college shortly and am needing a new computer. I currently have an Asus and it has not been good. What are some good brands of laptops and what did you like/dislike about them?

I currently have both an acer and an asus gaming laptop and an MSI gaming PC, both have served me very well. For simple activities such as web browsing and office activities such as word and excel, pretty much any brand will do. You will want at least a intel 5 processor (most are quad cores now) at least 8 gigs of ram and at least 500GB of hard drive. I was able to get my daughter a good laptop (with dedicated graphics card) from Best Buy for $400. That’s what a cheap serviceable laptop runs for these days. I hope this helps!

PrimeConvoy said "I currently have both an acer and an asus gaming laptop and an MSI gaming PC, both have served me very well. For simple activities such as web browsing and office activities such as word and excel, pretty much any brand will do. You will want at least a intel 5 processor (most are quad cores now) at least 8 gigs of ram and at least 500GB of hard drive. I was able to get my daughter a good laptop (with dedicated graphics card) from Best Buy for $400. That’s what a cheap serviceable laptop runs for these days. I hope this helps! "

It has 8 Gig RAM and the i5 7200U CPU and has the 17" screen. This probably more than what you need for school, but it serves me very well with no issues. It starts up very quickly, but I did replace the hard drive with a Samsung 850 Pro SSD just because I wanted to make sure I could process photo editing and embroidery digitizing as quickly as I could.  
 
I usually have a large number of web sites open and a few programs running at the same time and this laptop handles it all very well. Had it for well over a year and don't think I've had any problems with it.

My daughter went through two non-Macs in the first 3 years of school, then got fed up and invested in a Mac and has been delighted with it. They are pricier to start with, but in the long run it is probably cheaper. The way they intergrate with an iPhone is neat too and can be a bonus. The old addage that you get what you pay for is correct for laptops.

Just over a year ago I purchased a Dell Inspirion laptop and is junk. Very slow, keeps crashing (have lost windows 10 twice and bluetooth only occasionally works. Dell support is awful as on the many occasion I have had to call it is a call center somewhere and I can not understand them. To top it off Dell was hacked and there customers account information stolen, including mine and now I am constantly getting scam calls. Have asked Dell if my credit card info was stolen but they would not say, so had to cancel the card as well.  
Worst buying experience of my life!

Try the HP i5 8G and 500G  
Is an awesome machine very fast with LED backlight.

I have had Toshiba, had that for 5 yrs no issues and sold it was and is still running Good. I bought used Lenovo T430 from ebay. They are solid machines.

Have had bad luck with Dell and a couple of Acers. Lenovo has been the win for the last few years.

When wanting reviews, check out online reviews.  
For computers, check them out by year. As what was adequate 8 yrs ago is certainly not adequate now. You can probably go back 2 yrs in reviews on computers and still find good ones thatcare current.  
Best part about reviews by people in the industry, they will specify why these vomputers are good (point out any downsides) and also specify who/what these computers are good for. Gamers are looking for something much different than a casual web-surfer.  
I included a sample from google to illustrate what I meann. Go through a couple of different list by different sources and see what computers come up again and again. Keep in mind, all review list will specify what model they are reviewing.  
Like car companies, computer companies have a wide variety of quality, types and systems to cover a wide variety of consumer needs. There is goingvto be a huge difference between a laptop for $300 and one for $3000.  
 
https://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/best-laptops-1304361

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/series/spin5  
 
I bought this laptop last year, works great. Doubles as a tablet if needed, touch screen and amazing mouse pad gestures for easy navigation. Boots up quickly and has more than enough power to handle school work.