Expert: Bobbert - 3/11/2009

Question
I am looking into purchasing a new laptop basically for surfing, emailing, photos, and dvd burning.  I am looking for quality, value and tech support.  Any brands you find to have the best tech support?  What about extended warranty for the laptop, do you believe in them?  I have done my own repairs on desktops, but not a laptop.  I am thinking steering clear of vista 64 bit, good idea?  Thanks for your input.

Answer
You seem to be on the right path, I would suggest WindowsXP, Windows Vista for 32-bit Systems, or a non-Microsoft product (depending on what you're comfortable with). As far as good technical support, Dell and HP consistently rank among the best, and offer a very good value on their products, a relative new-comer to this field would be Asus, and so far they've shown great things, so you might consider them as well. A further suggestion would be Apple, as nothing you've listed requires Windows or Windows-specific software, so that route may be worth it as well, Apple's support is generally fairly good, although the initial purchase price is higher than you'll spend on a comparable Dell or HP unit.

Extended warranties are a tricky game, generally you'll get one to two years of warranty support included in the purchase price (and sometimes companies like Dell will include an additional year for a few dollars (literally $10 or so), depending on what promotions they're running at the time), which is generally sufficient in my experience. However, if replacing the system in 3-4 years seems impossible, extended warranty could seem reasonable to a purchaser, here's where I'd caution you to consider the price of that warranty (of course if its free, or nearly free, why not?), and the age of the system that far down the line. In 4 years, consider how far "passed by" the system will be, and ask yourself if you'd really like it repaired at that point, or if you'd just prefer to replace (generally laptops are replaced on average every 18 to 24 months).

Ultimately the decision is yours, but I would urge you to consider it strongly before buying the extended warranty (as generally, they go unused, and its just extra money in the salesman's pocket).

Now, I'm guessing hardware specs is another underlying point of your question, in regards to that, more or less "anything" new will suffice, as long as it features a DVD writer (as everything else you've listed is a relatively easy task for a modern computer, from $500 to $5000, anything will do). So I would let your wallet and personal tastes be the judge, for example if you really like the Apple offering, nothing is really making that a painful switch (other than perhaps needing to learn new software), if you like included features on some Dell or HP promotion, that route would seem logical, and so on.

Finally, if you decide to stick to Windows (and there is nothing wrong with this route), I would suggest you ensure software security with a good anti-virus suite, spyware cleaner, and similar "service" applications, personally I would suggest Grisoft's AVG (available free to home users) and Safer-Networking's Spybot Search & Destroy (also available free to home users), Grisoft does offer subscription packages that upgrade the functionality of AVG to handle spyware as well (making Spybot redundant and un-needed), thats purely your choice. Another application that does wonders for Windows systems is Piriform's CCleaner, which handles cache cleanout, registry error correction, and other minor tasks (just those little extras that keep a Windows box running in tip-top shape).


-bob