Windows laptops don't last

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

Just now, WereCatf said:

They can, though, as far as I know, only if they are on AC, not on battery.

yes they can wake up when plugged in for network acces etc but you can turn that off. i knew that. i'm asking if they can wake up while in a backpack randomly and overheat because of that. 

[WereCatf]

Just now, Extremematt52 said:

even if it was lasting a year that not exactly great either. even if the odds of getting a good or bad laptop from a reputable brand. out of 4 laptops the odds of that happeneing at 6.25% if their odds of failure are lower than that then I must be satan for my luck to be that shit.

To be honest, this whole thread just sounds more like you wanting to vent. I get the need, I get that it's frustrating to have troubles with any item you care about, but this isn't a particularly useful thread. If you feel like you'd be better served with a Mac, get a Mac.

[Extremematt52]

On 1/11/2019 at 11:29 AM, jstudrawa said:

So you're 18 or 19 and saying laptops with Windows don't last.  You simply lack the experience necessary to make this determination.

 

1 laptop is your sample size?  Study statistics in college please.

 

[bellabichon]

6 hours ago, Extremematt52 said:

even if it was lasting a year that not exactly great either. even if the odds of getting a good or bad laptop from a reputable brand. out of 4 laptops the odds of that happeneing at 6.25% if their odds of failure are lower than that then I must be satan for my luck to be that shit.

That's just not a very good argument. You can't calculate a percentage of laptops that fail from a sample size that small. All Windows laptops owned by my family have been going for 1, 3, and 4 years respectively, and with very few issues. 

 

6 hours ago, Extremematt52 said:

Ive been taking college courses since a sophmore in highschool. I took stats and calc don't belittle me because im young. Also not my first laptop, I went through 3 WINDOWS machines in highschool. 1 cousin went through 3 windows machines in highschool. My brother 1 laptop in highschool vs Me with 3 laptops. I  have to be a scientist to know thats not a good track record.

Honestly, if you're going through laptops of any kind at that rate, you obviously aren't respecting your technology. Also, not the place to brag about your intelligence. It doesn't actually make you seem smarter, believe it or not. If you've been taking college courses since you were 14 years old, maybe you should've thrown a literature course in there. Or, ya know, just use spellcheck. 

[Origami Cactus]

I recommend buying a 'business' laptop instead of a consumer one, these thing last better in my experience.

I haven't had a single problem with any lenovo Thinkpads. These things are like tanks.

[genexis_x]

WTF?

[Dedayog]

12 minutes ago, bellabichon said:

Honestly, if you're going through laptops of any kind at that rate, you obviously aren't respecting your technology. Also, not the place to brag about your intelligence. It doesn't actually make you seem smarter, believe it or not. If you've been taking college courses since you were 14 years old, maybe you should've thrown a literature course in there. Or, ya know, just use spellcheck. 

I think this is it.  Kids usually don't, or at best don't realize you need to not toss it around.   Just because phones are tough, other electronics may not be.  Just because it's portable doesn't mean it's ultra tough.

 

 

[TempestCatto]

Windows needs to be optimized by the user. Turn off all the wake on lan and shit like that. You'll have to turn off all the "green" and "powersaver" shit for your wireless nic.Turn on whatever powermode floats your rootbeer (high performance personally). Turn OFF Windows Update (fuck updates. you only need major ones, not every little chode they push out), ensure you have a good A/V that auto updates only on your home network. Turn off everything but your A/V at start up. Uninstall all the useless bloatware.

 

Personally? I just wipe the thing clean and install Windows 10 LTSB. I have the .iso file and have installed it on secondary machines around my house (like my data recovery computer for example). It to me, sounds like user error here. I have an Acer Travelmate 5730. It's from 2008. It's still truckin' along with an ssd and ram upgrade (Windows 7). I've never honestly had an issue with it, and that was my daily driver for a LONG time. I also have a Samsung Chromebook (very early model) I got out of the trash from back when I used to work at a school. Reinstalled Chrome OS and it's still rockin' and rollin'. My current PC (the one I custom built, parts list on my profile) is still going too. I had to optimize Windows with my hardware, but it's never given me any issues.

 

So to me, as I said before, I'm calling user error. I'm not trying to be mean when I say that, but that's the only thing I can think of. Especially because the school I used to work at has shit loads of Chromebooks and Windows 10 PC's that even under student and faculty abuse, still work tremendously. It's all about optimization and maintenance. For example, when you buy a new engine for your car, you can't just plunk it in. You have to dyno and tune it. Once you use use the car, you'll over time have to change fluids and filters, plugs and wires, and so on.

 

To add, if you're having hardware issues, you could indeed be mishandling it as well. I don't think your issues is with Windows really. But rather in how you handle and treat your devices. I have to agree with others, phones are small and their compactness makes them a bit more robust. But the larger size and less compactness of a laptop makes it easier to mistreat. My mom's work uses Dell work station laptops, and with the traveling she does with it (weekly, almost 1,000 miles) it's never missed a beat. If you were to get a mac (totally not recommended by the way) I'm certain you may run into the same issues. Or even different ones, since Apple is...well...I'll stop there. 

[bellabichon]

5 minutes ago, jstudrawa said:

I think this is it.  Kids usually don't, or at best don't realize you need to not toss it around.   Just because phones are tough, other electronics may not be.  Just because it's portable doesn't mean it's ultra tough.

 

 

True. The inbuilt compact-ness of phones generally makes them pretty strong. They're build like aluminum bricks, whereas laptops have plastic cooling assemblies, and often plastic cases. Sure, you could build a laptop out of solid aluminum, but who wants to carry 8 pounds on their back every day. 

[Zusafek]

I still have my Toshiba satellite with a first gen core i7 and an Nvidia 250m processor running Windows 10. Still works perfect.  It even has the original hdd inside of it. But my wife's new MacBook pro took a crap after 4 days off use. It happens. 

 

For example. I bought a 2013 Dodge Dart Mopar 13 edition brand new. It was a lemon...had to get it replaced 11 months later after it spent most of it's life in the shop. My replacement has had zero issues. 

 

Oh and you most likely did something to the motherboard when you left it in sleep mode in your backpack. I only use sleep mode outside of my backpack because the machine can wake itself automatically for updates. 

[captain_aggravated]

10 hours ago, bellabichon said:

Again, you're acting like having hardware break down in 3 months is a common occurrence. It's just not. 

Yes it is.  I've had Dell ship me a laptop that they spent 6 months trying and failing to fix.  And you'll hear the exact same story for every manufacturer, they all ship lemons.  Quality control is non-existent in the PC industry.  Or it's performed by a temp that gets paid $2 a day to work in a building surrounded by anti-suicide netting.  If you were in that kind of environment, you'd do a bad job too.

 

10 hours ago, schwellmo92 said:

Backpack - you shouldn't put laptops in your backpack asleep, they can wake up for maintenance tasks.

I struggle with statements like this, and I've seen them a lot on this forum. It should be glaringly obvious to anyone who has lived in Western culture for more than a few hours that laptops are designed to be carried in backpacks.  There's an entire industry that manufactures backpacks specifically to house laptops, and every retailer I can think of that sells laptops also sells those backpacks, including the laptop manufacturers themselves.  It should also be glaringly obvious that the millions of students who carry laptops to school aren't going to shut their computers down completely and boot them from scratch between every class, they're going to shut the lids and stuff them into their backpacks.  A laptop that cannot survive being carried in a backpack doesn't deserve to be sold for real money.

 

The reason I struggle with statements like this is, you're right.  Computer manufacturers can't be relied upon to paint USB3 ports blue, let alone build a computer that won't overheat and break.  Most everyone who is in computer development--designing hardware, writing software, implementing systems, a high school student who just needs to type up his senior project--spends most of their time just fixing what everyone else has broken in the last few hours.  There are no standards nor any body to enforce them, and no one can take the time to develop hardware and software designed for each other that can connect and function with the rest of the world as-is, which is nothing but a series of desperate kludges to get decades old protocols and techniques to survive tasks they were never designed for.  They can't do this because it's a monumental task. Then a teenager turns up exasperated at the whole thing because he just needs a reliable tool, particularly for how much they cost, and he's flat out told he's wrong for even having that need.

 

That about got it?

[NeuesTestament]

I don't think you will be much happier with MacBooks. They are quite fragile nowadays and have a lot of hardware issues.

[bellabichon]

16 hours ago, captain_aggravated said:

Yes it is.  I've had Dell ship me a laptop that they spent 6 months trying and failing to fix.  And you'll hear the exact same story for every manufacturer, they all ship lemons.

I personally disagree, but I won't fight you on this particular point, because I've already spend half an hour fighting OP over it. 

 

16 hours ago, captain_aggravated said:

Quality control is non-existent in the PC industry.

It is true that PC quality control isn't the greatest, and as consumers, we should be working to try and pressure companies to make it better.

 

16 hours ago, captain_aggravated said:

Or it's performed by a temp that gets paid $2 a day to work in a building surrounded by anti-suicide netting.

That's China for ya.

 

Overall, in my opinion, for laptops in 2019, you have basically two options. You can go with a PC made by any number of manufacturers, and deal with Windows 10 being a bogged-down POS, crappy QC, and bloatware, at a cheaper price, or you can go with a Macbook that already has engineering failures built right in, and deal with the restrictions of OSX. Both kinda suck, but it's about the lesser of two evils. Go with a PC, get crappy QC. Go with a Mac, get badly-designed, and badly-put-together hardware. 

 

People often praise Apple for building laptops that last 5, 10, or even 15 years (in some cases), but what I don't think they mention is how much repair goes into Macbooks to keep them running. Because Apple is the monolith that they are, taking your Macbook to the "Genius" Bar every year or couple of years doesn't seem like a big deal, because there's one in every Apple store, while on the flip-side, mailing your laptop in to Dell or HP is a massive pain in the ass. Macbooks have just as many problems as any other laptop, it's just that first-party repair for them is so much more widely available than for PCs. This is a problem that the PC industry has to overcome. Whether that means spending the capitol to open up dedicated shops in major metropolitan areas (a bit like what Microsoft is finally starting to do), or whether it means just simplifying their online/mail-in repair process, I don't know. What I can say, is that Apple's repair costs are absolutely ludicrous, and if PC manufacturers can step up their game, Macs will continue to become a harder sell. 

[Falkentyne]

On 1/11/2019 at 8:59 AM, Extremematt52 said:

I don't know about what experience the rest of you had but I have had so many issues running windows machines. I love windows and I really hate saying this but I might be switching to a MacBook in the near future. 

 

I graduated from high school summer '17 and as a graduation present my parents bought me a Dell XPS 9560 (32g RAM, 1tb NVMe SSD, 4k Display you get the idea) This is by far the nicest laptop I have ever owned and I really liked it.... for the first few months. Between then and now I have had to send in my laptop for various issues 5 times between initially purchasing it and my third semester of university. I wanted the Dell XPS because so many tech influencers recommended it and turns out its good for 3 months....

 

Currently the system has been with square trade for 4 weeks and I start my 4th semester of university Monday without a laptop. I'm praying I can just get the money from them and put it towards something that will last me for the next 6 years of higher education, or at least longer than the Dell

My MSI laptop has lasted almost 2 years with no problems except having to deal with repasting, which many laptops need done.  And that's basically a DTR model.  In the future, if you are going to order a cheap disposable throttlebook for more than $1000, make sure you buy it from a good reseller that does their own repasting and testing and offers a good warranty for their services.  HIDevolution is highly recommended, and they even have liquid metal repasting services with protection against runoff.  Buying anything directly from Dell (or a mass reseller like newegg or amazon) is going to be a huge crapshoot with lottery and RMA's.  Best off buying it from a dedicated laptop reseller.  

Xotic PC also tends to get recommended, as well as Gentech PC, but HIDevolution (one of the few Prema Bios partner ships for desktop LGA replacements) is one of the most reputable out there.

 

Sorry for your problems.