In the business of a new laptop

I will never buy another "half decent" laptop again!
It's just the fact that they die, that puts me off
And yeah, mostly heat related deaths at that!

Don't let people talk you down from an Acer. They've completely turned their quality around from when they used to be the Kia of laptops. They're good, come with good hardware for the price you pay.

However, when people want something reliable. I always send them the ways of Lenovo (formerly known as IBM years ago). I can, without exaggeration, say there is no laptop built like a Lenovo.

I've recommended them to 6 people and all of them are taken off their feet with how they're built. One works for a company I can't say but he's had his laptop confiscated by FBI to be checked, taken apart by airport security, dropped on cement and it still works. It's survived the 5 corners of hell with him and only the screen part fell apart so he gave it to his friend who replaced it. Still works.

I personally had a thinkpad which also has a magnesium alloy roll cage built in as well as a hard drive monitoring system that'll park the heads if it detects it's dropped. Well I accidentally dropped mine on cement from about 5 feet. Know what it did? Scuffed the plastic, that's it, and it barely did that.

HP and Toshiba are by far the worst and I seriously get sick of having to fix them all the time. HP's are known for failing motherboards and had to replace 2 in the last few months. Toshiba's are always dying and my friends always regreat buying both of those. They all use Acer and Lenovo now.

Dell, I've used them, they're all right. Their XPS laptops are better than their other ones as far as anything goes really but I'll reserve that judgement for someone else here who knows more about them.

Stay away from sony. Anything they do, the above do it better, there's nothing redeeming about them.

There's gateway too, I've only ever had experience with their FX series which is no longer in production and they were built great and priced good too for what they had for hardware. Outside that I have 0 experience.

Asus makes really good gaming laptops and I've heard they're pretty darn reliable. However the shell they use is usually a pretty shoddy plastic that, if you drop it, say hello to a obliterated case.

In the order I would buy a laptop: Lenovo - Acer - Asus - Gateway - Dell

I would never ever buy an HP or Toshiba, period.

Asus, Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba.
I love my XPS.

It's not in that list, but Samsung isn't bad either.

Check this out:
under laptops...

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Deals-Monitor-Dual-Monitor-Cheap-Printer,14744.html

Did you not read his post? lol

Dell business laptops are pretty good, I have two.

Asus is also good, because of their quality and customer service. (safest choice)

I liked Lenovo until they completely screwed me over warranty service. they are still reliable though.

stay away from Acer, even though people say the quality has improved, I have yet to see how improved. and no matter what the quality is, their customer service is none-existent in the states.

Sony is a joke.

Out of your choices, the most reliable I have had is Dell's Latitude and Precision line.

The Latitudes were well used and abused by the networking team. But, that isn't to say they didn't have problems. Every vendor will have their issues.

The nice thing about Dell was the fact that someone was at our door the next day. They had all parts in hand and would have it up and going in 30 minutes.

HP has been a problem. It seems QC has went down, many bad motherboards, screens and HDDs.

Note, I am not talking about gaming machines. I'm talking about Enterprise laptops for work environments.

No offense to OP, but that question is basically asking what's better between a Chevy and a Honda. Perhaps Honda is better overall, but does that mean anything if you want a high-end convertible like a Corvette Z06? No. It's also not fair to compare a Vette to an Aveo. Same way, it's not fair to compare a $300 Acer to a $800 Acer.

If you want useful information, actually consider what you want in a laptop. As an example, business-class laptops are extremely solid, but the downside is weak graphics at a given price, and they're usually thicker/heavier. Any of these brands have their strengths once your budget goes up. If it's just a $400 laptop or whatever, get something with a good 3-year warranty and be done with it. All you'll get here is a bunch of people complaining about their 1 HP, or their 1 (insert laptop brand here) that died after 13 months and that's why they hate the whole company. And also consider that hypothetically, suppose laptop X (8% 1-year fail rate) is more reliable than laptop Y (9% 1-year fail rate). Would you really get laptop X over Y, if laptop Y fit your criteria better in terms of weight, style, etc etc. ?

One last point, reliability is all based on probabilities. You could get one of the most reliable laptops, say a Dell Precision, and have it die on you 13 months in. I don't like to gamble, so to me, it's easier to splurge the extra $70 on a 3-year warranty, than to assume that having a "reliable" laptop will mean it gives you no problems.