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5930 Posts
HP DV laptop range had issues all the time because there are frankly a huge amount of design flaws with their laptops. Poor design, build quality, and poor cooling combine to produce a very unreliable laptop. You mileage may vary but I wouldn't touch HP's consumer line (or any consumer laptop in general besides Asus and Apple) simply because the build quality on most of them actually offends me.
Not sure if they revised them but holy shit the old plastic ones were fucking awful to service because they'd literally be dead within 2 years as the HP design team forgot that GPUs do actually get hot, you need good connectivity with thermal pads, etc etc while engineering them. Nice of HP to host assembly literature on their websites though because that makes life easier to get inside and repair them.
Business laptops are good because you tend to get warranty that is actually useful and the build quality/design is a hell lot better in general (but not always, Lenovo's T300 and T400 do have some annoying design problems but at least they don't flex and feel like tanks). You pay for what you get I guess.
I'd actually suggest a refurbished Apple laptop. If all he needs is something that can run Maple Story and do general casual stuff, there isn't a single reason why you should be dicking around comparing high end laptops with i7s because realistically he will not notice a single difference between it, an i5, or an i3. Apple laptops might have lower specs but everything else about them is generally much better.
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Sandy Bridge is amazing. Obviously the HP one beats the lenovo one at everything except size. You want the high res screen because if you do ANYTHING other than play games on it, a higher res monitor on a laptop is always better. Because SC2 is mostly CPU bound, you'll probably get perfectly fine fps for SC2 on medium-high. Never expect to play anything on ultra-equivalent on a laptop.
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hp and dells are terrible for reliability. even though the specs suck compared to the others i'd rather go with the lenovo. check into asus's, toshiba's and MSI's they're all excellent for reliability (which is what you want in a laptop since almost everything is nonuser replaceable).
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Thanks Starfries and Womwomwom(Lol what a name). That's some of the insight I needed. As for the Apple option, he doesn't like Apples, neither do I really. Apples are what it is is because of their great marketing skills. That's my opinion anyway! I did check into Asus, not Toshiba or MSI though because I doubt they would have Sandybridge laptops for under 1000. And..the thread ends. He already purchase the HP one. Thanks guys!
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Answering the OP's question: Lenovo laptops are famous for reliability! They even have something like air bags for the hard drives (if it's under their Active Protection). The chassis is always of a higher quality on a Lenovo than HP or Dell. I wouldn't recommend an IdeaPad though; Go all out with a Thinkpad (I personally prefer the T series)! Lenovo is the top tier brand for build quality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinkpad#Features
Personal Opinions: I would not get a Lenovo unless you actually plan to use it for work, or you have the money. Lenovos are no joke when it comes to build quality: It would be THE go-to laptop for mission critical data. However, Thinkpads aren't too great for gaming... Alienware is the top tier brand in gaming laptops. If your friend plans to play any sort of game on it, do a quick Google search to see if others are satisfied with its performance. My buddy bought a netbook, but didn't do his research; it uses Intel GMA 500, which doesn't support OpenGL, so he can't play his favourite game (Minecraft!).
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