laptop decision - ASUS vs Toshiba

I have a Toshiba laptop. It's great. I've never had any real issues with it.

 

All I can say is, during my recent laptop shopping session I test drove about every make and model that could be found on shelves. Asus was my favorite in general performance for value, and all around "feel" of the machine. It's lack of video card however steered me elsewhere. That said, Toshiba is a fine maker as well.

 

I have a 6 year old ASUS S5N 1.7 mhz Pentium Moble laptop sitting on my desk beside me right now.

It has traveled over 360,000 miles as carry on and has gone back and forth to work in my truck a couple of thousand times.

It has a 12 inch screen that has never failed.

All I have ever done to it is image the drive so that I could relplace with a bigger one. The original was a 40 gig then a 120 and now a 360 gig.

It only supports 768 meg of ram and runs XP.

The darn thing will just not die.

I am very happy with it.

 

I have both. But cant really compare as they are generations apart. Both are equally good brands.

The Toshiba is an ancient P3 900 that still runs. CD rom has failed and the keyboard is all messed up due to the kids playing with it.

Asus is a major OEM supplier for almost all major brands. They make everything from motherboards to video cards. As far as I know, the only things they dont make are processors and ram. They make some of the best motherboards out there. My Asus U80 is around 4 months old. Good unit. Just poor speakers.

its a toss up between the 2. Just go for which one has a better after sales service, better specs and price.

 

Square D, an internet company that insures electronics for repair, did a study of laptop reliability, based on their records. Asus and Toshiba were best, and the percentages were very close.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24572434/Square-Trade-Laptop-Reliability-1109

My personal experience with a fleet of Sony Vaios has been very good.

Hewlett-Packard was dead last....

 

I would go for the one that has:

- the best specs (most ram, largest hd space, etc.)
- best feel
- best price.

 

It depends, on what you're looking to spend. I know Toshiba used to be good, but don't know about now. I've heard good about Asus, however, I also don't know anyone that actually owns one.

Frankly, pretty much all the sub $500 to $750 laptops are about the same, crapwise (don't know if this is what your range is). So I would look more at the specs offered if they're about the same pricewise. However, unless you got a really great deal, I'd stay away from HP. Their higher end stuff might be good, but the lower end stuff is garbage in my opinion.



But between Asus and Toshiba, I'd just look at what you get with it if the price is close.

 

Between the two? ASUS

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/05/w...-for-ban-on-toshiba-exports.html?pagewanted=1

 

I was a big fan of Toshiba. Was. My co-worker and I had been impressed enough with their build quality and stability that we bought all Toshiba for a couple of years. Big mistake. Every single one of them crapped out. I'm not talking hundreds, but I'm not talking four or five, either. Their support was no help.

It's been several years, but it'll be a while of watching extended reliability reports before I trust them again.

I don't think Asus is the best laptop maker, but I don't think there's anything wrong with them at all. You get a lot for the price. I vote Asus.

 

Just bought an Asus Eee T91MT today. Been messing with laptops for years. Toshiba used to be the cats *** and still are if you spend $$$.

Price vs price, Asus.

 

I bought the Asus for my wife on the recommendation of my son. He works in a company that writes demo software for manufacturers of new computerized products. The majority of the software department chose them over any others.

I bought the 10.2 hr battery, the memory extension to 4 gigs and the 10" screen......It has bneen flawless. I would buy it again. $400.

 

I have an Asus and it's been great so I highly recommend.

 

The only laptops my friends have ever had problems with were Toshiba, but this experience was a few years back. I had to help my boss a couple of times take the battery out of hers to shut it down. I presently have an Asus EEE netbook which is pretty solid (I installed Fedora 12 Linux on it, of course).

 

what he said, i have three toshibas, around four yrs old, they have held up very well, prior i had a sony vio, quite expensive, but tough as nails....

 

I recently bought a Toshiba notebook after quite a bit of research. During the process, I ran across a lot of positive endorsements for certain Asus models. FWIW, my wife is a CIO and heads a rather large IT department as part of her responsibilities and she said: "The brand is a start in the selection process...but...you also have to investigate the specific model under consideration. At times...some models of brands like Acer are quite comparable to more expensive competitors."

 

I'm typing this on an Asus laptop. I've been very happy with the priceerformance:reliabilty:feature set. I would probably not buy another Asus but that's because of the hit or miss driver updates for their laptops. This laptop is not that old but Asus never released Win7 or Linux drivers. They made available (via their pretty slow and shoody website) the first set of drivers that shipped with the lappy and then completely forgot about model.

This is not a "budget" laptop, it's a 17" desktop replacement.

That said, it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things for most users. Their customer service was very responsive when I had fan go out on this machine (which isn't an indication of build quality, fans are mechanical, mechanical parts fail).

I fix computers for a living, I have worked on every major OEM on the market (except Gateway, remarkably) and they're all pretty much the same as far as build quality and components. The money differences between them is almost always what you're paying for service AFTER the purchase. OEMs can vary wildly on THAT score.

Asus provides good value. Toshiba charges 40 dollars for the recovery disks they should have shipped with their laptops. Unless they did ship you disks (very low chance) in which case it's only 25 dollars.