What are the best and worst laptop manufacturers.

Best:

Dell and Lenovo

Worst:

Don't know any particularly bad one.

As you said, Apples aren't bad but they're not worth the price.

I have a Toshiba. It runs Windows 95 and has a floppy drive, and still works.

Dell - Total arse. Died in 5 weeks, and their customer service just blew me off every time. Never got it replaced or refunded, since they would hang up during 'tests' they demanded I do before I could get either. Never giving them money again.

This isn't really a good question. The majority of laptops are designed and manufactured by the same handful of companies. Failures in consumer laptops are pretty much all down to luck unless there's a major design flaw.

And then there are business class laptops which are completely different in terms of reliability. Dell and HP are great here while people seem to dislike their consumer laptops.

I like HP. Have HP now, last was HP, sister has HP

Worse: Acer, (HP seems cheap too, never used one, but I had other products of that brand like
scanner and it wasn't good quality, cheap plastic, bad software, but at least it doesn't breaks, but seems ozo2003 may disagree.)

Best: Asus, Lenovo, Sony, Apple(yes it's overpriced, you may hate it, but the quality is just one of the best, but I don't recommend you buying it lol)

Had my dell inspiron 15r for a year now it's refurbished and I really like it :) Not bad for the refurbished price and was meant for school but is ok for a bit of gaming too.

My last laptop was a Toshiba, lasted 5 yrs, then had a friend of my (ex)husband upgrade the hd to something new with more space and it still ran beautifully. Then gave it to the ex (it was still running great, btw, just old and I wanted something newer for games and the stuff I do). Got another Toshiba, and have had it for a yr and half and runs perfectly.

Since laptops are carted around a lot and moved around a lot, how they are handled and how often, can play a BIG part in how well the hold up; plus, so can environment, natural hit-or-miss manufacturing defaults that comes with buying ANY electronic, and even depending on what grade it is within the laptop brand. All brands are going to have the cheapo junk and their high grade stuff and everything in between.

Edit: Skype seems to make EVERYTHING run hotter than normal is my experience. I have it on my phone, had it on another, and have it on my kindle, as well as the laptops, and when it is in use, they all start to get a little warmer; though only when video chat is going on the laptop and I have games going too. XD THAT doesn't help. But my phone gets REALLY hot sometimes when I have skype running.

Sony used to be amazing. I had one from 1997 or 1998 (not sure now) that took 12 years of daily use to die. The low end one I had in 2008 was pretty alright, but cost too much. My last one was a beast (F series), but died in a year, and Sony refused to acknowledge anything wrong (despite lots of similar deaths pouring in at the year/year and a half mark). Not sure what to think of them anymore, but spending that much on a laptop to have it die in a year and not being compensated at all despite it being due to a clear issue with the model itself... well, that doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth.

I have a Lenovo Y510p SLI now with excellent specs. Plays everything on ultra so far and was still only ~$1100. It's too new to comment on quality really, but I love everything about it: great speakers for a laptop, beautiful screen, responsive keyboard, etc. I'll see how it does as time goes on I guess.

edit: Your Toshiba sounds like my stepdad's. It's a Satellite too. I assumed it was due to how terribly he treats it, but it has all the same issues as yours.

my first laptop was a compaq. never had a problem with it. that was before hp bought compaq though, so i wouldn't pay much attention to that anymore.

i've had 2 toshiba laptops problems. the first (a tecra) one's problem you can't count against toshiba: it fell off the desk and landed on the pcmcia card (anyone remember those?) which tore the connector off the board. the second (a satellite) problem is the hinge for the screen got loose, so there was a couple degrees of wiggle room from where you set it. i recycled the tecra but am still using the tecra with the latest ubuntu installed.

my wife is on her 2nd acer laptop -- she liked the first one enough that she requested i get her an acer the next time around. we share an asus netbook which had a usb port that fit really tight and ended up tearing the outer part of a usb plug off when i pulled it out with a pliers. other than that it's been great. my main laptop is also an asus which has been awesome.

none of these are gaming laptops -- the compaq and the toshibas were business laptops and the asus i'm using now is an ultrabook that uses intel hd graphics.

Best for me would be Asus and MSI. Bought a Dell XPS 15 L502X and it was one of the worst laptops ever, kept on freezing after playing a game for a while >:(

The Dell I had bought for my dad in 2010 still works ... that's my experience anyway. The only crappy thing about it is the 5400rpm drive they use in laptops.

I've only ever had 2.

My Dell Inspiron 15R is about 4 years old and it's still running ok. Might have to replace the hard drive soon as I've heard the arm click once or twice recently which I'm led to believe is a pain with this model. It's been fine when I've been using it though.

First one was an Acer Aspire. Had to have the heatsink reseated when it was still under warranty and it totally fell apart after 3-4 years. The hinges on the screen came away from the case so I used to have to lean the screen against something. The CD drive became hard to close. The casing became very discolored just next to the touchpad where I'd rest my hand. The screen has 2 thin lines running down it from when the hinges broke off. The bezel/border around the screen is cracked. The strip that covers the on switch and a few other buttons fell off. The power adaapter started to fit badly in the back of it. I had quite a few BSOD's with it during it's time too. In an absolute emergency I could still use it.

My experience with older Toshibas (Mine would have been about a decade old if I still had it) was that it always always always ran hot. I've avoided Toshibas since then.

had lenovo g550 worked for 5 years almost 24/7 then charger died, replaced it and still runs, meanwhile bought lenovo g500 and runs also 24/7 and next one will also be lenovo... my buddie bought hp, died in a month had to wait two months for new one, sister-in-law got acer which simply died after warranty ended (3 years)... so im sticking with lenovo

Alienware is master race.

I really like my Dell. Been a solid laptop for the last 2-3 years. I'd also recommend Apple laptops as they use a unibody metal frame and metal hinges. Gives the whole thing a less "cheap" feel and is physically less likely break apart. They are pricey, but still rank among the best if you can afford them :)

Older laptops generally are far better built than newer ones unless you are prepared to fork out.

I only had 2, one was an old Acer, which was pretty good actually. I had it for 5 years, before the battery couldn't run for longer than 40min, also it was too heavy for the university, so I bought a Macbook Air for that, which I got quite cheap and I'm happy with it and I have to say it feels better than most other laptops, but it is still a bit pricey and the touchpads for Macbooks are way better than those of most others.

Best: Asus (massive and ugly like a russian tank, but as durable too)

Worst: Samsung (HORRIBLE)

Acer tends to overheat

I've been looking for a budget laptop myself. So far, the one I'm looking to buy is the HP Pavilion 15 TouchSmart (n232sa). Any thoughts on this? My priority specs are the processor, RAM, and battery life.

My first Dell lasted many years, my 2nd Dell needed to be repaired within 2 months and it took way longer than they promised.
I have mixed feelings about Dell

"What are the best and worst laptop manufacturers."

There are only about a half dozen main laptop manufacturers in the world, not a single one has yet to be mentioned in this thread, and most people probably have no idea who they are. (Also explains people's had a good one and a bad one from same company stories)

Current list via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manufacturers#Original_DesignManufacturers.28ODMs.29

Quanta sells to (among others) HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, Fujitsu and NEC  
Compal sells to (among others) Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo and HP/Compaq  
Wistron (former manufacturing & design division of Acer) sells to Dell, Acer, Lenovo and HP  
Inventec sells to Toshiba, HP and Lenovo  
Pegatron sells to Asus, Toshiba, Apple, Dell and Acer  
Foxconn sells to Asus, Dell, HP and Apple  
Flextronics (former Arima Computer Corporation notebook division) sells to HP

Interesting that very few of the laptops mentioned are gaming laptops.

Personally I like Sager/Clevo. They aren't beautiful or especially lite, but you can't beat the bang for your buck performance. The Gigabyte gaming laptops look like they have nice performance for their weight, but that comes with the cost of loud fans.

Alienware is expensive and bulky. Macs have great hardware, but not for the additional cost.