Which 17" Laptop to Buy?

Wynona said:

OK, I know this has probably been asked before, but as we all know, technology changes from day to day, so . . .

My friend wants a new 17" laptop. Ideally it will have a backlit keyboard, but she can live without it.

So far, we've found a Lenovo with 4GB RAM and a 1T hard drive and I know several folks here have one. She hasn't heard of Lenovo before, so she's being overly cautious (which I would advise anyway).

I'd like to hear opinions on what she should get and how much she should pay.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Ask her if she has heard of IBM. IBM spun off their PCs to Lenovo some time ago, also spun off their HDDs to Hitachi who probably made them anyway.

I don't see many Lenovo in my area but a neighbor/client has a 15.6" model, seems to be as good as the other brands. I have an older Dell Studio 17/1747 which runs Win10 just fine but its biggest drawback is size and weight, not an issue if it is used as a Desktop replacement. There doesn't seem to be as great a choice of 17.3" as there used to be.

I have a Dell 17" (Vostro 3750) that was chosen after much thought . It does have the backlit keyboard and tbh that is a really nice feature. Have to say I've been very very pleased with it. The single biggest upgrade in performance though was in slotting in a SSD. I would not have believed the difference that made. Everything is instant.

I also have an old Acer, and while I have to say its been brilliant in that its never suffered any hardware problems, it did suffer with a hinge problem despite me being super careful. Most users were seeing these fail in warranty... mine lasted 5.5 yrs. I've fixed that myself and its going strong at 9.5 yrs old now. Would I recommend Acer... well I have an Acer tablet and that has a display fault (a green line down the side) and which at 3 yrs old is out of warranty. The hours on the tablet wont even run to 3 figures and so I would say no to Acer.

Have a look at Dell and check out the business models (the Vostro was one such).

I would stick to HP if they have a laptop she would be interested in. My present laptop is an Acer, it's face works fine, but I don't like the keyboard at all. Anyone else might get used to it, but it's very difficult for me to. I usually buy HP which had been very nice and if I have a problem the techs at HP are very nice to deal with.