I'm a bit of a laptop aficionado. I own somewhere around 9 or 10 laptops ranging from a 1983 TRS-80 Model 100 to a 2008 Acer Aspire 7540, and there's something I've noticed. Media laptops SUCK. When I say media laptop I'm referring to those glossy widescreen jobbies you see with the hideously low resolution on a 19" screen, all shoved into a laptop with mediocre parts, mediocre pricetag, and absolute [censored] build quality.

My two main beaters right now are an Acer Aspire 7540 (a media laptop from 2008) and a Dell Latitude D600 (business laptop from 2004). I've had the Dell for a lot longer, and as I never took very good care of it. Regardless, the only issues it's developed are the traditional Dell screen wobble, a small dent (not a crack, more on this later) on the back of the screen, and a couple scratches from the time some retard shoved the charger in the same compartment of the laptop, leading to the metal prongs of the plug scraping up my lid. Uargh.

Anyways, now let's look at the much more modern Aspire 7540. I've babied this thing. When I take it somewhere it goes straight into my padded and water-tight aluminium briefcase, and generally it just stays on my desk. Let's see what's gone wrong with this thing...

1. Screen has developed several bright spots. My OCD trembles in agony.

2. Two discolored spots where my hands sit on the keyboard rest. None of my other computers have this, and I keep my hands pretty clean. No clue what's going on here, but I'm guessing it's got something to do with...

3. This thing idles at 65 degrees Celsius. That's *PATHETIC*, and also *AFTER* I re-applied thermal paste (before that it would regularly hit temperatures of 80*C or higher). I've since figured out the reason is because of the [censored] heatsink construction actually leaves a *GAP* between the processor and sink, instead of pressing down on it. Fix? Copper shims, but I shouldn't have to do that.

4. THE GOD-DAMNED STUPID SHINY BULLCRAP ON THE LID. Instead of making it out of colored plastic or painted metal like on the D600, where the lid is made of aluminium so that it bends instead of cracks, it's made of TWO plastics layered in a sandwich of agony. First is the base plastic, which I assume is some sort of uber-strong ABS plastic. Above that is a millimeter-thick layer of shiny fingerprint-magnet plastic that doesn't adhere to the ABS very well, and as a result will flake off if you so much as BLOW on it wrong.

It is important to note that, when new, the D600 was $2000 and the 7540 was $500, but there's also 4-5 years separating the two. You'd think in that amount of time that some of the superior construction from these utilitarian laptops would trickle down to more consumer-oriented wares, but I guess not. And no, these issues aren't just Acer-specific. I've seen them in just about every HP I've laid hands on.

Quick spec comparison:

Dell CPU: 1.6GHz Pentium M
Acer CPU: 2GHz Athlon II X2

Dell RAM: 1GB DDR
Acer RAM: 4GB DDR3

Dell video: Radeon 9000m
Acer video: Radeon HD4200m

Dell screen: 1400x1050
Acer screen: 1600x900

So yes, the Acer is technically superior, but when you use it it just doesn't *FEEL* superior.

I'm going to more or less attribute this crappy build quality in consumer laptops to planned obsolescence/breakage. Consumers expect their crap to break in a few years, and most buy new crap every other year anyways. Business, however, are much more critical of the quality of the machines they buy, and a company such as Dell could stand to lose contracts and large orders with large companies if they get a reputation in the corporate world for building bad business laptops.

Just my two bits. Anyone else have similar experiences?

The only laptops I've ever bought are ThinkPads, but I know what you mean every time I go to Wal-Mart's laptop section.

I've never had a problem with my Acer (except overheating. But, heh, mine's a mainstream 2008 laptop [5735Z])
I suggest to stay away from Samsung N1xx netbooks, their build quality is no good.

I've had two laptops in five or so years. Both of which I'd consider "media" laptops. First up was an HP Pavilion dv6000z which I got in August 2007. This laptop had one of the earlier Turion 64 X2 processors (2.0 GHz TL-60) which were notorious for overheating. Coupled with a discrete 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce GPU, the laptop lasted until April 2008 before the entire motherboard needed replaced due to overheating issues. I never used the laptop in bed or anywhere where the ventilation would be a concern. I believe this was a widespread problem with this generation of HP laptops. To replace that laptop, I went with a Dell Inspiron 1525, another 15.4" glossy, wide-screened "media" laptop. I've had much better luck with this laptop. I used it every day while at school for four years and I've had ho hardware problems with it. It's 1.6 GHz Core 2 Duo and integrated graphics run much cooler than the HP did. As far as durability goes, I tend to treat my gadgets very carefully, always making sure my laptop is in the case before transporting it. I didn't have the HP for long enough for it to really show any wear, but after few years, I imagine it would've been pretty bad. The entire laptop was made of glossy plastic. The Dell on the other hand, has no gloss whatsoever, except for the screen. The lid and inside surfaces are all matte plastic. Now that I'm out of school, I don't really use my laptop at all, so I'm not looking for a new one, but if I were in the market, I'd get a business-class laptop (probably a ThinkPad, I've always loved IBM's/Lenovo's designs).

...which is another thing. Why the hell are glossy screens a "FEATURE" now? I'd much rather have a matte screen that DOESN'T show my reflection in it whenever I look at something black, thanks. I my dell matte monitor and D600s matte-finish LCD.

It doesn't matter that the Acer is newer at all. Its a consumer product built for a consumer society that wants cheap goods and flashy plastics. The computer manufacturers started shipping widescreen laptops because of consumers. Consumers wanted shiny laptops with wide screen displays for movies that are also light and most importantly, very cheap. So, in response to this, manufacturers used cheaper, lighter parts made of plastic instead of metal and ABS. They could skimp on the quality since the average consumer won't keep the laptop in service for very anyway, since when it goes out of style, they will just buy a new one.

Corporate customers (usually) aren't swayed by flashy plastics. They want to be able to order hundreds or thousands of the same exact model. The D600 you had cost just under $2000 when it was introduced in 2003. Corporate laptops in major businesses or government offices are in service from 4 to 8 years before they are replaced. If they tried to use an Acer in this setting, I highly doubt it would have the build quality to stand up for even the shortest deployment.Corporate laptops, like the Latitude series from Dell, have metal frames, shock mounted hard drives and durable keyboards which are far stronger than the consumer products.

TL:DR Consumer laptops are [censored] because consumers want cheap, light and flashy laptops for multimedia and fun.

Acers are just terrible.

As for cooling, laptops are universally poor at this.

I nearly died when I opened up my first-gen EeePC and noticed that the heatsink was the keyboard retainer. That said, it shows how cool-running those 630MHz celerons were, to only reach 50C.

I've also noticed the build quality between home and business laptops seems to be huge. I've seen many people who want me to fix their HP because it has overheat problems, or replace the keyboard because some keys don't work. I also hate the shiny screens. My Latitude E6400 here isn't quite matte but it's far from shiny, looks like an anti-glare finish to me because there is some reflection but I can see right through it and it isn't noticeable when looking at the screen, only when you focus on the reflection.

Another thing is that my laptop here (from 2008 or 2009) just murders most people's new Celerons, Atoms, etc. You would think that 3 or 4 years would give the time for the low end processors to catch up with the old high end ones (this is a 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo T9800).

Another issue I've seen is battery life. This still gets around 2.5 hours battery life 4 years later. I've seen brand new laptops that class mates have that don't hold that charge new. I also still have my Precision M60 with it's original battery that last 40 minutes (OMG! SO MUCH!), but that still was pretty nice for it's time, 1.7 GHz Pentium M, 60 gig 7.2k HDD, 15.4" 1920x1200 display, nVidia Quadro FX go700, and it's 8 years old this year. Most laptops I see from that age that are home laptops don't hold a charge period, and if they do they typically just stay they're charged and just die when you unplug them or they hold maybe 4 seconds.

As for lids, I love the metal finish on my Latitude E6400's screen, as well as the metal on my Precision M60 and my brother's D600. The metal has probably saved my screen many times from when I just throw [censored] on to it, like the cord. It also makes it feel more sturdy when I'm opening and closing it. Not only that I can't press on the back and see screen discoloration or anything, the metal is awesome. My mom's laptop on the other hand is 5 month old Samsung with a plastic screen casing, plastic bottom, plastic everything. I hate even touching the back of hers as it causes screen discoloration.

Now, as for pricing. My E6400 here is almost the best configuration you could get from Dell. It has the 2nd fastest processor (next one was 3.06 GHz, but the difference probably isn't noticable), 4 gigs of ram, 160 gig 7.2k hard drive, backlit keyboard, bluetooth, WWAN, wireless A/B/G/N, 1440x900 display and the nVidia NVS160M. I'm sure someone spent a nice chunk of cash on this new, however I got it for $270 on ebay (minus the WWAN, that's my own addition).

My mom's laptop is a basic laptop, AMD A6-3420M, 4 gigs ram, 500 gig hard drive, Wireless B\G\N, bluetooth and whatever the APU graphics are. Hers was $400 on sale, brand new in the box. It does seem to have great cooling, it idles at 40 degrees which is just slightly more than my laptop which idles at around 38 degrees. Hers also has an Anti Glare display that is very much similar to my laptop screen, only mine's smaller and of a higher res (14.1" 1440x900 vs 15.6" 1366x768).

My brothers laptop on the other hand is a average business laptop. Intel

My brother's laptop is an average 2004ish business laptop. It's a 1.7 GHz Pentium M, 1 gig ram, 40 gig hard drive, Wireless B\G and a Radeon 9000M and a 1400x1050 display. It does have a screen higher than my mom's laptop or my laptop, but it runs insanely warm, it idles at around 50 degrees, even after cleaning and reapplying thermal grease (Arctic Silver 5), and even replacing the heatsink and fan assembly it still runs warm. I'm not sure if that's because it shipped with a 1.2 GHz processor, previous owner upgraded to a 1.6 then I upgraded to a 1.7 with a 2 meg cache or because it just has a crappy cooling system.

"This still gets around 2.5 hours battery life 4 years later. I've seen brand new laptops that class mates have that don't hold that charge new."

Sure makes my D600 look like a hotshot, it gets about 2 to 2.5 and it's 8 years old!

With regards to the shiny spots, all my keyboards develop that after a while from the repeated friction of typing. Dunno why it happened under your palms, though. And honestly, you get what you pay for. "Consumer" laptops tend to be flimsy pieces of crap. If you want quality, you're going to have to shell out for better gear.

Unfortunately, I learned all of this way too well with my first two laptops.

My first one was a cheap piece of crap Toshiba A135. It ran extremely warm for a Celeron 1.73ghz and the 80gb 5400RPM hard drive died after a year of the laptop sitting on my desk. Nice. It had no metal anywhere on the computer so you could push on the back of the screen and it would show "funny colours." Did I also tell you this came out in 2007 and was running Windows Vista? Yeah. You can be extremely sorry for me.

My second laptop is a Dv6z-1100..... Holy crap. This seriously is the most poorly built laptop in the world.

Idling with the screen shut, it's gotten so hot that its melted the keys all together.
Recently the fan that cools both the GPU and CPU started to hit the inside of the case and then crapped out.
The CPU de-soldiered itself from the frickin motherboard.
And HP's service is a joke. I shouldn't have to send a laptop in 6 times to get it to work correctly. (Yes, a week ago I set up my 6th servicing with them for this laptop. I will be selling this laptop on eBay once it comes back due to the fact that I don't want to deal with it. Instead, I'll be buying a PowerBook G4.)
Again, no metal anywhere. Same problem with all these "media" laptops. It had a shiny display which kinda sucked.

My current laptop is a Late-2011 MacBook Pro 15in Core i7 2.6 (I think). Its durable, runs well, and overall is probably one of the better laptops you can buy.

I've dropped it 5 feet on to concrete. That's pretty frickin good because all it has are a few scratches from it.
(Yeah, it was stupid to be carrying my baby outside)

Completely made out of metal.... Now we are getting somewhere.
Unfortunately, I didn't pay to get the matte screen so I'm stuck with an extremely glossy display. Its okay but I wish I put another 100 - 150 into getting it the matte.

One thing I have found though, it gets extremely hot. The trackpad gets extremely hot in the process which makes it hard to use. Sometimes I'll just turn it off for an hour, let it cool down, and the continue using it. Its a good way to get me off the computer 'cause lets face it. I'm on the computer 8 hours a day, everyday. Time to cut back....

Just a little note here:

Most things nowadays have crappy build quality. Plastic, plastic, plastic, that's all I see. Also, don't forget about the crapware! That's another feature in media laptops and pcs: they seem to have even more junk shoved on them when you buy them than others.

Acers are a damn sight better than some other laptops out there, namely HP and Dell. I've never seen a well built HP or Dell laptop, ever. Every acer I've had has been well built. My first acer laptop was given to me and was 7 years old before the power port died and was irriplacable. The 2nd suffered a motherboard failure for backlight control for the screen but it still works besides that. My 3rd acer I bought 2 years ago and is still going strong.

Still, everyone prefers a different brand for different reasons. I've never really had much trouble with acer.

I love my Acer Aspire 5740G, and I use it as my main PC (only other is a cheap netbook). I can't even imagine using my previous Compac laptop, its just way too slow to do simple tasks, and literally can't run games (can't remember model but it was about 1gb ram, WinXP Home). No major problems with my Acer, no heating problems, no screen problems, no colour problems on the laptop (although I know what you mean-my desk has that). I hated the Dells they had at school, must be the worst computers I ever used, and so I haven't even considered buying a Dell, I thought only corporations use them because they are cheap-and the users don't really get a choice.

I actually have the same one So there is at least one other person that agrees with me!

I had a Dell Inspiron 1540 that lasted me three years, and only had to be replaced because it got run over by a car. So there ARE well-built Dell laptops. Sony's better, though.

I was going to say that your problem was the fact that it is an Acer, but others have beaten me to it.
I have used plenty of different laptop brands and Acer is usually on the bottom end next to the HP DV series and the dell studio series.
Best ones I have had the pleasure of using are the dell xps and anything Lenovo. My HP DM series is pretty solid, but it is small and sturdy. Anything shiny is to be avoided.
My 6 year old dell inspiron laptop has held up better than my girlfriend's dell studio that is 2 years old.
And I agree about matte screens. Not available for my HP, but is on every other computer in the house.
My all time favorite is the Compaq armada m700 with solid metal chassis. Still have 3 running, and most are 10ish years old.

The problem I have with MacBooks is that they do run quite hot - there's no ventilation, they're improperly cooled and did I mention that aluminum is a great conductor of heat?

So when you've got a heatsink on your lap, especially if you're a male... yeah. Not so good. On the plus side, you CAN cook with your MacBook!

Hey, that's not limited to MacBooks. I have scars on my leg from the single exhaust port of my old Sony. I literally cooked my leg there.

I know it's not limited to MacBooks, my old ThinkPad T21 got rather warm when it was placed under load. Just saying that heat problems are quite common in MacBooks.

Saw this and couldn't resist, My Macbook Pro gets pretty damn hot when I'm playing Tetris Battle on Facebook. If I knew of a program like SpeedFan for Mac, I would use it. I'm guessing most of the components go to 80 or 90 Celsius when I have Photoshop or just Safari with 10 tabs open. (And yes I ventilate it well.)