Laptop dying- how to keep it working, tips for new purchase?

Dichotomy

So, as one might guess by the title, this laptop is dying.

I bought it... nearly two years ago now? It's a Compaq, a Compaq Presario V3000 to be more precise. Of course, it was after the purchase that I did some research and heard through the grapevine that Compaqs have a tendency to crap out after a while.

First thing to go was the internal cooling fan, I guess. I mean, about eight months ago this thing would start to overheat and shut down if I taxed it too thoroughly- running games, mostly. I managed to deal with that problem by propping it up at the corners and setting up a fan beside it to get airflow going underneath the thing. Bam, problem solved, if a little noisily and awkwardly.

Second thing was the wireless card. Okay, so now I run a cable from the laptop to the router three feet away. Not so bad. Keep in mind that I haven't had a need to keep my laptop portable for a good year now.

I'd like to mention here that I had to move my laptop about a week ago, and the battery life has faded to about thirty seconds. That is not a joke. If I take this laptop off of the outlet's power, it lasts a good half a minute before it goes into Hibernate mode with all sorts of "DANGEROUSLY LOW BATTERY" messages.

The final thing to break, so far, seems to be the entire laptop. I can't even think of a reason why this next thing would happen. It first started... four months ago, I think? I woke up in the morning and hit the power button, and all the lights went on- and that was it. Nothing on the screen, no CD drive activity, just lights on. There would be no activity at all all afternoon. I turned it off and went off to work, and when I got home I figured "Well, why not" and started opening compartments. I only had one year's warranty, anyways. To my surprise, after I took out the hard drive, looked at it, and put it back in, it all started up like nothing had gone wrong. I was still a little confused, but hey.

That's happened another three to four times now since then. I will wake up one morning, and my laptop will turn on, but not "activate". There's no surefire way to get it to work, but after a few hours of inactivity, I will hit the power button and hey, look, it's all starting up like the day I bought it. Happened just this morning, which is what provoked me to make this post. Needless to say, I'm hella confused. I'm not a computer person.

So.

If anyone could tell me what the hell is going on here, please, I would love to know. I run Norton every week, it doesn't register anything. I defragged after the last time this happened, and it didn't do anything, as you can see. If there are any ways I can safely prevent this from happening, keep this zombie laptop alive a little longer, I'd be ecstatic.

Next, this computer is scrap. Slag, junk, garbage, whatever you want to call it. I'm going off to college in the fall, and I am going to need a working laptop- a well-working, reliable one, complete with self-cooling ability and wireless card. I'm not going to buy it for another few months, knowing the speed technology moves, so I'm not interested in specific makes and models. I would like to know brands. I want a company that makes a solid laptop. Something that can withstand serious abuse and last for years. Not that I'm one to abuse his valuable electronics- but after this experience, I want a laptop that can stop a bullet and still, I don't know, burn a CD, or play a game.

Next time I should probably opt for an extended warranty. Thanks for your time.

ihmmy

I would recommend not bothering with Dell. They used to be an amazing company, my first laptop from then lasted nearly 5 years (and a technofriend puttered with it and has it running again tbh). My second however, well, it hates me. The video card is crap, the support is useless, etc. I don't know who precisely is good anymore, but Dell ain't it

Pheezer

If you want reliable hardware, go with Toshiba, Lenovo or Apple. I'd personally suggest Apple, but that's me. You're going to pay for reliable hardware, but you can either spend $600 on your Dell/HP/Compaq laptop now, and another $600 in two years, or $1200-$1800 now and have it for four+ years.

I'm on an iBook I've been running for four years now, it runs slightly faster than it did when I bought it (upgraded the OS to 10.5 from 10.3), and it's still worth around $500 on the used market. It was $1500 when I bought it, and that was with the bluetooth (two years before it was standard) and a RAM upgrade.

Partialartist

I have to echo the sentiments in the thread so far. I bought a cheap Dell about a year and a half ago. My original powersource crapped out on me, so I had to get a universal one. That worked for a little bit, but now it won't always register when I plug it in. The powersource works fine. It's the slot that it plugs into that's wonky. That's just scratching the surface of my problems with the thing. I was going to get some RAM for it, so that Photoshop would run better, but with the issues I've been having, I'm just going to get a new notebook. I'm looking at Lenovo or Toshiba and will probably spend ~$1500, instead of the ~$600 I spent on the Dell. It'll be worth it to have a decent, reliable machine.

corcorigan

Yeah, you get what you pay for, sadly. More monies = better laptop.

HiredGun

As far as your current problems, it sounds like it might be a heat issue. A friend of mine had very similar problems with his laptop - would shut down during intense use, then gradually become less and less reliable as far as even powering on and POSTing. We opened 'er up and discovered that the thermal grease had degraded a lot, hampering the heat transfer between the cpu and the cooling parts. We took out the cpu, cleaned it up and applied a new layer of thermal grease, and the laptop worked like a charm after that.

But it sounds like you're getting a new system anyway. I absolutely swear by my Dell, which has served me better than any computer I've ever had before, including those I've built myself - but I bought it five years ago, and have heard a ton of bad news about Dell since then. The Sony VAIO and the Lenovo Thinkpad remain great notebook computing machines in almost every regard, but the hitching point is price... you will definitely be parting with well upward of $1000 for a decent rig.

Do you have a price range in mind?

Zonkytonkman

i've got a hp 500$ jobby

it's largely crap. the battery is a joke.