I've owned about 25 laptops over the last 7 years. No I am not making this up. Costco used to have a program where ANY computer was returnable for up to 6 months. As soon as I figured this out I was trading in my laptop almost every 2 months, every time a new one came out with better performance at the same price. After a few years of doing this I got my wife on the same program, so we had 2 laptops at once and would stagger the trade in times so we were never without a laptop. This also allowed us to custom order HPs through cosco's website to the exact specs we wanted, while it took 4-5 weeks to have them custom built we didn't care because we had 2, and were staggering the returns, we never were without a computer.
I lost track at 17 but I am guessing we ended up with about 25-30 different laptops over 7 years. Then Costco changed their policy, I'd like to think at the board meeting they brought up my personal account as an example. I never bought ANYTHING at Costco other than the laptop, so my record would only show the many returns. When they did change their policy to not allow returns on computers, I simply allowed my membership to expire, then went and returned the laptop for the last time. See when you make a return with a receipt and no membership, they have no way to give you in store credit so they must give you cash.
So after buying a computer, trading it in every time a new computer came out, and getting ~25 over 7 years, I got a FULL CASH REFUND of my original purchase price. This was the best legal scam ever, basically a free, new, top of the line computer for 7 years. Oh and the return policy, well like I said no questions asked, I even spilt a full beer on the keyboard one time and fried the poor thing, had a brand new one the very next day!
Anyway, the bottom line is I have a lot of experience with all of the major brands. Most of them are total crap. HP and Dell are the worst, Toshiba is only slightly better. After I got my cash refund from Costco I went out and bought a middle of the line Sony, and COULD NOT BE HAPPIER. You will pay slightly more for the same performance, but it is well worth it. The quality of the sony is just so much better in every way, the built in mouse pad, the keyboard, the way the case is made, the list goes on and on.
Also another thing I would recommend, buy a laptop with the least amount of ram you can find, then upgrade it yourself. The reason, the computer companies charge way more for ram than what you can buy it for separately, and the upgrade is very easy to do yourself. I custom ordered my sony and chose to have nicer components but the least amount of ram they offered (I think it was 512), then simply bought 2 gigs for $45. If I would have got the 2 gigs from the start, sony would have charged $200!
