Comment by scholia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scholia | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It doesn't work like that. Most PC "manufacturers" (including Apple) don't make PCs, and they all use the same Taiwanese OEMs/ODMs and Chinese factories. The main ones are Quanta, Compal, Pegatron (spun out of Asus), Foxconn (Hon Hai), Wistron (spun out of Acer), Inventec etc.

Quanta is probably the biggest notebook manufacturer, followed by Compal and Pegatron. Compal and Pegatron probably have the best quality overall.

Most PC suppliers use several manufacturers, sometimes as many as five (Dell, I think). Asus currently uses Pegatron, Compal and Wistron, so it's average quality should be pretty good.

It's a tough business because the number of viable contract manufacturers is growing while the number of viable PC OEMs is shrinking. (No more Gateway, Compaq, TI, IBM etc, except as brands.)

In addition, companies with large volume sales can afford to offer several product ranges aimed at different markets. Dell, for example, has different ranges for consumers (Inspiron is low end, XPS is high end) and for businesses (Latitude, Optiplex, Precision), plus Vostro for the SO/HO market.

So, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to compare, for example, Dell with HP with Lenovo. They all have multiple ranges made in different factories -- and they could all be using the same factories!

You'd really need to compare the same types of laptop (low-end, mid-range, high-end / consumer, business, enterprise) across different PC manufacturers.

If you don't do this, the "worst" brand is likely to be whichever company makes the biggest volumes of really cheap consumer laptops, especially if they don't support them particularly well. This used to be Acer. Today, it's probably Lenovo.

Conversely, the "best" brand is likely to be whichever company makes the smallest volumes of really expensive laptops ;-)

I don't think it's so simple. Sure, Apple makes laptops at the same places as Dell or Lenovo. But I can't imagine Apple releasing, as Dell as, multiple product lines with a glaring quality defect (coil whine). Or consistently using cheaper IPS displays with backlight bleed and PWM like Lenovo. Apple's laptops aren't defect free by any means (e.g. anti glare coating rubbing off, paint rubbing off on the black polycarbonate MacBooks), but they are sporadic and don't seem to be the result of conscious decisions to cut corners.

You'd really need to compare the same types of laptop (low-end, mid-range, high-end / consumer, business, enterprise) across different PC manufacturers.

I'm talking about the high-end range (Thinkpad T series and XPS series).

In fairness, there's also a market for "80-90% of the quality for 40-50% of the cost". Apple's strategy is to stick to high end and that's worked out well for them but for someone like me who uses a laptop only occasionally as a secondary computer or for mobile media stuff (dj, vj, projection art, etc) they just don't offer something I can justify buying.

Last laptop I bought was maybe 3 years ago. I was comparing everything at the local Microcenter and wanted something fairly powerful but not to the point that I was paying a hefty premium for that last "tier" of polish and quality. By sorting the options to include only i7, at least 16GB RAM, dedicated GPU, and at least 1920x1080 display, I was left with some silly Asus that looked like a Michael Bay Transformer, another Asus with a tasteful aluminum chassis, and a Macbook Pro.

The black thing with red LED lighting was out because I guess I am still a bit shallow and superficial. The other Asus had a better GPU, lower quality TN display, and spinning HDD in comparison to the lower-end GPU, nicer IPS display and SSD on the MBP. But the aluminum Asus cost $999 and the MBP was $2399.

I wouldn't have minded buying an Apple notebook if there had been a more affordable option with similar tradeoffs but as you say, they don't make ones like that. And I'd certainly like a nicer screen but not for more than double the price. A SSD was easy enough to swap into the Asus and when I upgraded the one in my desktop, I passed that older SSD down to the laptop.

I guess the main point is that these other OEMs like Asus still do decent sales and produce options with less-than-top-tier parts because there's a real market for those who are fine buying an Accord instead of a Mercedes even if the Mercedes has some superior features or build. Not sure how much of it is artificial (as far as intentionally targeting different price brackets with parts that may only cost the OEM $100-200 less to include).

Either way, as my current budget stands, I'll continue to gravitate toward whatever company can sell me "not quite the best" for half the cost of the top tier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com