>looking for a new laptop. She is comparing Lenovo, Dell, and HP (this specific model). I know that Lenovo and Dell have a good reputation. But HP, I am not so sure. And Lenovo and Dell would cost (for the same memory - both SSD and RAM - size) about $500 more. She will not be doing IT study, just the school stuff. But she likes to have the latest and the greatest (my genes :)).
>..
>>>Back in spring 2015 I bought the HP Spectre. It is a great laptop. Brilliant display, performed well. Even those who slam HP have acknowledged the Spectre is a great product.
>>>The mouse can take a little getting used to - IMHO.
>>>I wound up getting a Lenovo a year later, because the Lenovo had 16 GB of memory. The Spectre I bought only had 8. (Though I see that the Spectre also now comes with 16 GB)
>...
>>Thank you very much. This helps big time for her to make the decision.
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>Cannot comment on the specific machine. I was never a fan of Dell, but bit before turn of the century a whole group I know more or less went with Dell for 8 - 12 years. Continous downtrend both in bang-for-buck and service, none of them bought a Dell in the last 4 years.
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>Lenovo: no bad words about any machine type anywhere, but you pay for that with 10-20% higher prices. Not as bad a markup as some Apple stuff, but clearly not calculated to give you great deals at the counter - only in retrospect. Expirienced it with 2 tablets and 2 laptops: sturdy and rugged. 1 tablet died, but that IS ***my*** fault: I am harsh on micro-USB, killed 3 different devices ;-)
>Aquaintance going for bang-for-buck swears on buying refurbished 18 month old machines from Lenovo, laptop and desktop.
>
>HP quality was/is all over the place: over 9 years I witnessed a not too shabby insurance company use HP exclusively, switching from back-then-IBM-Lenovo. Some machines were wonderful, some were abysmal. Tech support, when needed, was always abysmal with HP (might be totaly diffrent stateside...)
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>Myself quite happy with Fujitsu: all laptops falling from 90+ cm onto marble floor (once speeded up A LOT by foot-entangled power chord) boot and are usable, even if 1 has screen casing broken+taped, another splintered DVD but everything else works. Zombie machines to look at after the fall, but chugging along, used now only for surfing and media serving ;-))

Thank you very much for your input. I will pass it on to my daughter.