Korean Job Discussion Forums

fakeplastiktree · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Location: Northeast Seoul

I will be returning to Korea for the fall semester and I'm looking into buying a new laptop before I leave (one that will hopefully last longer than its unfortunately short-lived and expensive Dell predecessor). I don't have a ton of money to spend but I will spend what's needed to get a high quality laptop, provided it will (presumably) last for a while. I've used exclusively PCs in the past but I'm not averse to making the switch to a Macbook, if that's what's in my best interests. Essentially, I'd like to buy a brand of laptop that can be serviced under warranty while I'm in Korea, in case I have any problems with it. What are my best options?

eamo · Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.

I really don't believe that, of the top 6-7 laptop makers, one is especially better than another.

Just get the best deal you can get by any of the famous brands. The fastest CPU, the biggest HDD, the most RAM......etc.....

.......concentrate on the spec of the machine. Brand is increasingly unimportant in the global market. All the makers go to great lengths to be competitive with each other and many share component suppliers.

Any well-known brand will have an A/S center in Yongsan, Seoul. Maybe even other locations. They should service foreign-bought laptops without question.

headache · Joined: 02 Jun 2009

I believe that what the previous poster wrote is "mostly" true.

We have an Hp laptop, a TG, 2 Samsung (one is an old P3 (2002), still working perfectly and used by my kids to watch videos and play little kids games) and a Toshiba. I can tell you that HP/Compact often have issues with their laptops. Toshiba has been 99% good to us. TG is fine and Samsung has been the best. That's my personal experience. I might be lulcky, but I don't think so, not with Hp anyway.

About Hp, you can often find good deals, but I believe you get what you pay for. For instance, recently they began a recall on batteries because of two accidents in the States where the battery exploded/caught on fire. I was afraid that I had one of those, but turns out I don't. My wireless internet is dead, though, and the only option I have is to change the whole motherboard. This is a well-known problem with HP/Compact computers and they even extended their warranty for an extra year because of that, BUT you have to be in either the States or Canada to be able to take advantage of it. Otherwise, you can get the motherboard changed in Korea, but I was quoted about 200,000 for it, so I'm thinking of buying a card instead to plug into my laptop angd get the wireless that way... heard it might be around 15,000 won. Also have another problem with my HP: it keeps freezing these days. I'm not sure why, but someone who had the same problem wrote about using NVdia upgrades from HP rather that from Nvidia and it solved the problem. Anyway, I'm wasting a lot of time just making this one work, and it's really p***ing me off.

One piece of advice, whatever laptop you want to buy, take it easy: take time to browse the Web to see if there is any know issue with it. If I had known about the HP one, I'm not sure I would have bought it.

Cordova · Joined: 14 Apr 2009

I've had pretty good luck with Toshiba (owned 9 or 10). If you watch Toshibadirect.com, they periodically come out with good deals (all tax free) and free shipping in the U.S.

swigs · Joined: 20 Apr 2008

I would recommend checking out the new macbooks. They just lowered the prices so that they are comparable to what Dell and other companies would offer hardware wise. But even at those prices you still getting a lot more for the price: including a better OS, included basic creative suite for photos, music, and movies. (none of those things come with windows that I know of)

Here is a PCmag article about the lowered prices: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166362/reassessing_the_apple_tax.html

Bought my macbook in 2006 and it's still rocking. Plan to upgrade when I go back later this year to a macbook pro. And you can load a Windows OS with boot camp so you can access internet explorer if you ever need to. (Korean internet banking, etc)

The new OS that Mac is releasing in supposed to upgrade the performance of current multi-core processors and GPUs. And the new OS is automatically both 64bit and 32bit compatible, unlike windows where you have to choose between 32bit or 64bit, making it more confusing for the user. (Windows 7 is more like Vista plus.)