Originally Posted by
Phil Thien
I believe many of the newer machines from HP, Toshiba, Sony, etc., are made by a common manufacturer (I'm thinking Foxconn, Acer, or Asus). Used to be, machines were designed here in the states (or IBM Japan, where the ThinkPads were designed, I believe), and then manufactured in China, etc. There were substantial differences from one brand, to another.
Now I think what is going on is Foxconn, Acer, and Asus are developing designs and shopping them to major manufacturers. So it isn't unusual for the same basic design to be marketing under multiple brands.
Also, I've seen an increase in the # of machines with hard drives that are not easily removed. Dell and some others have designs now where the hard drive is screwed to the motherboard. Seeing as the hard drive is about the most likely part to fail, this is unacceptable. So whatever you buy, I'd make sure you can easily get to the hard drive.