What laptop should I buy?

[burkhard]

This is one of those threads that could go on forever, but one thing you might want to check --

We bought an HP laptop for my wife a year or two back, not because of any loyalty to HP, but because the price/performance ratio seemed a good match.

Only after we had it and she had used it for a month or two did we figure out that the battery is not user-serviceable. I never would have bought it if I had realized that. Obviously this is the trend for things that need to be especially tiny, like many smart phones and tablets. On a laptop, though, I consider it unforgivable and unfathomable. In all the many laptops I've "owned" (work machines) over the years, the batteries always crap out within a couple years, sometimes less. User-replaceable batteries are a must.

I didn't even think to look as I had never seen that in all the laptops I've used. I'm not sure if HP does this across their line or how many other companies do it as well now, but it would be a deal-breaker for me.

Yes, I can take it apart and it probably isn't that hard, but it's one more thing I need to deal with instead of my wife just easily exchanging a dicey one with a new one. The original one she has now has degraded down to a run capacity of under an hour, so it's going to need dealing with soon.