Laptop Guruji - Brand Battles

ACER

Some Acer laptops provide decent keyboards and touchpads but their Chromebooks and budget laptops suffer from very bad key-travel and mushy key-clicks. Temperature Control is not Acer's forte as the laptops tend to run hot but manageable. Tech support is mediocre with Acer's representatives always bugging you to extend your warranty. Acer provides minimal bloatware but their BYOC (Build Your Own Cloud) Software is innovative where you can access your HDD remotely.

APPLE

The only reason to buy Apple's MacBook’s is for their MAC OS and the "Retina" (just a fancy name for high resolution) displays. While hugely overpriced when considering the specs, these laptops are just beautiful to look at. The older models provide a nice selection of ports but the latter ones skimp on them for slimness. Expect to buy a lot of adapters if you're planning to connect a lot of peripherals. Their keyboards have a satisfying tactile feedback but the key travel is very short. Tech support is the best you'll get from a laptop company with prompt service and don't expect to find the word bloatware in their dictionary.

ASUS

Asus makes some of the coolest laptops on the planet. Even under heavy load, the bottoms of their laptop never become hot. Keyboards and Touchpads are excellent on all models and port availability is vast but their laptops are generally heavier. Tech support is again not its forte as an average call to Asus' call centre will last 19 minutes. Bloatware is at a minimum and Asus provides 5GB free Cloud Storage on its Cloud service and a few of its editing software’s.

DELL

A well respected brand, Dell provides a vast selection of laptops. XPS for its premium users, Inspiron for the budget ones, Latitude for business people and the all mighty Alienware for those rich gamers out there. All of their laptops look sleek with a decent providal of ports. Keyboards are very good with more than decent travel and feedback. Alienware also provides some of the funkiest keyboards thanks to their backlighting features. While Dell's call centres aren't the best, their active twitter account makes up for it by answering your queries in an instant. Bloatware is at a minimum with only Dell's PocketCloud and My Dell for tech support included in its laptops.

HP

Audio is where HP laptops really shine. Featuring beats by Dr Dre and Altec-Lansing branded speakers, sound quality is exceptional. But the keyboards and touchpads are on the other end of the spectrum with arrow keys fit for Ant-Man and terrible travel. If you're a coder or a typist, then avoid HP like Ebola. Ports are generously available and tech support is exemplary. Hp adds quite a lot of its proprietary software but keeps third party software to a minimum.

LENOVO

Lenovo offers great value for money laptops. Their ThinkPad business line is well respected; enough for NASA to allow them on their space stations. When it comes to keyboards, Lenovo is in a class of its own featuring brilliant feedback and well placed full sized keys. In order to price their laptops competitively, Lenovo skimps on the display and build quality. Port offerings are quite good with a VGA port still being offered on some models. Tech support is average and nothing to boast about and neither is the amount of bloatware (or adware in this case) that comes preloaded on the budget Lenovo laptops. Be sure to delete these third party software so that they don't silently eat away your laptop's resources or hamper its security.

MSI

MSI specialises in Gaming laptops and sets the benchmarks for innovation. Being the first laptop manufacturer to provide a mechanical keyboard on a laptop and desktop class CPUs, its laptops are nothing short of revolutionary. The membrane keyboards are good too but nothing to boast about even with the Steel-Series branding. The software provided by MSI is quite useful and they mainly focus on optimizing the laptop's performance.

SAMSUNG

Not featuring much of variety, Samsung's line up mainly consists of Chromebooks and Ultra portables. While good to look at, the keyboards are disappointing to type on with mushy feedback and very short travel. But one area that Samsung shines at is the Support department. It has a feature called SPOT (Smart Personal Online Training) which connects laptop owners with knowledgeable Samsung representatives. The software provided is interesting too with Samsung Side Sync which stands out as it allows you to answer calls on your laptop when connected to your Samsung Smartphone.

TOSHIBA

Generally featuring boxy and unattractive designs, Toshiba laptops are heavy and not very popular. The key travel is very limited in their keyboards and the touchpads are subpar. Port offering is surprisingly very nice and so is their proprietary software featuring no bloatware and innovative applications such as Nuance’s Dragon Assistant for hands-free voice control.