Need Advice on a New Laptop

[Gonz]

I am looking to buy a new laptop. I don't use a desktop ever, so I need one that I can do everything on, including games. I have been looking at Alienware and Dell XPS (i have an older model of this right now). Anyone have any experiences with Alienware or suggestions on another company that would be better to build a laptop that can do it all?

[Veratu]

If you want a hot laptop, that you pay way too much for, buy an Alienware... otherwise Dell has a solid bang for the buck on their XPS line.

Just make sure it has the processor/screen/video/memory/hard drive space you want, and the rest is just fluff no matter who you buy from.

My XPS Gen2 has been solid (I know you have one too) .. so just ask yourself, has your XPS been good to you? If so, get a newer model and call it a day. Cuda has a new model XPS, he replaced his XPS Gen2 with another model and he loves it.

If you massage the coupon/discount system just right you can really drive Dells prices down... sometimes it takes a week or 2, but if you arn't in a rush then that week or two could save you $500 or more in costs.

-V

[Veratu]

One other thing, I'd wait a little bit, the 8700M GPU's just got released to the mobile market, so the prices on the 7 series will come down and if you want "latest and greatest" then it'll be worth waiting for the 8700.

-V

[llanedd]

I am looking to buy a new laptop. I don't use a desktop ever, so I need one that I can do everything on, including games. I have been looking at Alienware and Dell XPS

I'd look at Sager notebooks. They are the OEM for Alienware and you get the identical laptop without the paintjob for about a third of the price.

I bought mine from http://www.powernotebooks.com/ and I highly recommend them.

[Braindrop]

I've recently stopped buying Dells because of a service issue, and bought my wife a new HP laptop that is much nicer than the Dell she had in terms of ergonomics and features IMO.

That said, I have an Dell Inspiron 1705 that has served me well for over a year.

[Veratu]

What HP series did you get? I've never been happy with the 2 HP's I've owned. The D series practically burned my fucking leg off, and the 7k series just decided to stop working one day.

I've had 2 Acer's as well .. yah fuck those pieces of shit .. and Sony Vaio blows ass too.

Dell is one of the few (I hate to say it) that's actually held up over the test of time and continues to work, and lived well beyond its warranty life.

Much of it of course depends on how well you treat your equipment too ...

-V

[Prybutok]

I hav a soft spot for Dell because for the longest time it seemed they were the only company to have discrete video cards in their laptops.

[Deadmere]

I'd have to second the sager recommendation. They do OEM for alienware.

I've had two of their boxes, and they're pretty good. You'll save a bit by dropping the brand name too.

www.powernotebooks.com is a reseller for sager, machines are shipped from sager, not the reseller, and you'll have to deal with sager for any repair issues. They're a little annoying, but probably not moreso than most.

That said, I just scored a brand new apple powerbook for $3K (for work), and it's pretty sweet. Play's WoW at 1900x1200 just fine on its 17" screen.

[Prybutok]

is there a good site for used/reconditioned laptops?

[Rathic]

ASUS.

i had my laptop built, which i would suggest anyway, but the ASUS box i got came with a pretty rockin ati card.

handles WoW and whatnot perfectly. however, i have a bit of old tech in it, using core duo 2.0ghz processors. 2gig of ddr2.

i get about 60fps on wow. works really well.

cost around 1100.

[Fydax]

I've had 2 vaio's, never had any problems with them - current one is an SZ series which gives you the ability to disable the geforce 7000 series chip in favor of extended battery life.

[remagi]

I actually still have a Vaio from almost 3 years ago, and don't want to give it up even though it's lagging on the CPU front. It weighs 5 lbs, has a discrete video card (ATI R300/"9800" part), and lasts almost 5 hours on a battery charge.

It's only downside is it's a 2GHZ pentium-m, but damn, it's really hard to match the particulars of this thing on todays market, period. I can easily exceed it in CPU power, but all of those are giant, have lower battery life, or use Intels complete piece of shit "video hardware".

-Remagi

[Dilusion]

2 of my friends have Sager laptops and they both had to buy external cooling fan attachments because of overheating issues.

I don't know if that's still an issue, but just a heads up.

-Dil

[Annihilate]

One other thing, I'd wait a little bit, the 8700M GPU's just got released to the mobile market, so the prices on the 7 series will come down and if you want "latest and greatest" then it'll be worth waiting for the 8700.

-V

wtb this message befor 2 aug but i didnt have a computer then... lol

[urish]

So, my laptop fried last night. Pretty sure the video card finally melted down. The laptop was about 3 yrs old and is dated now anyway. P4 2mg cache blah blah blah. I can't see any point in trying to fix it.

I'm shopping for a new one. Would love a new alienware or any of the 4 to 5k units but, my god..., i dont have that kind of gold to throw down on a laptop. I'm home for the month of November (desktop rocks) and don't need the notebook until Dec.

Can't seem to find any V machines online!!!
You ever build laptops V?

My goal is to try to stay under 2 grand. The more under the better.

Whats the best video card out there atm? the GeForce 8700M?

This one looks good for 1599 but the gpu is 256 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834114384

To get the 512 gpu it jumps to http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834224076


Thank you in advance for any advice on the current market.