f13.net

... bigger than your laptop.

Queue Dark Helmet. The Dell M1730 (http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m1730?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19) has officially entered the land of ludicrous speed. And size. The price I paid is basically accepting that this is little more than tipping my gaming rig's CPU tower onto its side and welded a monitor to it.

We're beyond "lap" at this point. And beyond Economy Plus on flights. Maybe I could open this thing up in Business Class. But since I'm not likely to be playing Crysis or Mass Effect en route, I'm better off just sticking to the iPhone.

And forget that brick. If I'm lugging this thing around O'Hare, I'm checking that stupid thing with the luggage.

Ah well. At least Delta is experimenting with wi-fi in flight. Not that I could use it with this thing.

Backlit keyboard sure is nice though. No dock support though, which could bite if the monitor wasn't so big that it makes my 24" superfluous...

So, what was the point [of buying it]?

I have a 17"ws laptop. It's good fun, not that heavy, and plays competitively. I got my ass handed to me in TF2 just as efficiently as I could have on my desktop at the last f13 get together in May.

And after using a pair of 24" monitore, 17" still seems cramped.

<edit> typos

Yeah, well my laptop's power brick fits in a pants pocket, and the laptop itself is smaller than your laptop's screen; area and thickness.

(I have a MacBook Air.)

It also can play games, but I need to spring for the external drive to get BootCamp going.  Doesn't have the dedicated graphics of that beast... but it's mostly for web/mail/dev work, which being basically BSD is great for.  Gaming, not so much.

And yes, backlit keyboards are the bomb.

Hehe, This is the laptop i recently purchased, Runs vanguard awesome, plays every FPS i have. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220340 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220340)

What the fuck?

lawl

He's doing it wrong.

Hmm..  is it any more difficult to do a fresh OS install on a laptop than it is on a desktop?  I might pick up one of those is I can stick XP on it.

Pretty trivial these days. The ages of hunting down three million shitty laptop drivers of doom are gone.

That said, I've had terrible experiences with Asus laptops. Maybe just my horrible luck or something.

Did you get the model with the 8800M GTX video card?

(Sager are shipping Clevo-based 'notebooks' with 9800M GTX from next week and are working on a dual 9800M GTX version which they hope will be available in a month)

That Asus is just a 9600 GS. Plus Vanguard. Fail.

Not so trivial if the machine's hardware has no XP drivers available on the manufacturer's site. There's the XPS 1330s from dell that still does have XP drivers on the dell website, and let me tell you, it was a royal pain in the neck hunting down the stuff.

It makes me happy. Surely you guys arent so jaded that you have forgotten that gaming is about what makes you happy.

This is my 5th Asus. Ive had great experiences with them and have only ever needed warranty support on one of them. The first one. Years and years ago.

You should only hit that on manufacturer specific parts, like integrated cameras/fingerprint shit and any special buttons of doom outside the normal laptop function keys. Everything else is just basic hardware these days. Video, NIC, etc etc. I generally don't install fingerprint software anymore, as they've always been a mess of instability as is. If you like that kind of thing though, never use anything but the installed OS.

Dude, Vanguard is the only time were I'll say if you are enjoying it, you are having fun wrong <3

Seriously, I dont suffer from any crushing bugs, I like some grind in my games. Whats left of the community is really strong/close. There is no way to have fun wrong. For me WoW, and every other MMO ive ever tried just didnt fit right. Besides i know how you guys are, you all recommended AoC to me in the AoC thread. I now understand what you guys are about. LOL

leave the boy be. its not like he's playing UO or some such.

I should add that my wife plays and ejoys Vanguard with me. Its a completely different game, when your wife likes to play it with you too.

P.S. She has the same laptop for when we are traveling as well. It is a really nice machine unless you are a bleeding edge snob. You can play for hours with it on your lap and it doesnt ever get uncomfortably hot.

If you have an install disk which will work for any desktop that will work on the laptop fine.  Hunt down your drivers before formating and stick them on a CD or flash drive.  If the newest video drivers from ATI/NVidia won't install because the machine wants manufacturer made ones, Driver Heaven has a neat little driver mod utility which will unlock them.  (Trippy can now correct me on a better method. ;D)

It's a really good idea to put a fresh install on though.  They load laptops with so much crap these days.

Because it's shiny.  Very very shiny. And has lots of glowing goodness contained therein.

I :heart: my M1730 but yeah, it's not very portable. It's really a desktop replacement and is ideal while I'm working away from home.  It would be fucking terrible if I had to do any demos for clients as battery life is about an hour.  It's also too big for my bike panniers so I bomb it up the motorway with it in a backpack which isn't ideal.

Did I mention how shiny it was?

Might have to buy a more portable alternative for those more portable occasions though.

I'll pay that one point.

8700GT in SLI. Ordered awhile ago though. Took this long to get it up to speed.

Dude. It's a Dell.

One of my guys needed a new laptop, and I needed a much bigger hard drive. I figured I'd take one more stab at portable desktop before realizing I'm traveling too much for anything bigger than an Air. I haven't traveled with this one yet though so not ready to throw in the towel. COD4 plays like a dream, but it did on the old one too. And I'm well done with AoC so not going to bother. Fallout 3 will probably be the first attempt-to-crush game I install. I couldn't nuke Vista fast enough either.

It's mostly testament to excess. But the backlit keyboard is awesome!  :grin:

hmm, for me saying 'Its a dell' is like saying 'Its a volksvagen'. I mean, great and all, track record of reliability in their business models, and great service if you have warranty, but uhm, its not that exciting. maybe that's just me.

Nah, I was just saying that because of the late 90s/early 00s commercial with that guy who'd going around saying "Dude, you're getting a Dell!"

No other reason. I'm not a brand loyalist.

It's time to unpimp zee auto.
(http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads12/unpimp1207282062.jpg)

???

That's Peter Stormare but I don't know the film. Or the reference.

EDIT: Ah. Because it's VW adverts that I don't recall seeing in the UK.  Google is your friend.