Dream laptop

[Grelf]

If you could spend 3k on a laptop, which one would you buy?


At the moment, I'm leaning towards the 17 inch Alienware laptop. Any other ideas for the dream laptop?

[Azaroth]

I only have one piece of advice: Don't buy Alienware.

[Grelf]

Why?

[Kenrick]

Overpriced methinks?

[Azaroth]

I dunno. There's getting middled, then there's getting middled.

[schild]

Alienware breaks. A LOT. If I spent $3,000 on another laptop I would probably buy another Dell.

[Trippy]

If you could spend 3k on a laptop, which one would you buy?


At the moment, I'm leaning towards the 17 inch Alienware laptop. Any other ideas for the dream laptop?

It would help to know your portability and battery requirements or is this strictly to replace a desktop machine?

[Shavnir]

Trust me on this one.  You can get anything Alienware will sell you (and more in most cases) from Saeger.  For that $3000 you can get a laptop with a RAID if you want it :P

And frankly if their pricing is what it was when I bought mine, $3,000 is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AW laptops.

[Krakrok]

I'd spend $1.4k on the laptop and $1.6k on an 80 inch TV as the docking station.

[Grelf]

Portability isn't an issue since most of the time it would be used at home.

The AW I priced was at $2800, for 3.4ghz HT proc, 1 gig of ram, 17 inch screen, maxxed out video card (forget which one off the top of my head) raid 0 80 gig hard drive, xp home, office basic, an extra battery, and the regular bells and whistles.

[Grelf]

So I just checked out the sager laptops. Built them to the same specs as the alienware, and the AW is 2 dollars more.

Now I'm just trying to find out, which one is better in general. They both seem to blow through battery life like mad, and both weigh 10lbs plus.

[schild]

I'm still gonna stand by the Dell. Just go outfit one and see the price difference. Oh, and reputation. Alienware buys it's reputation. In the realworld, those machines are as prone to breakage just like early E-Machines were. Ironically this also applies to cars. The most expensive cars in the world often break down as much as the shittiest. Go figure.

Oh, and you should probably get a centrino 2.10 ghz over a Pentium 4. Save yourself 4-6 hours in battery life and get roughly the same processing power on average.

[Trippy]

For a desktop replacement at that price range my requirements would be:

[*]Top-end graphics chipset which would be a GeForce Go 6800 or the newly announced Mobility Radeon X800 (don't think any notebooks are out yet with that)
[*]7200 RPM Hard Drive
[*]1 GB RAM (1 SODIMM), expandable to 2 GB
[*]DVD+-RW Burner
[/list:u]
The best you can get with a Dell or Toshiba in terms of graphics is a Mobility 9700, at the moment, so that cuts them out of the picture. You can check out any of NVIDIA's GeForce Go 6800 partners to see which one can build you one within your price range and feature requirements:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/go6800_partners.html

[chinslim]

$3K...laff.

That's still too little for VoodooPC laptops.

Best bang for the buck seems to be Sager.

[Kenrick]

I'm not really one to ask about laptops, but after googling "ultimate gaming laptop" I came up with this site that looks like it seems good laptops.  Their rating on resellerratings.com seems to be pretty good.

/shrug

[Jimbo]

I recently was reading about Dell's gaming notebook, looked very promising, other than the Pentium part (I'm a converted AMD fanboy now :) ).

If you don't want to worry about graphics as much, I have had no problems with my CF-29 from Panasonic.  Of course, I used it for medic/firefighter class, and needed something that rugged.  Now, I'm actually thinking of getting one that is more bussiness and gaming in design.

[schild]

The mobile intel chips are about 193240912483290842x better than the AMD mobile chips. Mobile != Desktop.

[Viin]

Schild is right, mobile != desktop. But, also, gaming laptop != mobile.

My Dell "gaming" laptop weighs a ton. It also gets really hot when playing games. I took it with me to Iraq(ish area) in 2003, man was it a pain to lug around. It wouldn't be so bad if you took it somewhere where it remained stationary for awhile, but lugging a heavyass laptop around sucks.

Stop being a ninny and get a desktop.

If you really need mobile gaming, get a GBA or DS or PSP or whatever the kids play these days.

[Kenrick]

Iraq(ish area)

This made me giggle.  Why?  I do not know.

[Arnold]

Portability isn't an issue since most of the time it would be used at home.

The AW I priced was at $2800, for 3.4ghz HT proc, 1 gig of ram, 17 inch screen, maxxed out video card (forget which one off the top of my head) raid 0 80 gig hard drive, xp home, office basic, an extra battery, and the regular bells and whistles.

Then spend $1,000 on a desktop, $1,000 on a cheap laptop for those times when you do need to be mobile, and spend the rest on booze and hookers.

[Righ]

For a laptop, I recommend you get a cheap and shitty Gateway/eMachines AMD64 laptop - preferably the older models for some deep discounts, and pull the chip and replace it with the current top of the line Athlon 64 DTR. Pull the drive and replace it with the only 7200rpm 2.5in job on the market (60GB).

If you're using it in the living room only, its worth thinking instead about building a quiet desktop, and getting a flat panel and mounting arm.

[Joe]

AMD historically runs at two temperatures: hot and dead. Remember this when thinking about your mobile gaming solutions.

Stick with Dell, man. They beat Alienware's ass any day of the week on hardware and labor, and they're fucking everywhere, which means they're easily fixed if something DOES go wrong. I am of course typing this on a Sony laptop. But calling this thing a gaming machine would make other gaming machine cry tears of graphical RAM.

[Fabricated]

I'd recommend Dell generally, but if you're not the most careful person in the world I'd recommend an IBM Thinkpad.

[Fabricated]

AMD historically runs at two temperatures: hot and dead. Remember this when thinking about your mobile gaming solutions.

What's funny is that the temperature thing with AMDs and P4s has totally switched with the newer generations of their chipsets. The newest 64-bit Athlons run a fair amount cooler than the Prescott P4's, which run REALLY fucking hot.

I remember the old Athlons, god, fucking space heaters. One of my friends used to dry his clothes over his old Athlon rig.

[Shavnir]

One time my thunderbird's CPU fan quit out.  Turns out the mobo had temperature controls turned off or the thermometers were fried.

Well fast foward 36 hours and you could probably cook a fucking egg on top of the case.  That's how hot it was. =/

[Kenrick]

What's the point of laptops again?

[SirBruce]

What's the point of laptops again?

Making PowerPoint presentations when you travel to a conference, the head office, the company retreat, etc.

Bruce

[Kenrick]

What's the point of laptops again?

Making PowerPoint presentations when you travel to a conference, the head office, the company retreat, etc.

Bruce

And it takes $3000 for that?  Yikes.

[Sky]

I'm considering a Powerbook myself, though it wouldn't be a good gaming rig. I'd be using it for recording music, mostly. Tap into the line-out of the mixing desk and then burn to cd and give it to the band, at a tidy profit.

I've had a Dell laptop (last generation before good mobile gpus :() and it's been nothing but solid for years of use, for 2 years it was my primary work pc.

[El Gallo]

I bought an Alienware several years ago and the thing rocked, solidly, for 4 years.  I've heard the customer support is also good, but I never used it  because I never needed any.  It was a great system, the components were great, but it was a bit pricey.  Back when I didn't know shit about computers and lacked the time or inclination to learn, it was a good choice.  Now that I know where to look for component reviews and can mostly put one together myself, I don't buy from them.  I still use the case and some of the drives from that old Alienware though.

[Ezdaar]

I'm considering a Powerbook myself, though it wouldn't be a good gaming rig. I'd be using it for recording music, mostly. Tap into the line-out of the mixing desk and then burn to cd and give it to the band, at a tidy profit.

I've had a Dell laptop (last generation before good mobile gpus :() and it's been nothing but solid for years of use, for 2 years it was my primary work pc.

I changed out my iBook for a Powerbook and if I had to do it again I think I would just get a beefier iBook. I like the PB but it doesn't really do anything the iBook didn't, gets worse battery life and crappy wireless reception. It is a bit snappier but after using a G4 iBook I don't notice the difference that much.

[doubleplus]

What is the difference between the iBook and P-P-Powerbook? I mean, really.