Buying a New Laptop

[patton04]

I was planing on buying a new laptop at the end of summer. i want it to be a gaming laptop and i have about $1,500 to spend on it and i just wanted some opions on wht should i buy. i like alienware but i also like sony and dell laptops. but anything that can play half-life 2 of even oblivion would be nice so i just wanted some opions on what should i buy

[E.T.]

Noterbookforums has been a great resource supported by hundreds of knowledgeable users on all brands including Acer, Alienware, Asus, Dell, Gateway [my pick], Sony, Toshiba & others.
http://www.notebookforums.com/

The boards are easy to navigate & regulars there are usually eager to help you make a selection on a specific model, offering current real time specs & prices.

The good news is a decent mobile gaming rig can be had for near $1500.
Alienware Area 51 [believe model M550] is currently being ran @ $1300 & offers 256mb GPU upgrade for additional $70. Dells XPS entry laptop starts around $1200.....but the fact about buying a new PC with the best gaming hardware [laptop or desktop] is that you'll have to spend closer to $2K to get the good stuff!

[DBS]

Even harder to keep it under the price point for a notebook. There are expanable notebooks out there too if you pay alittle more. You will get years more out of it if it has a upgradeable gpu for instance.

I do not own a gaming notebook because of the cost. Get a powerful desktop and a DS ...")

[Renzatic Gear]

If you want a good gaming laptop, you're gonna have to go with an expensive model. If you see one and think the price is too good to be true, it usually is.

A friend of mine picked up an ultra souped up laptop for under $1200, it had all the bells and whistles you could ever possibly want and was a generally slick machine based on it's feature list. But to get to that price point, it seemed that Gateway had to cut a ton of corners and ended up shipping a computer that only barely worked. He has to hold the AC cord to the power suppily to get it to charge, his dvd burner never works, and his harddrives crash randomly.

What's even worse is that Gateway refuses to fix it. He sent it to them for repairs and they kept it for over a month...only to diagnose the problem as a bad power cord and send it back to him as is. If he wants any more done to it he has to contact Best Buy, who in turn tells him it's not their problem and to contact Gateway. So when you get a laptop, make damn sure you know exactly what you're getting.

[E.T.]

Sorry to hear about your friends experience w/Gateway Renz.

I had to R.A.M. my Gateway laptop THREE days before it went off warranty due to cracked hinge cover [a common chassis problem]. The good news is that Gateway not only approved the work under warranty, but sent me a foam fitted box with return authorization shipping label, did the repair in 7 days & shipped it back to me @ no costs! Btw, after 14 months of use, my Gateway laptop has had no issues [model # 7405GX AMD64 3200+, $1300]

On the subject of laptop gaming, its not as comfortable as I had hoped...certainly nothing like desktop gaming. Also battery life & cooling are concerns. I use my lappy primarily for making DVD backups & archiving/editing photos now.

[HyperSnowMan]

Being totally honest, if you want to play high end FPS you'll have to spend a lot more than 1500. More like 2000 or 2500.

You can go two ways. Get a desk top CPU and mobile graphic card or Laptop CPU and desktop GPU.

I currently have a 2 year old DELL xps P4 3.4E with Mobile 9800, 256mb, 2 gigs with 7200rpm 80 gig hd. It runs Battlefield 2 without AA pretty well. If I were you, I would go with the desktop CPU and mobile GPU because in the long run, if you use the laptop for anything other than gaming, it'll serve you better. The only drawback to this is that you can't really run it without a powerchord without major slowdown.

If you don't get a half decent CPU and a very decent GPU, you're just going to waste money. It will not run anything south of a 3 year old game. So I'd save a little more and get the best possible, rather than buying a mediocre laptop that "might" play a decent FPS.

I just wish they would make a desktop CPU + desktop GPU in non propeitary form. That way we could upgrade the GPU every other year....

[DBS]

I didn't mean to skimp on the cpu for gaming. They do make some upgradeable notebooks and I think Alienware has some desktop component notebooks. Even the new XPS notebooks are nice but you are talking 3k at least for a notebook gaming machine that is gonna serve you.
When you need that kind of power, it is simply better to purchase a desktop pc. Too much power consumption for one and you simply are asking to be frustrated as it is going to be one expensive, delicate pc that you are going to worry about. For half the cost you can get a powerhouse pc to keep you happy.

I also think , as ET stated, it is not as comfortable as you think to game on a notebook. I would not mind a notebook to surf and do some other stuff in the living room or outside but not my serious gaming.

[DBS]

Hyper,
what was your cost when you picked that notebook up? It has some nice features but now the mobile 9800 pro probably is the weak spot. Still a very nice notebook.

[HyperSnowMan]

an icing on top of the cake. Honestly speaking, if my company wasnt paying for my laptop, I would never even think about gaming on a laptop. I bring this not too portable laptop when I travel and to be fair, I'd say, one would have to spend over 3000 bucks for a gaming computer if you want to run the current generation of games. But what's the use of being able to run current generation games when torrow, it will be next gen games. I havent had the chance to run Oblivion but I did hear that it will not run pleasingly on any laptop. And that pretty much tells me that most current generation laptops will be obsolete in about 2 years maximum.

I'd say 4000 bucks is a good ball park. 19 inch monitor, dual SLI in 512 mb of 7900 GTX Go. and M44. killernotebooks.com (i think that was the name) has the best price. Being fair, Alien, Voodoo, Falcon are very pricey but you're paying for the services like over night fixing, post paid, 3 year warranty, etc etc etc.. Less than 19, I'd say 17 inches is absolute minimum to play games comfortably if you are talking about FPS. I can play Civ4 on 15.4 but that's because it doesnt require a huge field of vision.

well, you are right. At that price of 4000, might as well get a desktop for 3500. and a cheap laptop for 500.

Really, if I had to pay for my computers, I would NOT in a million years spend this kind of money on a comp that has almost no upgradeable options, sough of maybe (a big maybe) on cpu and adding memory. But at the point when one is spending 4 grands or more on a laptop, I'm sure it's all maxed out from the get go, so there's pretty much nothing one can do to upgrade. (Even the members in the Voodoo forum advise people not to get the Platinum upgrade service on a laptop.)

That being said, I'm waiting for the new Intels to come out so I can get a new laptop!!!!

[HyperSnowMan]

I forgot how much but it wasnt cheap. LOL Probably in the 5000 grand range. But keep this part in mind. I'm in Japan and EVERYTHING costs 30% more. LOL

Still this Dell is not upgradeable. Everything is maxed. Well I could theoretically change the CPU but that would void the warranty. So far this thing has only been returned once but I have no clue how to take a laptop apart and I still have a 15 months left on the warranty. Besides back when I got this, it was AGP and almost no laptop had PCI E back then so that pretty much kills all options on upgrade even if I knew how to take this thing apart.

So far the only thing I've had problem running on this rig is FEAR. Havent tried Oblivion but why bother. LOL Rise of Legends, SpellForce, BF2, runs pretty well.

[DBS]

Yeah...keep it for the ton of games it can run fine. For now I do not see laptops being the best system for the ultra high end games. It simply cost too much for the hardware to run these and battery consumption is a problem when you max the rig out on something it can hardly chew so where is the advantage if it is not mobile? Play some great rts games and adventure games on the laptops and leave the super fps games to the desktops. From many points it just seems a better use of the technolgy imo.

[Jasmania]

I was checking in, reading the posts and decided to respond, even though this post is late in the discussion.
I got a Dell XPS Gen2 laptop about a year ago and have nothing but good things to say about it's gaming performance. I have run HL2 & HL2 Episode One, FEAR, Oblivion, you name it with most setting maxed out. Its a monster-17 inch widescreen, heavy and just OK battery life, but the laptop is stable, the 6800 Ultra rocks, movies look great on the wuxga screen and I rule at LAN parties.

I got mine for $2147.00 delivered with a 40% e-coupon from an affliliate site for Dell.
That included an extra battery.
Check out EBay and look for online deals and you might just find the perfect gaming laptop in your price range.
:thumbsup: