laptops ahoy!

[Bloodfire]

@ Gredival

can you give me your thoughts on this ASUS:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220959

it's simply awesome specs wise and has everything in the right place and the price is tolerable, and is pretty mobile but newegg has no feedback on it.

additionally this ASUS:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220921

very cool system, and just a bit thicker than the previous one i mentioned.

all in all i would like mobility, but do not want to feel like i will break the poor thing. The laptop would only be used when I am on the go or at school. I rarely travel, and the tables at school have plenty of room to place 17" laptops. 15" is probably more my bag though.

I looked at the envy, and it is a great laptop, but the Ethernet port on the right side bothers me for some unexplained reason.

not trying to give a hard time, I just wanna make sure I get a good laptop, that I feel comfortable with, and pay a decent price for it.

[Gredival]

@ Gredival

can you give me your thoughts on this ASUS:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220959

it's simply awesome specs wise and has everything in the right place and the price is tolerable, and is pretty mobile but newegg has no feedback on it.

additionally this ASUS:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220921

very cool system, and just a bit thicker than the previous one i mentioned.

all in all i would like mobility, but do not want to feel like i will break the poor thing. The laptop would only be used when I am on the go or at school. I rarely travel, and the tables at school have plenty of room to place 17" laptops. 15" is probably more my bag though.

I looked at the envy, and it is a great laptop, but the Ethernet port on the right side bothers me for some unexplained reason.

not trying to give a hard time, I just wanna make sure I get a good laptop, that I feel comfortable with, and pay a decent price for it.

I think at the point you're fine with 15"/17" then you should try to aim for best value for price.

Between those two that means the G53. It's got a much more powerful graphics card and it has a better resolution. It's basically the G73 in a 15.6" package instead of the 17"

Also I wouldn't shy away from the initial G73 you wanted - it is a fantastic power laptop for its price.

[Weeks]

I recommended the Envy for you since you seemed to be adverse to smaller screens when netbooks were brought up, but the m11x should be able to do everything you want.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ard-_-34157661

This version of the Envy comes with a 14" which is pushing the bounds of portable, but will get you the retail space you want on your screen and comes with an ATI HD 5650 which is slightly better than the GeForce 335M on the m11x. This model from Newegg is cheaper than what you can get at HP's site, but I'm sure there are ways to get it less than sticker through HP. I remember that a few months back Boyiee was able to get an Envy build that curbstomped the m11x r2 in price-to-value.

HP has had a lot of $500 off offers since the next-generation chips came out. I got mine with 8 GB of RAM and an i7-720 for $950 after coupon. It's got a disappointing display, as pretty much all laptops do, but it's a lot of computing power for the money.

That said, I wish I'd waited a few months and got this instead:

Dell XPS15 @ fatwallet

[Bloodfire]

@ Weeks

I understand your pain when it comes to the, "if I had waited just a little longer" line. It is this reason alone that makes me hesitate profoundly when it comes to purchasing a laptop. With a desktop you can upgrade no problem, a laptop however, will only allow Memory and HDD upgrades. There is probably other ways to upgrade a laptop but you will find it easier to just buy a new one altogether.

I can't tell you how many times I purchase electronics and come to find out in 4 months there is a better one out there for less. Prime example: My 46" tv 120 Hz I paid 1700 open box price, later on I found 3DTVs, same size, same brand for less. Fuck I hate Moore's Law

[Coren]

Personally I fix so many damn hps/compaqs I could never recommend one of their products. I've had great success with toshiba and asus (and lenovo, but they're more business-oriented). That being said, I just picked up the dell XPS 15 deal going on because it's so good. Hopefully it doesn't bite me in the ass. Dell inspirons are mostly crap, but I'm hoping the XPS is better-made.

Also, if you wait for "the best deal", you'll never buy anything. There is always a new chip coming out, or a new architecture, or faster ram, or a die shrink on the horizon. Sandy bridge seems to be better than most of the "new things", so jump on it and just prepare to feel annoyed in 6 months.

[Maaglin]

Pretty much agree with the above. You just have to make a decision and go with it.

I finally decided to pull the trigger on a sandybridge Sager with the GTX 485. I already know this will last me quite awhile, and I won't feel too bad 6 months or a year down the road with it.

[Bloodfire]

Quick question, has anyone bought anything from iBUYPOWER.com? If so, can you give me opinions? I am looking at this 15" Battalion 101 P151HM1 Gaming Laptop and for maybe an extra 140-150 I can potentially get a better laptop than the G53 I was looking at.

Thoughts plz?

[Gredival]

I had an iBuyPower before I bought the m11x.

As I mentioned earlier, it was meant to be a desktop replacement. There was a lot of hardware decay, but I don't think it was necessarily their fault. Moreso the architecture of the time was not suited to building desktop replacement laptops (first generation Centrino).

However customer service is, imo, pretty shitty. I had this issue where my laptop's screen was flickering. The LCD was on but the backlight would flicker and go out. So I could see things like my mouse moving on the dark screen, it just wasn't illuminated. They have no problem trying to fix it, but god help them diagnosing it. They replaced the whole LCD, ran a burn in test, and gave it back to me. An hour later, flicker-tastic. I returned it, told them I thought a connection between the mobo and the screen was loose and asked them to look at it again. Came back, issue not resolved.

I eventually opened up the LCD cover myself and found a wire being clamped. Once I fixed that, I never had the issue again. I don't think they spent the time with it long enough to encounter the problem and try to fix it. They instead just tossed new parts at it.

So long as you don't actually require tech support though, you're probably getting a pretty good deal.

[Bloodfire]

Well I have decided on this Laptop:

http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Batta..._Gaming_Laptop

I will get better overall power out of this, compared to Alienware's M15x , and the ASUS G53. Also overall design seems better than the other two. Addtionally to get an alienware M15x comparable to the battalion I would spend almost $500 more. So yeah...

One final question for the community though, What size SSD would provide sufficient space for this guy? I already have a WD passport 1TB external so that is why I figured SSD would be better.

Any suggestions are welcome, and thx everyone for your input. Especially Gredival who was most helpful. Also, Gredival, I usually don't require tech support for my PC problems, cause I normally have the knowledge on how to fix things, google, and you guys

/sigh now I must decide on a new mobo and cpu for my desktop, cause I aint gonna have my Desktop ousted by the laptop...

[Coren]

I run an SSD primary and a standard hdd for storage. I found 80gb to be on the small side, so I replaced it and I haven't filled my 128 yet. There are some new hybrid SSD/platter drives that look like a good concept, but I haven't seen them enough to know if they are dependable.

[Isiolia]

One final question for the community though, What size SSD would provide sufficient space for this guy? I already have a WD passport 1TB external so that is why I figured SSD would be better.

Depends on your usage. With a laptop, you want to figure on having room for everything you'd want to install on it, since you won't always want to use an external drive. If you have a machine set up roughly how you'd use this one, check how much space the OS/applications are taking up to get an idea. My guess is that a 120 GB will be a fairly comfortable fit (it's what I have in my primary desktop), but you could make a 60-80GB drive work if you needed to keep costs down. I've got 30 and 40GB drives in machines, which are perfectly fine for basic OS/apps, but would be too small to be putting more than maybe one or two bigger game installs on as well.

[Bloodfire]

Biggest things that I would install, game-wise, would be Crysis 1, and Starcraft 2. Misc. software would be things like Visual Studio, Office 2007, and other school related software, which barley take space to start. So, Isiolia you feel 120 GB would be enough for this loadout? I mean, on my desktop the partition that has my windows install is only using 96.7 GB of the half TB allocated, and that's with all the software I mentioned before plus, FFXIV and more.

[Maaglin]

ssd 120 GB is more than enough. You can cheaply and easily get an 500 or 750 gb internal hdd for your storage needs. external hdd's are not required in any way imo.

[Isiolia]

So, Isiolia you feel 120 GB would be enough for this loadout?

I think you could probably get away with less, honestly, but 120GB will require less thought/effort to make work. Same reason I went with a 120GB for my desktop. I'm usually under 80GB worth of stuff, but this way I'm not constantly needing to monitor it. Additionally, SSD performance degrades as you fill them, so you optimally want to have a little bit of breathing room.

[Bloodfire]

Ehh, fuck it all. I will feel better managing a disk drive than an SSD. Plus I still wanna wait for cheaper SSDs and the technology to get a little more further before I commit to one.

[Kenshiin]

My sister wants to go pick up a laptop from bestbuy. Can you help me pick out a winner for her? Something around $600 with a good processor, decent memory, big enough hard drive 320-500gb, webcam, and a great battery life. It also needs a CD drive. She's not going to be playing games or doing anything major other than everyday stuff.

Thanks.

[avelle]

My sister wants to go pick up a laptop from bestbuy. Can you help me pick out a winner for her? Something around $600 with a good processor, decent memory, big enough hard drive 320-500gb, webcam, and a great battery life. It also needs a CD drive. She's not going to be playing games or doing anything major other than everyday stuff.

Thanks.

My mother got a 17" HP with an i5 processor, 4gigs of ram, and a 600gb hard drive for $699 at Sams. It was a pretty damn good buy.

[Bloodfire]

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Lap...&skuId=2352085

this is a computer you would buy if all your gonna do is surf the internet, watch streaming video, word processing, etc. Once you start getting into 3D graphic design & heavy gaming, you'll need to up the ante. Call your local store and give them the SKU off this link here, SKU is 2352085 for the one I linked up above, and see if they have it in stock for in store pickup. You can also have them order it for you if that is what you wish, or buy it online yourself.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pav...&skuId=2285026

This would probably be comparable to a 17" version to the above link, biggest difference seems to be though this one has a dedicated video card in it, and processor speed is a touch faster, by .2 GHz.

Both of them are under $600.