The Laptop Guide - Post here for questions, deals, etc.

[Cephius]

Around 1000 USD.

Personally I'd go for the XPS models, like this one.

That should have enough juice to run your games, the only question mark is the Nvidia card and how it plays with FFXI. Getting a newer laptop to run FFXI these days is very hit-or-miss.

It's a 13 inch screen and weighs about 5 pounds. Not the best size to play games on. If you plan to game a lot on it, I'd buy a monitor + kb + mouse so you can plug into it when you're in your dorm.

[Telamond]

Thank you for your input. I'll def look into that one as well!
And it's small and light. :D

[Cephius]

What's your price range?

edit: Btw, I'm thinking about getting this guy: Toshiba - Satellite Laptop with Intel® Centrino® 2 Processor Technology - Copper - E105-S1402

If and only if Windows offers a free upgrade coupon to Windows 7 sometime this summer.

What's your guy's take on this machine?

I really only need something for surfing, coding, and grad school. I don't know if the onboard video card could handle any 3d applications.

I don't like Toshibas. They always come with the stupid bloatware on it thats near impossible to remove. I guess a lot of retailers do that these days, but still. The specs are okay, but the lack of a decent graphics card will prevent you from running all but the oldest games. It's decent, but I think you could do better with 750 bucks.

[Telamond]

Wow, everything seems so much cheaper in the states. I can't afford the XPS in Sweden. We don't even have that model available to us. >.<

I was wondering, how big difference is these three processors:
(1) Intel® Pentium® T4200-processor with dual core (2,0 GHz, 800 MHz, 1 MB cache)
(2) Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6400-processor (2,0 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2-cache)
(3) Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8600-processor (2,40 GHz, 3 MB, 1 066 MHz)
If the difference really was that noticable? Cause I could probably make the upgrade, but I'd rather upgrade the battery from a 6-cell to a 9-cell... Is the switch from (1) to (2) that noticable as well as the switch from (2) to (3)?

Thanks in advance!

[Cephius]

Electronics are always mega expensive in that region My boss has family in Denmark, whenever he visits they always make him buy like 5 grand worth of electronics to bring because it'd cost almost 10 there..

But anyway. The difference in those processors is fairly significant, I'd go for it. You can always tweak the screen brightness and power settings to get more battery life.

Also Stockholm is a lovely town, even if I've only seen it while passing through

[Telamond]

Taxes. ;_;

I just heard that the 9-cell was significantly heavier as well. So I might scratch that. Another upgrade I thought of making was the screen resolution, for an upgrade I can upgrade it from 1366 x 768 to 1920 x 1080. I think that sounded good... :S

[Kurp]

I'm looking at finally purchasing my first laptop after many years of putting it off. I've been looking for something in the 15-16" range that can play games well. My budget is around $1500-$1700.

I found this Sager 15.4" laptop that seems to fit my needs.

With 4GB RAM and the 320GB 7200 RPM hard drive it comes out to $1427 after the cash discount.

My question is should I spend the last $170 on the upgraded screen or a better processor?

15.4" WSXGA+ "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen (1680x1050)
15.4" WUXGA "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Screen (1920x1200)

The second option is $175 more than the first.

That $175 could be used to upgrade the processor from a P8700 (2.53ghz, 3MB) dual core to a P9700 (2.8ghz, 6MB) dual core or even a Q9000 (2.0ghz, 6MB) quad core.

I haven't used laptops much at all and don't know how much of a difference the screen makes in regards to matte vs. glossy. 1680x1050 is what I have on my desktop now and I've been happy with it. I've never used a 1920x1200 screen though, so maybe I'm missing out on something.

I'm leaning towards the better processor now (the P9700 specifically), but would like some advice. Tips for other brands or models would be appreciated also as my laptop knowledge is fairly limited.

[Norelco]

I don't like Toshibas. They always come with the stupid bloatware on it thats near impossible to remove. I guess a lot of retailers do that these days, but still. The specs are okay, but the lack of a decent graphics card will prevent you from running all but the oldest games. It's decent, but I think you could do better with 750 bucks.

Yeah. What if I pretty much don't have an interest in playing games on it?

[Cephius]

Yeah. What if I pretty much don't have an interest in playing games on it?

If you don't do anything that involves 3d applications and whatnot, you should be fine with that.

I'm looking at finally purchasing my first laptop after many years of putting it off. I've been looking for something in the 15-16" range that can play games well. My budget is around $1500-$1700.

I found this Sager 15.4" laptop that seems to fit my needs.

With 4GB RAM and the 320GB 7200 RPM hard drive it comes out to $1427 after the cash discount.

My question is should I spend the last $170 on the upgraded screen or a better processor?

15.4" WSXGA+ "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Glossy Screen (1680x1050)
15.4" WUXGA "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright Screen (1920x1200)

The second option is $175 more than the first.

That $175 could be used to upgrade the processor from a P8700 (2.53ghz, 3MB) dual core to a P9700 (2.8ghz, 6MB) dual core or even a Q9000 (2.0ghz, 6MB) quad core.

I haven't used laptops much at all and don't know how much of a difference the screen makes in regards to matte vs. glossy. 1680x1050 is what I have on my desktop now and I've been happy with it. I've never used a 1920x1200 screen though, so maybe I'm missing out on something.

I'm leaning towards the better processor now (the P9700 specifically), but would like some advice. Tips for other brands or models would be appreciated also as my laptop knowledge is fairly limited.

Honestly 1920x1200 is too much for a laptop, unless you ramp up the font settings things are too small to see clearly. I'd only get a screen that large if you planned on hooking up the laptop to a HDTV or something. Personally I think glossy screens look much, much better as well.

I'd go for the P9700 as well, as it's better than the default option, and a Q6600 is not ideal in a laptop.

[zoobernut]

I have been thinking of getting my wife a new laptop for her birthday and I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations in the $400 range. She mostly uses the laptop for the internet and downloading pictures from the camera and word processing. Sorry if this counts as a necro bump but most of the info in this thread is old or about more expensive laptops.

[Cephius]

I have been thinking of getting my wife a new laptop for her birthday and I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations in the $400 range. She mostly uses the laptop for the internet and downloading pictures from the camera and word processing. Sorry if this counts as a necro bump but most of the info in this thread is old or about more expensive laptops.

Stickies are meant to be necrobumped The main info on the first page is outdated yeah, technology changes too fast...

Anyway. Does she want a full sized laptop or would a netbook suffice? Netbooks are much more lightweight and portable, but they suffer in performance and such. I had this one for awhile and was happy with it. 10 inch screen, really small.

If she wants a bigger one, there's one on sale at newegg today: Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!

[zoobernut]

That is the issue I am not sure if she would need a bigger one or not. I was looking at the netbooks I think those would work very well for her except I am not sure if the lack of disk drive would be a bad thing.

It is mostly for the internet though she uses word, excel, and powerpoint from time to time.

[Buttons]

Telamond the Dell XPS Laptops are really wonderfull. I've had the 15 inch Dell XPS M1530 for over a year now and still love it.
The only problem with my laptop is the weight, for an 15 inch laptop it's really slim and light but still weighs too much for me to carry it to University every day. And I only have a 6 cell battery so can only run on battery for 2 and a half hours which is not enough for a proper day at Uni.

I'm gonna probably buy one of the new clamshell EeePCs for University work, the 1005 HA has won me over, a friend just got one.

But since you are looking for a laptop I would suggest a 13inch one. 15 inch laptops are so nice but can get annoying when you need to carry it around every single day.
Weight never used to be an option for me but with me taking the train every day and walking a lot from one campus to the other one a heavy laptop just isn't cutting it.

[Torn]

So I've been looking for a laptop for a few days now, it's going to be my first laptop so I'm pretty new to this but pretty much something around $1000ish CDN, and mostly for internet, videos, school and some occasional gaming. Was also looking for a screen size of around 14-16".
I was on dell.ca and saw that they had a canada day special going on with a few computers, one of them being a Studio 15. This seems kind of decent.

Dell Studio 15 Laptop Details

So I customized it and came out with a price of $1,428 CDN after taxes ect. A tad steep but pretty much I was wondering if I could get any opinions on this or any suggestions ect.

SYSTEM COLOUR Black Chainlink edit
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo P8700 (2.53GHz/1066Mhz FSB/3MB cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition, 64-bit SP1 edit
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Works 9 edit
HARDWARE SERVICES 1 Year Limited Warranty w/1 Year Return To Depot Service edit
HD DISPLAY 15.6” High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLife™ and Camera edit
MEMORY 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz edit
HARD DRIVE Size: 500GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) edit
GRAPHICS CARD 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 8X Slot Load Super Multi (DL DVD+/-R Drive + RAM support) edit
BATTERY OPTIONS 85 WHr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell) edit
WIRELESS CARD Dell 1510 Wireless-N Card edit
BLUETOOTH Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Internal (2.1) edit
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0 edit
SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee 30 day Trial edit
INTERNET ACCESS No ISP requested edit
KEYBOARD Back-lit Keyboard edit


Thanks.

[Buttons]

I can't say much about the price of the config but my sister has a Dell Studio 15 and it's a really nice laptop that's for sure. Very solid build, excellent quality, nice design, all in all a very good laptop series.
The config itself seems good, am just not good at all with prices, especially if they're in Canadian Dollars. xD

[Torn]

Cool, thanks.
And it seems like it comes out to 1,239.80 USD with the converter I used.

[Isiolia]

That is the issue I am not sure if she would need a bigger one or not. I was looking at the netbooks I think those would work very well for her except I am not sure if the lack of disk drive would be a bad thing.

It is mostly for the internet though she uses word, excel, and powerpoint from time to time.

You can get a USB DVD drive if you wind up needing one. Main thing is that the power of most of 'em is pretty low. 1GB of RAM usually, a CPU that's weak in the overall scheme, and so on. On top of that, the keyboards and touchpads can prove annoying to use.

I mean, as a purely internet browsing machine they do work well, or for light duty work like mentioned. But they're meant as a complement to a "full" PC, not as a replacement. If that matches what your wife needs a laptop for, then great. If it's her only computer though, you'd probably want to go with a full-feature laptop (though at that budget, can't really vouch for quality).

[Wetticus]

I have a job that has a LOT of downtime and would like a laptop that's capable of playing some new-ish games (nothing too incredibly fancy, and definetly doesn't have to be highest settings on anything). Last laptop was an Alienware that decided to crap out on me the second the warranty died, and before that I had an iBuypower that did the same.

Looked on those sites and on NewEgg and nothing really jumped out at me. Price isn't THAT big of an issue but I'd like to keep it reasonable if possible ($1000-$1500 basically, would go higher if it's a good deal of course).

Any good suggestions?

[Stee]

What size laptop are you looking for?

[Wetticus]

What size laptop are you looking for?

16"+ preferable.

Found a Vaio on New Egg. Looked pretty close but I dunno about Sony laptops. That's in the ballpark of what I'm looking for, though. I'd post the URL if I had 10 posts >.>

[Edit: And now I do, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834117938]