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In the market of a labtop have no idea what i wont as far as brand/model.
This going to be used a all-in-one Gaming/Personal/Work lappy.
I’d like to have one that accepts a docking station as this is more for grad school than anything else.
As far as specs go i’d like to have:
- 2Ghz+ processor Dual AMD preferred
- 2GB Ram
- thinking a 80GB hard drive and i’ll use a USB external 160GB+ for backups and storage
- Some decent mid-line Graphic card/chip so i’ll be able to run 3d modeling packages as well as Source/TF2 but not the top line $$’ers .
- Screen from 16-18″ (i dont like the ultra gloss mirror blinding screens)
so really i have alot in the air, Trying to get the best bang for the buck as always and i plan on keeping this thing for a few years.
Where do i start?
Also anyone has any experiences buying OEM refurbish lappys?
Just make sure it’s not like my Acer, which heats up until it kills it’s own hard drive 🙁
Honestly though, I love my acer besides the heat issue. Whatever you do….read every single review you can find.
Do not get a USB external HD the speed is slow as poo, get a Firewire 400 or 800 if the laptop you get can support 800 and use it, you’ll be much happier I promise! This doesn’t really help with the laptop though…sorry.
not looking to get a “gaming” labtop persay. But i do need one that supports some high spec software.
kuros theirs like 30 different Acer lappy modles.. anything in.pa.tick.u.lar
Also looking a a DELL INSPIRON 1720 looks like same specs as their XPS line but $700 cheaper for looks??/
Dice: inspiron 1720 is not same HW as XPS; they can only go up to 8600 gfx vs 8700 minimum for xps.
That being said the inspiron 1720 is a good laptop and I would sell you mine…. but Liam already bought it. There are some really good deals for them on the dell outlet (www.dell.com/outlet) and you can get the standard dell warranty with them. Also note that under business dell notebooks, the Vostro 1700 is IDENTICAL to the inspiron 1720, except in color, so just get whichever one of those is cheaper.
thanks,,
I was looking at the Latitudes and they dont come in a 17″ -*edited* it
i gess i just need to go to bestbuy and look at them all
BTW: how did the 1720 run games? i still cant figure out the difference between the different models, they say they all have the same specs just different casings.. and prob a different mobo but spec wise the xps = 1720 from what i can tell
SYSTEM COLOR Jet Black
PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7500 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB/4MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition
DISPLAY Glossy, high contrast, widescreen 17.0 inch display (1440 x 900)
VIDEO CARD 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS
MEMORY 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
HARD DRIVE Size: 160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
OPTICAL DRIVE CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
WIRELESS NETWORK CARDS Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card
BLUETOOTH AND WIRELESS USB Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)
INTEGRATED WEBCAM Integrated 2.0 Megapixel Webcam
BATTERY OPTIONS 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
SOUND OPTIONS High Definition Audio 2.0
This wouldn’t be a half bad Inspiron. You can also upgrade the graphics card to 256MB and a slightly faster GPU for $140 more. I wouldn’t worry about upgrading Vista, eventually you can get a Vista Enterprise key from campus and there’s really nothing wrong with Home Premium anyways. I also selected the Dell Plus warranty package which adds accidental damage protection. Just ask Nickname how nice that can be. As configured, this laptop would game pretty decent and only costs about $1,500. If this is supposed to last a while, the graphics upgrade might not be a bad idea. If you just have some extra money to throw into it, a hard drive upgrade to 7200 RPM ($90 something) would be a good investment as well.
The 1720 isn’t half bad in games; best if you don’t get the high resolution screen though since as you up the resulution obviously it affects performance.
With the 1720 I could play CS:S at 1920×1200, with everything on High except shadows and shaders on low. If you bump it down to 1440×900 then it plays fine with everything on High; same for TF2 as well I believe.
NoDice said:
kuros i though you said acer?maby liam will be nice enoulf to let dice demo it
I like Acer, but Mike’s Inspiron is pretty nice. I’d definitely look at going that route if you’re willing to spend a little more money. I’m not a Dell fan, but some of the more “high end” Dells are of decent quality.
Do NOT get a desktop replacement, you’ll hate it and it’ll never have the resell value of a desktop. Not to mention the battery life is MAYBE an hour. Oh and did I mention heavy and hot? If you want a laptop, spend $600-700 and get yourself a decent one with a long battery life, leave the gaming to the desktop.
MasterP said:
Do NOT get a desktop replacement, you’ll hate it and it’ll never have the resell value of a desktop. Not to mention the battery life is MAYBE an hour. Oh and did I mention heavy and hot? If you want a laptop, spend $600-700 and get yourself a decent one with a long battery life, leave the gaming to the desktop.word, i get about 2 hours of life on my gaming laptop when its not plugged in, weighs about 5 pounds
Kip, he’s not looking to get some highend gameing laptop; that dell gets 2:30 with the standard battery and about 4 hours with the extended battery. It’s also not as big and bulky as the laptop you have. Desktop’s have the same terrible resell value as laptops as well so stfu about stuff when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
if i were to play games on it, which prob not going to happen very often, it would be wired via docking station.
and yeah not looking for the resale value, but hey its technology. thats the main reason i dont wont to spend big bucks to get “ahead of the curve” looking at options that are a good bang for the buck, and will be halfway comparable to my desktop.
not looking forward to the heattrapper,, but i’d take heavy and portable than big and pain in the auss. i like to call teh lab tops anywho, who likes to fri their balls.
is their something comparable to a dell1720 HP/Acer wise?
just get yourself a little attachment that keeps the laptop cool for like 20 bucks and its no longer hot. go work out in the gym and then maybe you won’t think 5lb is heavy… even i don’t think anything below 10 pounds as heavy for one hand. 25 for two hands
dice, look into the hp dv9000 series .. Derrick and I both have them. I also have 3 in office at Teamworks. We all love them. For the price you can’t get much better. Compare the specs vs any other notebook maybe you will find it as good as a buy as we did. All of ours were less than 1000. We all play source and what not just fine.
nickname said:
Kip, he’s not looking to get some highend gameing laptop; that dell gets 2:30 with the standard battery and about 4 hours with the extended battery. It’s also not as big and bulky as the laptop you have. Desktop’s have the same terrible resell value as laptops as well so stfu about stuff when you don’t know what you’re talking about.Go look at the stats he posted in the initial thread and then relook at what you posted.
MasterP said:
Go look at the stats he posted in the initial thread and then relook at what you posted.I hear wedding bells. Maybe it’s just me though.
that laptop I sold to liam meets or exceeds every one of those stats he posted and I sold it for $1000. It happens to be the laptop he wants too, so I think I know what I am talking about. That 1720 is not some huge monster heat generator/battery sucker or anything like that.
BTW, I would consider a highend gaming laptop as something having at least 8700s in SLI or 7950s in SLI and nothing lower. A single 8600 HARDLY counts as a highend gaming laptop.
is their anyhting else i would look at when reviewing notebooks, never had one so note realle sure what to look out for other than online reviews
side note: labtops can be SLi’d?
some laptops can; see: alienware, dell xps m1730, sager, et al.
Check out notebookreview.com for some decent user reviews; I typically don’t give too much credit to online benchmarks because they can vary so widely between different sources and such.
The inspiron 1720 (vostro 1700) is good, the older e1705 is also good. Other notable mentions would be the hp dv9500t series and the toshiba p100/p200 series has some good ones; heck just found this: http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.t…amp;poid=365595 which looks like a great deal to me (7900gtx 512mb ftw!)
nickname said:
Check out notebookreview.com for some decent user reviewsThat’s about the only good advice you’ll get from Nickname on this subject.
Hmmm… that coming from someone that has had one big old crappy laptop vs me who has had 6 in the last 2 years.
Yeah, obviously I know nothing and masterp is the genius. but all the advise he gives is to buy a desktop. how helpful.
nickname said:
Hmmm… that coming from someone that has had one big old crappy laptop vs me who has had 6 in the last 2 years.Yeah, obviously I know nothing and masterp is the genius. but all the advise he gives is to buy a desktop. how helpful.
What he doesn’t point out is that at least half of those were free. Oh and my “one big old crappy laptop” was the best available when it was bought.
My advice isn’t to just buy a desktop; it’s to buy a laptop meant for long battery life (4-7 hours) and save the rest for a good desktop. Nickname you can’t tell me a laptop lasts as long as a desktop in the gaming world.
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