New Laptop
 

I am looking at buying a new laptop and plan to spend about $2000 for it, and I was wondering if anyone would be able to help me with getting the most for my money. It would need to be a desktop replacement type computer. Really fast, and good enough to play some games on, but it does not need a huge HD like 60 GB or so. I am not brand loyal, I just don't want to spend a boatload on a piece of junk.

Re: New Laptop
 

i saw a laptop in a Fry's electronics ad that was awesome
100gig hd
3.4ghrz
1gig memory
17 inch screen
128 graphics
533 fsb
made by hp

or this one
http://shop3.outpost.com/product/447...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Re: New Laptop
 

I REALLY love my alienware. www.alienware.com Only warning, a pentium 4 with hyperthreading can get HOT so I use a cooling pad. They actually are pretty good considering the price. If you want something cheaper though your better off with the above computer.

Re: New Laptop
 

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...iXM140s1&s=dhs


See for yourself, Dell is pretty good :-)

Re: New Laptop
 

I'm a Mac nut, and I have to put the good word in for the iBook G4:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...ok&mco=DFE2FCC

I'd recommend getting the 14" model with at least a gig of RAM, which costs around $1400 without any discounts, such as the college student discount. (I am dead serious about the ram--I cheapskated and only got 512 MB--and I'm saving up to buy another stick.) The PowerBook line is sexy, but a 15" model already maxes out your $2000 budget. (There is a 12" PowerBook and iBook, but I value screen real estate. Hence I sprung for the higher-end iBook model.)

There's plenty of games (although you'd be wise to check whether your current gaming addictions are available for OS X), and the ease of use of this thing is second to none. Everything looks and works just about like you would think it should, and it'll do everything my former laptop (a Dell Inspiron 5150) would do except play Rise of Nations and fall apart in one semester.

Re: New Laptop
 

I like the Apple laptops but what are you going to do with it? Not CAD that's for sure.

The Alienwares are overpriced imho. Also, someone on our team had one (P4 2.8 I think) and it got so hot you couldn't have it on your lap. And the batter life was aweful.

Re: New Laptop
 

By far, the toughest laptops are Thinkpads. They can take any abuse you can throw at them. They're the standard that other laptops are measured against.

Re: New Laptop
 

Alienwares are Sagers with the little alienware ribbing and logos added on.

Buy it from Sager and it's $1,000 cheaper.

At any rate, you can find a recent discussion about laptops here

Re: New Laptop
 

They're pretty sweet...the only problem is they're way more expensive than other companies, and they tend to be more business than graphics/media oriented.

Re: New Laptop
 

Granted, I can't seem to find CAD software online, but nobody mentioned CAD before. (And there's a viewer or two available, if you've got to look at a product.)

As for what I can do with mine, I can keep my life organized (no small task), do everything a business student needs to do in class, create all manner of documents for FIRST and other purposes (yay for PDF support baked into the OS), and create all manner of audio and video. (I have plans for this coming build season, plans that will bring about memories of WildStang's 2004 teaser video. Fwahaahaa.)

<edit>And I've heard great things about ThinkPads as well. If I had to stay with Windows, I'd probably have traded up to that.</edit>

Re: New Laptop
 

In April I bought my current Dell Inspiron 9300: 1.86ghz Pentium M, 1gb DDR2 Dual Channel, 60gb 7200rpm HD, 256mb nVidia GeForce Go 6800, 17" widescreen

It's a very powerful machine, light for a 17" screen (7.5lbs) and after using an $800 off coupon code from www.edealinfo.com , I got it for < $2000. If not this laptop, at least get one with the Pentium M chip.

For your reference, its 3dmark05 score is 2868 and 3dmark03 is > 9000. I can post a SolidWorks 2005 SPEC score later if you want it.

Re: New Laptop
 

Not sure about the price, but the Dell XPS gen 2 is an amazing beast of a laptop, especially because you can get it with a 6800 in it!

Re: New Laptop
 

It would appear the Gen 2 is discontinued.

The new XPS is the M170.

and it's base price is $2800.

[edit] weird that Dell put a pentium M in that thing. It's not going to get jack for battery life anyways.

Re: New Laptop
 

Gotta agree with Billfred on this one.

I also recommend iBook as well. It's strange that I wouldn't recommend the Powerbook line, but I took a good look at both laptops and saw very few differences (the biggest difference is the illuminated keyboard and audio chat available on the Powerbook). Overall, you are better off saving a few hundred dollars and go with an iBook.

However, it's a shame that the college discount only knocks $100 off the 14" model and $50 for the 12" model (10% discount?). Otherwise, it is a very decent choice for laptops.

Since you mentioned it, I did do a little searching. The closest thing I found to 3D object modeling is a program called Carrara 3D Basics 2, which can be installed on both Macs and PCs. Hopefully, this link works...

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...lm=TE967LL%2FA

for the number of features available, I'd say $100 is a nice price for it.

Re: New Laptop
 

I just got an hp Pavilion DV4000 for the things my Tibook can't do:
Inventor 10
EasyC
VAG-COM (for talking to my car's computer)

I'm still setting it up, so I can't give you a real evaluation, but so far it meets my needs. I decided on the hp mainly because it was the least expensive laptop which offered a graphics card compatible with Inventor (ATI Mobility Radeon X700, 128 MB), though it's probably the lowest spec machine which can run Inventor 10 properly.

If you plan to run Inventor, I recommend you check their graphics card certification page before you buy.

Some other specs:
Pentium M 740 (1.73 GHz)
1 GB RAM
60 GB HD
DVD/CD burner
XP Pro
$1425

It has all the usual connectivity and a decent package - about the same size and weight as an Inspiron 6000, but cleaner styling, fit and finish. Still not as nice as the Tibook, but that's to be expected!

Re: New Laptop
 

There are many other choices for 3d modeling in Mac like
Luxuology, Sketch Up, Lightwave, and Maya. While they might not be like inventor or 3dmax, they are pretty good.

I would also recommended a powerbook or an ibook.

If you want a wintel laptop I would recommend either an IBM or HP laptop. If you can wait, the new Intel chips are much better than the current processors especially for laptops. These new chips like Yonah will be available in mid 2006.

Re: New Laptop
 

He said he wanted to play games. You aren't going to be able to play many games at all with an Apple...Sorry to all you Mac fanboys, but I hate the things for gaming. So hard to customize your own system...I make fun of Austin Butler all the time on this one. He got an iBook I believe and the only game he can play on there is a mario-like game with the Linux penguin. I was like...hmm...Apple users have to resort to other operating system's games, how sad. I also joke with him and ask "You type any serious documents on that thing lately?" So...bottom line is don't get Apple, it's not worth it for gaming. (BTW, what would you do about games that required a right click? LOL) I got a pretty sweet Gateway laptop at Best Buy for about 1200. It's got an AMD64 3200+ processor, 80 GB HDD, and an ATI Mobility RADEON 9600. It can play Far Cry pretty well.

Re: New Laptop
 

Hey, good thread, question I have

My team is looking to purchase an laptop for auto mode and other team information. Anyone have ideas on how we can get a laptop from a sponsor and what type of laptop should we be looking at.

Thanks

Re: New Laptop
 

The Toughbooks are much tougher than the Thinkpads.

I personally like my HP a lot. It is better in all but video (card and monitor(s) size) and storage space to my desktop. Only $1100 too. $2000 will buy you a lot of laptop.

Wetzel

Re: New Laptop
 

I never said anything about being a Mac fanboy. A lot of us actually have valid reasons for switching to Macs...

As far as games go, there is a very good list of games available for Macs. Such examples include...

Doom 3
Halo
Battlefield 1942
Rise of Nations
Star Wars: Battlefront
Neverwinter Nights (and its assorment of expansions)
Age of Mythology
Baulder's Gate
Black and White
Call of Duty
Medal of Honor and all the bloody expansions
Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield

Then, for kicks, lets just add Warcraft II, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Diablo II, and Starcraft. Notice that I didn't even mention their expansions yet ;D

Personally, I'm glad that a company, such as Aspyr, exists. They have helped release a lot of popular games (such as Doom 3 and Star Wars: Battlefront) on the Mac.

And as far as Right-clicking goes...

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...lm=MA086LL%2FA

Hope that helps...

Re: New Laptop
 

I was just given an IBM ThinkPad by my employer. It's a T30 model -- 1.8 GHz P4-M, 512 MB, 30 GB HD and pretty nice 3D acceleration. I think it's an integrated Intel chip. It is quite a nice machine -- robust, light and runs cool, generally. I have Solidworks on it and it performs well. It sometimes crashes Solidworks, which subsequently crashes just about everything else -- but that might just be Solidworks itself. I've never had Solidworks show much stability.

Re: New Laptop
 

I use both Mac and Sony laptops at work. Both are good choices. I will throw in the two cents from some friends who are software engineers / developers. They are noticing that a really large percentage of programmers at big conferences now are using Apple PowerBooks.

As for design software, VectorWorks is a mainstay program which works on Macs. It can be used for everything from setting up the lighting and sound in an auditorium to designing a gear to be made with a CNC mill. Shade and Blender are also available on Mac.

Re: New Laptop
 

Some of the high end computer animation programs will only run on a Mac.

The person who asked about getting a laptop for your team. If its not for the animation, then just about any laptop will do for programming the bot. If it has a USB port, its probabally good enough.

Re: New Laptop
 

Mac's are Mac's you know when you want one usually, but it doesn't hurt to research.

If I we're to get a laptop under $2000 I'd be looking at the Acer Ferrari, nothing really parallels it, AMD 64 bit processor, lots of Ram, nice nVidia Go 128mb video card and lots of other stuff.

Re: New Laptop
 

The Ferarri is actually rather expensive (at least the 4005WLMi model). It's like $2050 before tax and shipping.

It looks cool, but there's better values out there. As I noted before, Acer uses the cheap 4200 RPM hard drives. To upgrade to the same size and 5400 is like an extra $80. I've also heard a ton of complaints that the ferrarri series quickly turns into a space heater as soon as you start doing anything graphic/processor intensive.

I took a quick look at a couple websites I considered when buying my laptop last year, and I came across this(I eventually ended up buying from here. 110% satisfied with my purchase).

after customizing it to the original poster's specs, it comes out to about $1950 fully loaded. The best part is that they don't charge sales tax (outside of nevada), so you save about $150.

As I noted in the thread I linked to earlier, if you don't care about having a name brand computer, I would highly reccomend buying from a company that sells laptops made by the ODM. For example, you can get any of the laptops Alienware sells, just without all the alienware branding all over it, at a significant discount. Same goes with a bunch of other models from various manufacturers.

You also get the same warranty, with exactly the same tech support as the name brands. They just thank you for calling a different company instead of Dell, Gateway, or what have you.

It turned out that I got even better tech support from the no name brand than from the mass merchants, since they're located about 30 minutes from my home. I had one very minor issue, and I drove it right over and got it back within 24 hours.

When it comes down to it, very very few manufacturers make their own laptops. I believe Apple was one (someone told me recently they don't anymore) and one other smaller company. Might as well pay less and get the same thing, with a different logo on the case :)

Re: New Laptop
 

Last summer i got a new inspiron 6000 with a intel pentium M 750 1.86GHz 512Mb of Ram 80Gb HD ATI Radeon Mobilty X300 w/Hydravision. This is a great computer and i have few complaints. I am able to run autodesk 7 with little trouble (altho sum more ram would be nice) as far as gaming goes it is decent but its no powerhouse. Dell now offers this computer with a 2Ghz Pentium M and i belive a better graphics card. It is a great computer doesnt weigh too much but i suggest getting a bigger battery since it only gets about 2 hours with wifi on. For the price you cant beat it.

Re: New Laptop
 

Can't forget Marathon! The entire series makes having a mac worthwhile!

Re: New Laptop
 

To be honest, I never heard of Marathon...

But as far as Windows computers go, Here are some ideas for specs...

A processor with at least 1.5 GHz
1 GB of RAM
(at least) 80 GB Hard drive
Video card @ 256 MB

Might not be helping, but I'm typing up some quick notes before I log off. (Need sleep)

Anyways, I hope those idea as far as specs go are useful to some degree

Re: New Laptop
 

I have to point out, there are some decent wireless network laptops on sale right now from Dell and Gateway for ~$600, that would be great for a student to use for all HS and most college courses

for $2,000 you could buy 3 of them, and still have $200 left over for SW!

Re: New Laptop
 

After looking reading your responses I was looking at the following laptops.
http://www.sager notebook.com/pages/notebooks/product-price.cfm or the
the hp zd8000
however if I can get a laptop for $600 that will do everything I need then I might just save some money.

Re: New Laptop
 

Your link is broken. Even if it did work, you'd be linking to a page full of computers, not the individual one you were referring to.

As for getting a laptop for $600, if all you're planning on doing is word processing, surfing the web, and watching some DVD's, you'll be fine. If you want to do anything graphic intensive (CAD, games, etc) a $600 laptop will suck a whole lot.

Re: New Laptop
 

If you want to replace your desktop, the ZD8000 will do well, but it will be just that. The P4 uses so much power and creates so much heat you won't make it through a long class to take notes, not to mention having an uncomfortable warm lap.
If you do get a HP, get the 12 cell battery. It both lets you use your laptop longer and it also sticks out the bottom, elevating the rear. The rear is where the exhaust fan is and allows much better air flow, meaning the fan gets used less and giving you even longer battery life. I get ~5.5 hours on my HP L2000 for general use: note taking, spider solitaire, video (not DVD). I know I can watch DVDs for at least 3 hours with some other use mixed in. Best $25 I put in the computer. I just wish I has ponied up and gotten 1gig of ram instead of 512, but you got to make budget somehow. :-/

Good luck!


Wetzel


PS: If you spend less than you had planned to, take the money difference and stick it in a retirement savings account. Compound interest is awesome.

Re: New Laptop
 

Thanks, I will stay clear of the zd8000. Is there a $400 difference between the hp zv6000 with 15.4" screen, Athon 64 4000+ CPU, and 128MB RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M video card. And the Sager np475-v, with the athon 64 3700+ CPU, RADEON 9700 with 128mb sdram, and 17" screen. The screen size does not matter to me, all I care about is performance and I know the smaller screen will boost battery life. If the only difference is in playing games then I might have to buy a 360 and switch over to counsel gaming.

Re: New Laptop
 

I would suggest this model over the np475-v unless you really want the Athlon processor.

The 9700 pro is almost two years old. It's still a pretty good card, but it's two generations behind the current PCI-E cards. The model I linked to features the second best notebook card ATI has out right now. It's also 17", but with a Pentium M processor. It comes out to right around $2000 from Sager. It's less from www.discountlaptops.com. About $1914.

If you want all out power, the same model, but with the brand new Nvidia go Gtx 7800 w/ 256mb comes out to exactly $2000 without a OS. (http://www.discountlaptops.com/index...&model_id=1302)

Re: New Laptop
 

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...05&pfp=compare&

That is the Pavilion zd8230us Notebook that I purchased on Fourth of July and got it with all the sales + a 3 year service plan for about $2,200. Yes it is a major investment but I didn't want to get a desktop for college also and I wanted to be able to beat it like I do with our desktop at home. It is something that i can take home easily and do my school work at home with all the college software that we have to use.

The 1 GIG of ram is very nice. I can play Battlefield 2, MIRC, GAIM, firefox and be burning a dvd and it still has memory to spare. It is a great laptop for its price and it is something that I know will last for at least the 5 years of college.

With the P4 3.4ghz processor yes it doesn't get the best battery value. I get about 1 hour 40 mins out of mine. The media center is also nice because if you are gone for a class or have homework (yes we all have that) you just set it to record the show or series and it does it all automatically and the quality is great.

Re: New Laptop
 

Thanks goes to everyone, but especially Cory. http://www.discountlaptops.com/index...&model_id=1302 fits me perfectly, because since I joined the Air Force I get huge discounts on all kinds of software and no OS saves me big. The only question I have is with the tv tuner would I be able to watch tv on the laptop? If I can that is just one less item I need to have in my dorm.

edit: I can watch TV on it. I should have looked at the details page, and thanks again for all your help.

Re: New Laptop
 

I checked the discountlaptop site - holy cow! that place is expensive

http://www.discountlaptops.com/index...clude_type=141

$1200 for a laptop with a cheap battery, that doenst even come with windows? you can get one from Dell or gateway or HP for $600 with the same HW/RAM/HD with windows installed.

Something is not right there!

you guys got me wishing for a new laptop now! Thinking of this one:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/sh...true&tab=specs

$629 W/ window home XP and free shipping.

Re: New Laptop
 

Oh yeah Discountlaptops was expensive, your better off checking ebay out for an Acer Ferrari (my DREAM laptop) the hardware is built for a performance/gaming laptop. It's AMD (therefore better for CAD and Gaming) based and its got a whole lot of Ram and Awesome Video

On the budget laptops, about 2 months ago I got a HP ZV600 for a grand total of....$450, yes Office Depot had 3 $100 rebates and a $50 dollar one too, I priced the very same laptop out online for $1000. It's got nice specs too and is AMD based (i got the Athlon 64-M 3200+) and has Dedicated Video unlike its cousin the V2000 linky

Re: New Laptop
 

Their market isn't bargain bin laptops. They can't sell them any cheaper than the name brand companies do.

Compare their upper end stuff to Dell's upper end notebooks, and you'll find that you can get a significant discount--up to hundreds of dollars off.

P.S. the reason that one is more expensive is because it probably has a 5400 RPM hd vs a 4200 in the $600 laptop, and it has a dedicated graphics card, something you'll never find in the cheapie laptops. Not sure that those $600 ones come with integrated a/b/g wireless at no extra charge either. it certainly wouldn't come with gigabit ethernet They also aren't going to have a 1.7-1.8 ghz Sonoma processor. It'll be Celeron, or an older slower Centrino.

Let's compare theDell XPS M170 from dell.com, fully loaded, to the Sager NP5720 with the same specs from discountlaptops.com

Dell's fully configured price-$3,951
Dell Sales Tax for CA-$327.95
Dell Shipping and Handling-$25

Dell total~$4,300

discountlaptops fully configured price-$2859
discountlaptops sales tax for CA-$0
discountlaptops shipping and handling-$25

discountlaptop total~$2884

That's a difference of $1400

Re: New Laptop
 

This is from NoRemorse...

I bought a gateway 7000gz series, and it cost me $1600

ati 9700 gfx card
1 gb ram
100gb gdd
2.4 ghz 64 bit AMD
Dual layer dvd burner
integrated wireless G
6 in 1 card reader
bettery lasts about 2.5 hours
s-video out

in my opinion, best buy out there... period