New Laptop

[sirbleedsalot]

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.

[Timmyd]

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

[mechanicalbrain]

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.

[Cody Carey]

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


See for yourself, Dell is pretty good :-)

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by sirbleedsalot

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.

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.

[sanddrag]

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.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

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.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Ogre

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.

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.

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Ogre

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.

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

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Ogre

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.

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.

[mathking]

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.

[KenWittlief]

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.

[Conor Ryan]

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.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

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.

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

[Bill_Hancoc]

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.