Help me buy a laptop

Fraz

Hey folks,

I'm suddenly in the market for a real computer.

I have a budget of $1,000 to $1,500. I know that's pretty broad, but I'd love to save some money if possible.

I'm looking for a laptop that will serve as my entertainment hub for the next few months. After that I'll probably have a TV and some kind of gaming console.

There's also a chance that I'll be taking abroad for 9-15 months, and I'd want it to be relatively portable and definitely sturdy.

I won't be doing a ton of gaming on it. Only thing I can think of that I want to play currently is StarCraft 2.

I'll mostly be watching videos, surfing the internet and managing my music/photo collection and playing the occasional game or two on Steam.

So far I'm considering:

HP Envy 14



Apple Macbook Pro 13"



Are there powerful computers that are also portable and relatively affordable? I remember that always being an impossible combination.

Fagatron

HP build quality is generally not great.

I have a Macbook Pro 13" that I bought recently and it is fantastic. As someone who has taken apart and repaired computers from every major manufacturer Apple's design in their laptops is top notch and the only product besides maybe the iPods that I would recommend to someone as worth the price over a similar, cheaper alternative.

ChopperDave

I bought a Dell Studio XPS 16 (from the Dell Studio line) this summer and have been really happy with it. The screen resolution is fantastic (1080p HD), it's got tons of memory and a spacious harddrive, runs any computer game you can throw at it at the highest settings, and has a bunch of smart features that you don't find on all computers, like two headphone jacks and a little ledge in the back that elevates it slightly and keeps it from overheating.

Basically it's a computer designed for art school students to run Adobe software on, but it's great as a portable media center too.

Probably the best parts about it, though, are a) that it starts at $1050 (even lower for the non-XPS models) b) that a few more hundred dollars can buy you some customized hardware and give you some serious horsepower for a laptop and c) you can buy a 3-year-warranty for cheap that covers you against common damage, hard drive failure, blown pixels, and the like.

The last part is pretty important. I've used Macs for the last 5 years and loved the software platform, but each MacBook I bought had some nasty design flaws (plastic bits snapping off for no reason, pixels blowing out, etc) and each suffered catastrophic hardware failure (I shit you not) one week after the two-year warranty expired, necessitating hundreds of dollars in replacement fees for difficult-to-replace parts. Macs just seem to be made of cheap, flimsy materials that are easy to break and expensive to replace.

Dells, on the other hand, have a reputation for being absolute tanks and the company's customer service is apparently top-notch as well. (I say apparently because I haven't had to use it yet, but my friends in tech service speak highly of them.) So that's worth considering as well.

Fagatron

Dell's business support is fantastic.

Their consumer support is about on par with everyone else's, thought they generally own up to and fix whatever the problem is even if it takes you a lot of time to get through all the flowcharts and tests with them.

mattclem

I'm on the lookout for a laptop purchase, too, as it happens. I'm thinking about treating myself to a gaming laptop for my birthday/christmas, and am just starting to gently take a look at the various options on the market.

At the moment, through work, I can get discounts on Dell (and therefore Alienware) gear, which does make the M15X look rather tempting, but before I commit to that, I thought it'd be worth getting opinions over here.

My overall goal is to get something roughly on a par with my desktop; that's an (overclocked) i5-750 with a Radeon 5850 and four gigs of RAM; however, there's space for the system to be a bit weaker given what I actually generally *do* with it (which is, basically, mostly WoW :-). Still, approximate consistency between desktop and laptop would be nice.

One factor that I should take into account is that I can get more significant discounts on the less games-focussed Dell range (in particular an i7 XPS 15 with a GT 435M), but I've no idea how those systems stand up to modern gaming requirements.

At the moment, it appears the best options are:
XPS 15, i3-370M, GT 420M, 4GB ram: £580

XPS 15, i7-740QM, GT 435M, 6GB ram: £830

Alienware M11X, i5-520UM, GT 335M, 4GB ram: £840

Alienware M15X, i5-520M, HD 5730, 4GB ram: £1050

The i7 XPS15 looks like the best deal to my eyes, but I don't know if there's anything in it that should be raising alarm bells.

Edit:

Oh, another just appeared;
XPS 17, i7-740QM, GT 445M, 6GB ram: £930

ChopperDave

Alienware usually comes down to aesthetic -- either you like that boxy futuristic look and the Alienware logo or you don't. Most reviews indicate that the M15x is rather thick and heavy (10 lb!), so be wary of that. The M11x, by all accounts, is a solid piece of kit -- affordable, great specs, good battery life, easy to carry around. The screen is, of course, small, but that's what you're buying when you get a notebook, and the resolution is still supposed to be phenomenal.

Dell XPS 17 and Studio XPS 16 are both solid for media and gaming. Like I said earlier, they've got a beautiful HD screen and more RAM (up to 8 gigs) than they has any right to have. You can even pay a little extra to get a Blu Ray player. The only problems with them are the mediocre battery life (about 3 hours on average, in my experience) and their middling weight (around 6.5 lb).