Want a laptop in general

chuck steak

It's time for a new computer, and since I'm often away from home all week for work I figure a laptop would be a good idea. I have never bought or even really looked at laptops before, and i haven't paid much attention to hardware in general since geforce 6800's were the top of the line. Needless to say I don't have a clue where to look or what to look at, so i'll fire away some questions.

1. Is it a stupid idea to buy a laptop as a main gaming rig? Would I be better off buying a really nice desktop and getting a cheaper laptop for older games, music, video, and internet while I'm sitting bored in hotel rooms? I already bring my ps2, and it seems to be serving my gaming needs fairly well.

2. If getting a gaming laptop is not a horrible idea, where should I be looking to buy one, and what am I looking at spending to be able to play new games? Should I wait any specific amount of time for directx 10 cards or games, or is what's available now going to be able to last a while?

3. If getting a gaming laptop is a stupid idea, what should I be looking at? Should I consider a Mac maybe? If it's not going to be my main gaming computer then just being able to run WoW would be good enough (would i have to buy new copy's of WoW and Burning Crusade for the mac?).

Invisible

1. Yes. You don't have the ability to upgrade, so you'll quickly be out of date. Gaming laptops have terrible battery life, so you'll have to be connected to play any significant time (like over an hour). They are also really heavy, so it's a pain to carry them around. If all you're going to do is sit in a hotel room, then maybe, but still the inability to upgrade really hurts after a while.

3. It really depends on what else you'd use it for, but Macs do tend to make nice laptops.

chuck steak

I can have it plugged in all the time, and I'm not much of an upgrader anyways so that's not really a concern. And as I said, i'll be using it strictly for entertainment purposes.

Daedalus

Trust me, you'll wish you were much of an upgrader in three years or so. Plus, gaming laptops use desktop-grade parts and laptop-grade cooling systems. Not exactly a winning combination.

I've got a three-year old gaming laptop right now. It was probably the worst purchase I've ever made. For the price of a decent gaming laptop, you can get a gaming desktop with the same specs AND a nice, light, portable laptop with good battery life.

chuck steak

Ok, I'm sold on the gaming desktop/media laptop combo idea.

So then, what is a good laptop for video/music/internet/WoW and other older games? Is Dell a good place to buy from? Or should I look around at Best Buy, Futureshop, and those types of places?

onceling

I bought one of these from Dell a while back (may not have been this model, I can't remember since I'm at work but it looks the same and the specs are about right):

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110111775358

Let me just say it was the best purchase I ever made. Yes, its heavy, yes it was extremely expensive, yes you had to plug it in to play anything at all. The only reason it worked for *me* was because at the time, I was never home (and had the cash to burn, no worries about upgrades in future). I played WoW, DDO, was in the Vanguard beta and played around with Oblivion for a while too all at different friends places. The ability to plug in at my various friends places and hang out with them without having to lug a desktop around was *awesome*. If they started watching sports or boring TV, I could just plug in and chat to my friends on MSN and play something. It is good enough for all the games I've wanted to play. When my buddy and I wanted to go into another room that didn't have a TV, bingo, the laptop could play DVD's for us in widescreen. The in-built wireless has never caused me a moment of trouble on the many, many friends wireless networks I go through (just finds and connects before I can even grab a coke from the fridge) and WoW looks great on it. (Don't forget to get a separate mouse, the touchpad thing is useless for games).

I totally agree with the points above about gaming laptops, but I just wanted to add that for some people, it still suits their lifestyle and can be a really awesome purchase.

I highly recommend Dell for a laptop, just because I've found their products reliable and suited to me, their warranties have not let me down before and their choices/selection well varied.

Just really depends on your personal taste.

Malkor

I use a Dell Lattitude for work its good all around. When I have it docked and on a monitor, I can barely tell the difference between it and my workstation. Its not too heavy, the battery life is decent, and I haven't had any problems with it other than mandatory company-wide battery change. It alot of older games, but I save CoH and Oblivion for my desktop back home.

MotherFirefly

alienware?

gneGne

MotherFirefly wrote: »

alienware?

No.

But it kind of depends on what games you want to play. It's gonna be hard to play Crysis on any laptop that's even out today. However, you might find a nice balance performance/battery life/weight of laptop. That will never be a powerhouse like a desktop can be though.

matisyahu

I have 2-year-old laptop that has been fine for games until recently (Crysis is a no go, so is that huge RTS made by the Total Annihilation guy). It's overkill for CS1.6, runs HL2 and CS:Source swimmingly (consistent 60fps in source), more than enough for WoW or FFXI.

edit: Dell Inspiron 9300 is what I have. The build quality on it feels really, really cheap now. It was fine at first, but after dinking around with MacBooks and some Vaios and even some HP laptops, the Dell's thin plastic leaves a lot to be desired.

EskimoAzn

Ah, I'd had the same dilemma up until late last year.
I wanted a laptop, not so much because of its portability, but mainly because I needed to save some desk-top space. It's a bonus that I could take it to my classes, should I choose to do so. Anyway, I also wanted to play some PC games, such as WoW, FFXI, and Guild Wars. And I'm a big music/movie buff, so I tend to download a lot. I WAS going to buy an Alienware laptop, but I decided against it, since I thought I'd be better off buying a durable, functional laptop for now, and MAYBE get a gaming desktop later, should I somehow magically acquire the time to play everyday or whatever.
I purchased a Dell Inspiron 6400 with higher-end options. I've had it for...6 months so far, and been very satisfied with it. It's reliable and affordable, which is perfect for me. Anyway, Dell -thumbs up-

Seattle Thread

Just a personal experience with Alienware, from when I was working as a repair tech. An Alienware laptop came in that was fried--the video would work for about 30 seconds before turning into the polygon-acid-trip-nightmare-from-hell. The video card was shot, and calling Alienware for a replacement was a joke. No one there was authorized to sell a part--I'm serious, they will not sell replacement parts to a technician for any reason at all, even if the owner speaks with them--and their phone service was worse than Dell's. Dealing with them for an hour was like pulling teeth.

Dell ain't so bad on the lapton spectrum. I would avoid Compaq and Toshiba like the plague (Compaq being extremely low-quality and Toshiba having a reputation for overheating due to poor design), HP less so, and IBM at the top. Those IBM ones be pricey, though.

There's also a newer manufacturer called Averratec... one of my co-workers bought one back there and it was a well-designed machine. It had great parts in it and the price was excellent, though I left that place about three months after he bought it, so I couldn't give you any info about long-term reliability. They would be worth looking into as well.

vonPoonBurGer

chuck steak wrote: »

1. Is it a stupid idea to buy a laptop as a main gaming rig? Would I be better off buying a really nice desktop and getting a cheaper laptop for older games, music, video, and internet while I'm sitting bored in hotel rooms? I already bring my ps2, and it seems to be serving my gaming needs fairly well.

A laptop as your primary gaming rig is probably a bad idea, as others have already stated. There have been a few models that have modular (i.e. upgradeable) video cards, but they're horribly expensive, the upgrade cards are horribly expensive, they're next to impossible to find, and I don't think anyone is manufacturing new cards in that format in any significant quantity. Basically, the whole idea of an upgradeable laptop was tried, and pretty much flopped.

chuck steak wrote: »

2. If getting a gaming laptop is not a horrible idea, where should I be looking to buy one, and what am I looking at spending to be able to play new games? Should I wait any specific amount of time for directx 10 cards or games, or is what's available now going to be able to last a while?

While I wouldn't recommend a laptop as a primary gaming system, I still think you could get one as a secondary / travel gaming unit. There's a really good thread at notebook review with information on selecting the right video chipset in your notebook:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=39568
Pick a group of chipsets that meet your needs, then take a look at notebooks featuring those chipsets from respected laptop vendors. I've seen a lot of HP/Compaq notebooks, and some newer Dell notebooks, and they seem alright. In terms of portability, ergonomics and design though, the Intel-based Apple notebooks really take the cake. This was also true of the pre-Intel Apple notebooks, but of course those aren't going to work for PC gaming.

chuck steak wrote: »

3. If getting a gaming laptop is a stupid idea, what should I be looking at? Should I consider a Mac maybe? If it's not going to be my main gaming computer then just being able to run WoW would be good enough (would i have to buy new copy's of WoW and Burning Crusade for the mac?).

A MacBook Pro makes a decent enough gaming system from what I understand. If you're looking for portable gaming and you're considering a Mac notebook, make sure you avoid the base MacBooks, they have an integrated Intel video chipset that's not up to snuff for most 3D games, even older ones. If your tossing the whole idea of portable 3D gaming, then the base MacBook would serve you well.

snowkissed

I purchased a Toshiba Satellite P100 last summer. It isn't too heavy and its specs satisfied me at the time. I play WoW, Oblivion, Tomb Raider Legend, Hitman Contracts and a number of other games and they're quite smooth. It will most likely become useless as time goes on and games require more out of the video card.

I'm going to be building, or having it built, my own PC some time soon so that I have something that's upgradable, but I'm still quite happy with my purchase.

Malkor

Anyone have anything good or bad to say about Sony's Vaio laptops? They seem pretty light and have good power from the specs.

StudioAudience

I have a Vaio laptop (http://www.amazon.com/Sony-VGN-SZ330P-Notebook-Processor-DVD%2B-R/dp/B000HLZOIU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3545724-0071341?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1176407446&sr=8-1), and while it's pretty light and portable, that shit can get loud. I also don't like the keyboard because it's really audible when you're typing as compared to some of the other laptops that I've used. The battery life is also mediocre, I can maybe get 3 hours on high battery settings. The nice thing about it though is that it has 2 video cards in it, and you can switch to either the "gaming" one or more crappy one depending on what you need. I tried playing STALKER on it and it ran rather well.

I've actually had a compaq prior to the sony, and I really liked it a lot more. Never had any major problems with it.

chuck steak

I think I may go ahead and get one of these, unless somebody can point out a reason not to. Oh, and is 2GB of RAM good enough?

variant

Buy direct, not from a store.

Also, I'm pretty sure Toshiba offers those specs on a 15.4" screen.

chuck steak

Why would I want a 15" over 17"?

Akilae729

chuck steak wrote: »

Why would I want a 15" over 17"?

A 17 inch laptop is a HUGE pain in the ass to lug around, its just very unweildly

Obs

Yes with laptops smaller is better not bigger.

People pay A LOT more for a 12 inch screen than they do for a 15 inch.

20+ inches is just crap.

chuck steak

Fair enough. Can i hook it up to a monitor (and keyboard) for use at home? Because it is going to be my main computer for a while.

variant

ofcourse.

chuck steak

Will I regret getting a graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600) with 128mb instead of 256? If I can play everything out right now on medium-high settings I'll be happy. I'm not too worried about playing anything coming down the pipe, aside from Spore.

chuck steak

How would I go about making it so that I can easily transfer files between my desktop and my shiny new laptop?

gneGne

Memorystick?

And I can't recall there being different versions of 7600go. Perhaps its 128mb dedicated memory and 128mb non-dedicated.