advice on buying printer, laptop, headset, headphones

Chaotic Descent

edit: either advice from members, or websites that can give me the advice I need. I have a few bookmarked, but they tend to ... uh. hrm. neither one seems to cover anything other than laptops.
One's www.myproductadvisor.com , the other is anandtech.com ...

Laptop:
So I searched the forum here for threads on buying a laptop. One of them was about gaming laptops, and it seemed to boil down to "Sure, they're fine. (No, you shouldn't necessarily just buy a desktop.) The trade-off is portability VS cost."
I was confused by the mention of a video card, which when I searched for it on newegg (or was it zipzoomfly) it seemed to be a desktop video card. are laptops these days taking desktop cards?
I ask because while I would like to be able to do gaming on a laptop (perhaps World of Warcraft. nothing special.) I'm not sure if it's worth the price. then again, I'm not sure a non-gaming laptop is worth the price either. I see they have here in Canada $400 laptops (+13% tax) with wifi. I had no idea they had them that cheap. I'm not sure how much more I'd need to spend to be able to game on it though. I'm not looking to spend like $700 just for that... I wonder if I could get a really simple laptop with wifi for even less than $400.
One specific purpose I wanted a laptop for was at Transformers conventions. (the only real requirement there is wifi) When I borrowed my roommate-at-the-time's laptop, I didn't really use it for more than checking eBay prices to sell my extra exclusives, although I did have other intentions for it.
I'm not sure I could or would want to use it in other situations. I'm a little bit computer & internet addicted. It would be useful when I visit my friend in the USA, since I wouldn't have to lug my heavy desktop case.

Are there external DVD players for laptops that can at least optionally run off the battery power of the laptop? I want the ability to play discs for example if I were riding in a bus or car, but also have the freedom to spare myself the weight and power drain if I wanted to travel light if I were carrying it around all day.


Printer:
I'm guessing top-brand. Canon? There are so many damned models I'm not sure whether it's practical to chose one, or just to pick a brand and buy the cheapest one (with any optional features you might require).
Scanning would be nice, since I do have artwork. I just want something color, decent quality (with today's technology, I'm guessing just about everything looks amazing.), and uh... I think I'd take less noise over speed. again, recent technology results in amazing speed already compared to what I'm used to from the bygone age, but irritating noise is probably more important.
and uh... if at all possible, one that's electronics aren't made with toxic chemicals that require unreliable recycling services. (prone to abuse, where instead of following the law, they sell it to China. or it doesn't even get recycled, but thrown into a North American landfill where it leeches those toxic chemicals into the ground. yay. or that has some kind of guaranteed recycling service in the warranty? I dunno.)


headset/headphones:
I'm looking to get one of each.

I'm a little daunted by the complexity of choosing headphones for my MP3 player. On top of that, I have a suspicion that listening to music on headphones gives me a headache, so it might all just be a waste. I'm thinking if I do get them, I want ones that are heavily insulted against noise. Not sure about noise-cancellation technology... since I have sensitive hearing, that might make my headaches worse. plus it draws more power. Maybe I should just go find a used set.

I also want a separate headset for my PC that I can listen to videos at night with, or do voice-chat gaming with. (not that I currently do a lot of the latter. I was hoping to get into WoW more, find a guild, go on voice chat, but... eh... whatever) nothing too fancy or expensive. possibly a mic that unplugs so that it's not in the way. (not sure if a mic that rotates out of the way would wear out faster than one that's unplugged... it depends on the connection they use, I guess.) any advantage/disadvantage to USB VS ... uh... the regular stereo audio plug? (besides USB not being usable on your MP3 player.) either one draw more or less power?

MagicToaster

As far as printers go, buy the one that uses the cheapest ink.

Elin

I have this printer. I use it mainly for printing school papers and photos. It's pretty enough. The part that sold me though is the ink is 10$ for black and 15$ for color.

As for laptops, I paid 1300$ for my Asus. It was worth it to me because I hate being tied to a desk but I like to play PC games. It's really what you want, but a good gaming laptop could cost $$$.

Chaotic Descent

Elin wrote: »

I have this printer. I use it mainly for printing school papers and photos. It's pretty enough. The part that sold me though is the ink is 10$ for black and 15$ for color.

I didn't realize there was "affordable" ink. (Back in MY day, all ink was expensive. (AND WE LIKED IT!)) Is there some kind of trade-off, like it's made out of the blood of 10,000 tortured babies and the toxic poisoned river water of 100 years into the future were mutants roam the earth?

How do you find out which printers have affordable ink?

I mean... how does it compare to those $30 and $50 printers? I'm not really sure I'm going to be using this so much that I'll need replacement cartridges, but I suppose in general I'm all for more efficient ones with cheaper cartridges.

As for laptops, I paid 1300$ for my Asus. It was worth it to me because I hate being tied to a desk but I like to play PC games. It's really what you want, but a good gaming laptop could cost $$$.

Eeeeeeeeeee! painful.
I should probably mention what MY desktop PC currently is. It's a P4 ~2GHz CPU with 1GB of DDR (I forget what kind) and a Radeon 9600 of some kind. It played WoW alright. So yeah, I strongly suspect that even "sub-par" gaming hardware would be way better than what I have now.

Do laptops tend to consume more or less power than desktops? and do they generate more heat, or is that just because you're so much closer to the components? a desktop PC and CRT monitor already raises the temperature in a room by 1C/2F easily, so it's not small matter. (which reminds me that I need to get a LCD monitor one of these years...)
I'm wondering if I end up replacing my desktop with a laptop, will I be wasting a lot more than before.

Casually Hardcore

For headphones you're not going to get any better then these baby

http://www.gradolabs.com/product_pages/sr60.htm

Sadly it appears they went up in price recently. But they're still, by far, the best headphones for >$100. Hell they may be the best headphones for >$200.

proXimity

A quick look at Dell's site shows that they have a 15" laptop (2ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM, 250gb HD) for $599 (USD) that would play WoW perfectly fine on it's intergrated Intel GMA X3100.

However, if you are really just looking for a cheap wifi capable computer, you might want to look at a netbook, which is basically tiny laptop with a screen <9". They *probably* can't play WoW, but as long as they're running windows you could try.

Laptops consume WAY less power than a desktop, and therefor put off much less heat. Laptop components are generally designed for minimum power draw. Off the top of my head, I know that the latest MacBook uses a 45w power supply, compared to the 300w+ power supply of most modern desktops.w

Chaotic Descent

proXimity wrote: »

A quick look at Dell's site shows that they have a 15" laptop (2ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM, 250gb HD) for $599 (USD) that would play WoW perfectly fine on it's intergrated Intel GMA X3100.

However, if you are really just looking for a cheap wifi capable computer, you might want to look at a netbook, which is basically tiny laptop with a screen <9". They *probably* can't play WoW, but as long as they're running windows you could try.

Laptops consume WAY less power than a desktop, and therefor put off much less heat. Laptop components are generally designed for minimum power draw. Off the top of my head, I know that the latest MacBook uses a 45w power supply, compared to the 300w+ power supply of most modern desktops.w

I heard integrated graphics were not good enough for gaming. Looks like I have a crap-ton of research to do on whatever crazy standards in the latest technology are. I hate PC hardware. and there's no real benchmarks. It's all relative and wishy-washy.

I went to see used laptops and they had 1.5-2GHz ones for$300-$350, but I'm not sure if it's worth getting those instead of new ones for $400. but I'm not sure what kind of graphics any of them had. at least the new ones had something...

I think a 9" or smaller screen is too small even for me to web browse. Plus a non-gaming PC I would want to show off pictures.

Elin

For something like WOW a "high end" integrated card will work. I had an old laptop with an integrated card that ran WOW just fine. Anything more taxing is hit and miss. There's a laptop forum post that helped me find mine, I'll see if I can find it.

edit: Ok, what I did is read this post. I selected the video card that would do what I wanted and then found the laptops that had it. I then looked at those and decided on the machine I wanted.

Chaotic Descent

Elin wrote: »

For something like WOW a "high end" integrated card will work. I had an old laptop with an integrated card that ran WOW just fine. Anything more taxing is hit and miss. There's a laptop forum post that helped me find mine, I'll see if I can find it.

edit: Ok, what I did is read this post. I selected the video card that would do what I wanted and then found the laptops that had it. I then looked at those and decided on the machine I wanted.

Awesome. Thanks.


Anyone else, I could still do with help on printers, headset, and headphones.

(that smartass banned guy was not helpful. surprise surprise.) I had considered relatively expensive headphones at one point, but I think $40-$50 is about my maximum until I know for sure whether music on headphones gives me a headache.
I have heard that the insulated cup ones tend to use more power, because the sound has to travel farther to get to your ear, but that's fine with me. I suspect having earbuds shooting soundwaves right inside my eardrums may be at least PART of the reason I get headaches from my iPod.

Corvus

I can't recommend enough Notebookreview for laptop advice. Those guys know their stuff. There's a whole forum for What Notebook Should I Buy with a standard set of questions to answer so folks can help you.