Laptop - where to go

[Jimmy Carter wuwu]

Which site to go for a good deal on laptops? Also, Which brands to stay away from? I keep getting mixed reviews from alot of people i talk to. From what i heard, stay away from toshiba,asus,gate way, compaq......

[Arbuste]

Let's just say I had a very bad experience with Alienware.
It's pretty, but it's expensive. My laptops had very good specs at that time. But Alienware went (and still goes, afaik) for the cheap brands. That caused me endless troubles (poor performances and nightmares with drivers.)

If you want something cheap, Alienware isn't.
If you want to put the price and buy something great, Alienware doesn't deliver.

I'm not sure where they outsource their customer support, also, but they weren't very helpful.

[Dekton]

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.html

In addition to Sager I would recommend ABS. You can customize easily to get exactly what you want.

http://www.abspc.com/index.asp

Happy hunting.

D

[makist]

I didn't mind Alienware.. just sucked after I bought mine everything went from AGP to PCI-Express, so they didn't put too much more effort into my laptop series. Other than that though, it seems to do alright. I probably wouldn't buy another laptop from them though. Voodoo seems to have some nice stuff though. www.voodoopc.com

[Jimmy Carter wuwu]

thanks alot for the links and info

[Samus Aran]

Dell.

[Lambourne]

I bought a Dell Inspiron 9300 earlier this year and I'm still very happy with it. I got the Geforce 6800Go video card (PCI-E) and it's very smooth running BF2 or Doom3 at 1440x900. Also runs Civ4 with all the settings maxed with zero problems (lot of people on the civ forums can't even get it to run on their laptops)

Disadvantages are that it's not exactly lightweight, small or cheap (about $2100 with the 6800Go card, 1gb mem, dual layer dvd writer and 2yr warranty) and while gaming the battery will be empty in less than 90 minutes even with the higher capacity 9 cell battery. (lasts about 3hrs doing office work or watching a movie)
If you're looking for a portable gaming rig it's a solid setup, although if you've got money to burn and want the latest and greatest you could go for XPS with the 7800 ulta ($4k+)

[Metranon]

i have a voodoo laptop, paid about $3500 for it new including 3 year service, 2 years ago

its a good laptop, their service is examplary(2 way paid overnight DHL) although getting through on the phone can be a pain. Parts are all high quality, although i blew up a hard drive, everything else is rock solid after over 2 years of leaving it on almost 24/7 downloading, playing WoW tons, etc

But honestly, if i could go back, i'd rather just order a midrange $1300 dell laptop to use for browsing the web and at school, and take the other $2 grand plus and buy a new desktop and upgrade it a bit later. Upgrading a laptop is a pain, and how often are you really going to want to play FPS on it? usually if i'm on my laptop, i'm on vacation (not going to waste time playing games) or at school (no time to waste playing games)

i guess it would be worth it if you are a businessman and travel a lot, or go a to a lot of LAN matches, or work in the software industry etc etc. I could never really enjoy it, i'd say 95% of the time spent on my laptop it's sitting on my desk with the display closed, plugged into a external monitor, mouse, keyboard, and speakers. At least this way you don't have to really worry about having an accident with a computer that cost almost as much as your car.

[Gauss]

My only suggestion is get a laptop for the purpose of what a laptop is intended to be: something mobile. Don't be like me and get a $1500 laptop from Toshiba that has a great graphics card, 17 inch widescreen, 3.0GHz P4 processor and will dislocate your shoulder if you try and carry it. Get a small one with a gig of RAM that can word process and maybe run a movie and build a desktop for gaming (which is what I did a year and a half later. I got more power at half the price).

Edit: I also want to note I have never had any Toshiba-related problems with my laptop. They put out a good product, but what you choose to buy from Toshiba is a different story. My laptop has served me well. Nothing in my 2 years of having it has ever broken (except the 512 stick I bought for it from their recommended dealer Kingston), even after I spilled an entire quart of water on it while it was on. The shit went in the exhaust, into the keyboard (and subsequently everything packed underneath the keyboard like the motherboard and disc drives), and came back good as new after I let it air out.

[makist]

heard good things about Toshiba laptops I have.

[Grooverider]

My family buys Toshiba laptops, I believe every member of my direct family owns one and has constantly told me how good they are.

When I lived at home a few years ago, we used to run a P133mhz Toshiba laptop running Windows 95 as our router to the internet. It had an uptime without crashing of over two years. We ran it pretty much non-stop for maybe 6 years (1996->2002). It still works perfectly - apart from the fan that is so full of dust it sounds like a jet plane taking off.

[Metranon]

pretty much all laptops are water-resistant now, same for keyboards. I still recommend buying an external keyboard/mouse to use because if you spill anything other than water on it, it's a bitch to clean.

My friend bought a $3000 dell laptop a few months ago...his brother has a baby, he asks my friend and his g/f to hold on to the kid for a couple hours, long story short, my friend is holding the kid in his lap at the same time as his laptop in on his desk 6 inches away, kid vomits directly onto the LCD screen/keyboard. This doesn't adversely affect it's performance but have fun cleaning baby vomit out of the circuits.