New Laptop

[TheSilverKnight]

Hi all I'm thinking about getting a new laptop for travel reasons when I go to university and all in a year or so...so I would like recommendations for a possible new laptop. Any certain brands you'd recommend, and prices? (If possible, convert US $ into British £ ?)

Thanks for any help you guys can offer, and smashing job on the new forum and choice of Beirut as moderator! He's a great mod!

Thanks in advance, - TheSilverKnight

[Lemur]

Laptops scare me. The only time I use them is when I'm given one for work. Not enough space inside them to stick tubes of neon. Noplace for glowing dials.

Anyway, I'll share what I know, which ain't much. The Pentium M is supposed to be the best of all possible chips for a laptop. (Reversing the desktop, where the Athlon64 rules.) The Centrino package is supposed to be very nice, since it is composed of a Pentium M, a particular mobo, and a wireless G connection.

A big question would be what do you intend to do with the laptop? For notes, study, email and web, the smallest, daintiest notebook would be ideal. If you want to game on it, you're into a whole different world. What are your intentions?

[TheSilverKnight]

Laptops scare me. The only time I use them is when I'm given one for work. Not enough space inside them to stick tubes of neon. Noplace for glowing dials.

Anyway, I'll share what I know, which ain't much. The Pentium M is supposed to be the best of all possible chips for a laptop. (Reversing the desktop, where the Athlon64 rules.) The Centrino package is supposed to be very nice, since it is composed of a Pentium M, a particular mobo, and a wireless G connection.

A big question would be what do you intend to do with the laptop? For notes, study, email and web, the smallest, daintiest notebook would be ideal. If you want to game on it, you're into a whole different world. What are your intentions?

I'd actually prefer both, but I don't feel like carrying my desktop to do the whole thing with me. What would you recommend for all of the above? For gaming, and for studies, web, and e-mail? Thanks for the help you've offered above, btw

[Lemur]

You wanna game? Okay, here's my best advice (and even my best is suspect) -- find yourself a Pentium M laptop that has a separate graphics card. A lot of laptops use onboard video, and that's death to gaming. But a lot of "gaming" laptops use dekstop processors, and that's death to weight and battery lief. Not to mention they steam up your lap.

So if you can find a Pemtium M-based laptop that has a halfway decent video card, you should be okay. And *whatever* you do, don't skimp on the RAM. The more stuff you can hold in memory, the less disck access, the longer the battery life, the happier the games.

If you can find something like that that weighs 6 pounds or less, you've got yourself a winner.

[edit]

Something like this would do the trick. I'm not recommending Alienware per se, since they charge a Fabulousness Added Tax, but this sort of build is what I'm talking about.

[Seagrave]

I would be careful with alienware. I have their 766 model area 51-m and it worked very well. It was a sweet machine, no doubt about it. But their customer service is less than good. I had a problem with my video card shutting down and CPU over heating after owning it for 18 months (had a 24 month warrenty). When I tried to have it worked on and the card replaced (still under warrenty) they told me "sorry we discontinued that model and no longer suport it or it's componets". They then informed me that since there was nothing they could do, my warrenty was void. When I tried to raise an issue on that they pointed to a clause on the warrenty stating they could cancel it at anytime.

Any who, not to bash them, the system was spetacular till I had this problem, the customer service is just somthing to keep an eye on.

[ah_dut]

I'd agree with Lemur...Pentium Ms (or core as it's known nowerdays) is great. Fast and relatively economical on power. Throw in a decent card (like 6600 mobile or whatever) and you should be go for small resolutions. In my opinion though, it's not worth mixing the two because you usually endup with comprimises that are just too annoying unless you have enough budget.

I personally quite like Acer's range (got one) but that's just me.