Need help with a laptop question,

[EZ_Janson01]

I know its not the best forum to ask these questions but well, its the one i frequent the most and since there is many gamers, one where i might get the most intersting question.

i began looking for a new laptop latly, and well there is a LOT of choices possible, from which im kind of confused on what to pick(going away for 4 month, so desktop is not an option). ive been visiting a lot of seller online, and a few attracted my attention, but to chose betwen them is aother matter unforutnatly.

My main need is well 1) games, 2) versality(small graphical works, autocads and other cads softwares..ect ect), battery life is not a big matter. i have to admit i prefer intel over Amd.
my budget is betwen 2000 to 3000us(including shipping, but i would rather keep it around 2500).

The models that attracted my mind most are:

Dell Xps.
sager 8790
alienware Area 51m
hypersonic aviator gx6

I have to admit, id like it to be a little original, BUT well seeing 350 tp 620$ for a coat of pain, is highly scaring me. anyone have any experience with notebooks ,advice or possibly ideas or alternative i have yet to see? im totaly confused about which to get now

Janson

Ps(yes, i know, its prolly nearly as bad as asking for medical advices)

[Tandom]

I don't know a whole lot about laptops. i was initially impressecd with the alienware but Glip had one and it died on him twice. Don't know if he just got a lemon.. but he did have HUGE problems with it

[Llabak Tharr]

6 years ago I got a Dell Inspiron laptop for school. It's still running now, although I must admit the P2 266 in it isn't really much of a workhorse any more. It still runs the stuff I need to run, however, when I'm travelling and need to take work with me.

I'm pretty sure that either PCGamer or CGW did a big article comparing gaming laptops some time in the last year. May wanna pop down to the local library and check out the last few issues of each and take a peek.

[EZ_Kyndraa]

Found this review on Tom's Hardware and they like it.

Mayhem G1

[EZ_Jenago MacGregor]

By far the most important consideration in buying a "gaming" laptop for me is whether the graphic processor will be upgradeable.

With the graphic card product cycle so short (even for laptops) I don't want to be faced with the prosect of having to buy a whole new laptop just because my vid card no long meets the specs for games I want to play.

Currently there are only 2 manufactures that have "upgradeable" graphics cards: Alienware and (recently) the Dell XPS laptop.

My preference between the 2 is Alienware, simply because Dell's "upgrade" program seems to be fairly limited (there is lots of fine print). It seems the only upgrade Dell will offer is one step up within a year of the purchase of your laptop. Basically you'll get to go from and ATI Mobile 9600 to an ATI Mobile 9700. Doesn't exactly blow my skirt up.

Alienware seems to be more open to additional upgrades in the future.

I haven't had any experience with Alienware laptops yet. I currently run EQ on a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop (2.4 Ghz Pentium 4M, ATI 9000M (64 MB) graphic card, 512 RAM). EQ runs fairly well, though I do get some frame rate lag in high population areas (which hasn't seemed to change much with the new graphic engine). Dell has had generally good customer service (though they now outsource it to India for home computer users which sucks).

The one caveat to upgrading your laptop is this. Throughout the course of this year NVidia and ATI are going to be switching from AGP based graphic cards to PCI Express graphic cards. PCI Express is a new bus architecture that will improve communication between the components of the computer (including vid card) and the CPU and memory.

For the time being NVidia and ATI will offer 2 versions of their cards (one in AGP and one in PCI Express) for desktops. Its not clear to me what their plans are for laptops, and whether laptop makers in general will change to a PCI Express bus rather than the current PCI / AGP. In the future, however, laptop / vidcard makers may only be making cards for PCI Express. So you may not be able to count on upgrading your laptop for long if the only vid cards available are PCI Express and your laptop is using AGP. Then again, its so hard to predict the future.


My 2 cp