The Furious Angels
FA Discussion => Off Topic => Topic started by: Styan on July 23, 2005, 06:20:33 pm
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Other than the obvious choice of an Alienware Area 51 7700 notebook, I'm looking for suggestions from people of what is good or not good to have in a notebook, or just ideas that may help me in finding one.
I'm really at a very early stage right now of shopping (probably about 30 days from purchase), so I don't have anything picked out yet. So if anyone has any input I would really appreciate it!
TIA
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Are you going for looks? You can get a similar notebook for a lot less usually...
If anything, make sure you get a really long warranty on it. They are all pretty good these days, if you go top range...
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get somthing that you can upgrade the most stuff on like vid card and stuff is what i sugguest.
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yeah when u buy alienware ur paying $1000 for the brand alone. id have to say go with dell. they usually have the highest quality gear at decent prices. and their tech support is leagues over hp or sony. thats the thing i hate about laptops, having to deal with oem's and what not.
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Ket: The reason I said other than, is cause i figured if I didn't people would start saying Alienware Alienware ... :p Come to think of it, I really don't know yet. (Guess I should decide eh).
I was thinking of something that would be good for school mainly, but cause im such an avid gamer, it would have to have some decent parts for gaming in it. Will likely be upgrading to a wireless network in my house when I do get it.
Khron: Are vid cards and stuff easily upgraded on laptops?? (other than the cost) There was one that I saw that had a ATI X600 i think, i know as much not to get the intel power graphics, or whatever.
Are there any brands anyone would recomend shying away from?
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id have to say go with dell. they usually have the highest quality gear at decent prices
The Dell Inspiron XPS-2 in a recent review in PCG had better benchmarks than the Alienware Area-51m 7700.
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i dont have a upgradeable vid card laptop but from what i see its like a panel on the back you unscrew and you slip out the chip and put in another one. same with ram
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Yea Khr0n1k that is how you upgrade RAM now video cards the laptop has to be built for it, and i think Alienware are the only on that do. But yea go with Dell XPS-2 laptop read the same review. Alienware only out prefromed it in one slot and that was CPU cycles i think not sure.
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For your reading pleasure.
http://www.sullycentral.net/images/xps2.jpg
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1.5 hours on the battery though...
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We use dell Laptops at work and i must say we have not had any problems (knocking on wood). However the desk tops are alittle different. So i would say get the dell. DO NOT GET A SONY VIO!!!!! The bettery life in them suck, i have replaced the one ii have 3 time and after 3-4 months the battery life goes to crap. I am lucky if i get a full hour of use. Not that i'm complaining or anything.
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Just, FYI, my work machine is a 3.4Ghz Pentium, 2Gb Ram, ATI x300 and it can play MxO on the HIGHEST settings with no graphics lag. I presume the x600 would be able to handle it all no problem..
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Oops.
We originally had an ATI x300 spec'd, but we really got ATI FireGL V3100, so you can probably disregard my above statement... But the game runs nice on that graphics card... no problemo at all.
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ahhh, ok
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I have a Vaio, never had a problem with the battery - about 5 hrs, watching movies and crap (mainly crap)
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you mean pron, right? :D
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Only what you send me
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Hey Destyn, Got a few questions about your Vio. Hit me up on TS when you have a chance, I'm having some trouble getting Mxo to work on it...it's a Pentium 4 2.8GHz, 1GIG Ram, ATI x300. The Ram is shared, not sure if that matters.
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Shouldn't do but I don't play MxO on my lappy ;) Did used to play Vampire on it though and it ran fine... shared RAM shouldn't be an issue. What happens when you run MxO?
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Thanks for everyone's input!
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Seriously...do not go Alienware. They overprice you, and they don't really give you anything for the inflation of price. Go PowerBook. That is the shiz right there. Trust me.
Anywho, yeah, pretty much anything BUT an Alienware. Trust me on this. Paying an extra $3k for an Alienware logo isn't really worth it
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Im not sure if anyone has mentioned this but if your not trying to go for straight gaming some of the strongest notebooks are Toshiba
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Seriously...do not go Alienware. They overprice you, and they don't really give you anything for the inflation of price. Go PowerBook. That is the shiz right there. Trust me.
Anywho, yeah, pretty much anything BUT an Alienware. Trust me on this. Paying an extra $3k for an Alienware logo isn't really worth it
Yea I don't think I have the cash for the AW, same with the XPS2, im just shopping around, and its stuff like this that i wanna hear, cause it gives me a good idea of what to or not to go for...
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this but if your not trying to go for straight gaming some of the strongest notebooks are Toshiba
Yeah Toshiba and Acer have been top picks so far... im leaning toward Toshiba right now... but still very early in my shopping.
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So on friday I went and picked up an HP Pavilion zd8210ca media center notebook... Actually tried last nite to play MxO and got about an hour and a half down, then I think I over-heated it. It ran alright but then I noticed the video gettin choppy and stuff, and then tizona's voice just repeating like hey hey hey hey... haha so either it over heated or just crashed, not sure... Anyway heres the link to the machine::
http://www.hp.ca/products/static/pavilion-notebooks/zd8210ca/
I got the extended warrenty plan thing too..