I need a laptop
Cereal_KillR
Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1837Members
Join Date: 2002-10-31 Member: 1837Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Any recommendations?</div>Well the title says it all; I need a laptop and I don't know what exactly to get. This laptop is going to replace my computer, so it needs to be acceptable for gaming. By "acceptable for gaming" I mean it needs to be able to play Natural Selection and World of Warcraft without being a slideshow.
Above all, it can't be a brick. It will move around. I'm not looking for the lightest laptop out there, but it needs to be easily transportable.
Obviously, it also needs to be cheap, so for all those who say "it can't be done!" what I'm basically looking for is something that doesn't weigh a ton and isn't worth a fortune, but can run the HL1 engine and WoW.
Also something I'm looking for is a RELIABLE computer. I don't want something that breaks down because I closed the lid a bit too fast or hit my knee on the table.
Things that don't matter:
-Screen size (I will have a screen for when needed)
-Presence of a webcam (I'm ugly and nobody wants to see my face)
-Excessive battery time (obviously, more than 10 minutes, but it doesn't need 3 hours or so)
-Hard Drive size
-Type of optical drive (no burner needed, let's not even mention HD or Blu-Ray)
Things that can be enjoyable but I don't even know if they exist for cheap laptops. If you find these, /me <3 you:
-eSATA
-SSD drive
That's all for now. Also, consider I'm in France, so no "special offer (US residents only)" to taunt me.
edit: Obviously, WiFi is very much appreciated, even though I do have an adapter, and regular ethernet. but I took as granted that every laptop had these nowadays.
Above all, it can't be a brick. It will move around. I'm not looking for the lightest laptop out there, but it needs to be easily transportable.
Obviously, it also needs to be cheap, so for all those who say "it can't be done!" what I'm basically looking for is something that doesn't weigh a ton and isn't worth a fortune, but can run the HL1 engine and WoW.
Also something I'm looking for is a RELIABLE computer. I don't want something that breaks down because I closed the lid a bit too fast or hit my knee on the table.
Things that don't matter:
-Screen size (I will have a screen for when needed)
-Presence of a webcam (I'm ugly and nobody wants to see my face)
-Excessive battery time (obviously, more than 10 minutes, but it doesn't need 3 hours or so)
-Hard Drive size
-Type of optical drive (no burner needed, let's not even mention HD or Blu-Ray)
Things that can be enjoyable but I don't even know if they exist for cheap laptops. If you find these, /me <3 you:
-eSATA
-SSD drive
That's all for now. Also, consider I'm in France, so no "special offer (US residents only)" to taunt me.
edit: Obviously, WiFi is very much appreciated, even though I do have an adapter, and regular ethernet. but I took as granted that every laptop had these nowadays.
Comments
Light (under 2 kilos), good battery life (the 6 cell battery apparently holds 4 hours, I upgraded to the 9 cell), LED screen, and with some sort of graphic card (8400GS, which is apparently the worst graphic card out there, bar integrated chips) that allows minimal gaming. There's an SSD in option, but I didn't take it.
Note, I've had a student special offer so it was slightly cheaper for me (1500 Euros with case, software suite and extended warranty), but it was indeed quite expensive, as in more than double what I hoped for.
Their awesome for multimedia, they have a thumb print scanner for security (its a pain in the ass tbh, i dont like it), and its small and good on power. Just about any new laptop will run half-life 1 engine and world of warcraft.
<img src="http://www.cheaplaptops.org.uk/wp-content/laptopimg/2007/05/tx1000-1.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
My department bought 6 a year or so ago and have had 4 of them fully replaced. Of those, 1 is still not working after a year. Not that the warranty from the old machines will not be transfered and the machines will not be issued valid serials this means that every time you call them they spend approximately 2 hours looking though the old logs to find out that we have not, in fact, made up the serials we are reporting and that the machines are still under warranty.
I swear by my thinkpad though.
I would take a look at <a href="http://www.pc.ibm.com/fr/thinkpad/" target="_blank"> Their website</a> check out the T series. light, sturdy, reasonably fast.
I carry mine around 2 miles on foot everyday. I have dropped it, poured beer into it, play hours of video games on it.
The only way I have managed to break mine was by dropping it open, screen first onto the foot of my chair. that cracked the lcd. felt like a moron on that one.
Personally, I despise HP. Their support is horrendous and the machines have been bad in terms of reliability.
My department bought 6 a year or so ago and have had 4 of them fully replaced. Of those, 1 is still not working after a year. Not that the warranty from the old machines will not be transfered and the machines will not be issued valid serials this means that every time you call them they spend approximately 2 hours looking though the old logs to find out that we have not, in fact, made up the serials we are reporting and that the machines are still under warranty.
I swear by my thinkpad though.
I would take a look at <a href="http://www.pc.ibm.com/fr/thinkpad/" target="_blank"> Their website</a> check out the T series. light, sturdy, reasonably fast.
I carry mine around 2 miles on foot everyday. I have dropped it, poured beer into it, play hours of video games on it.
The only way I have managed to break mine was by dropping it open, screen first onto the foot of my chair. that cracked the lcd. felt like a moron on that one.
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I bet those are refurbed since they have different serials. Trust me, the refurb products from our company are poorly tested and repaired by mostly morons straight out of high school with no idea what ram is till they work there. My bet is you got a unit made by the company called quanta. HP contracts out to 3 different companies to make their laptops: Quanta (the main one), Bizcom (only make the low end compaqs now, they use to make the best hp laptops. All of the bizcom units are very good), and Wistron (they make them hard as hell to work on, but their pretty sturdy and small.)
Quanta brands generally suck as they use cheap materials, very thin plastics, and use cheap parts. Only exception of a quanta unit is the smaller dv2000's which use cheap plastics also, and the tx1000 which has some composite parts (even though the palm rest is still cheap, the rest is built much thicker).
As for hp's warranty, they covery just about everything and i've had mine worked on, but yea they do have a problem with fixing things right the first time. Most other brands make really slow laptops or are way too heavy/large
I wanted a laptop that was:
1) thin and light
2) Acceptable for gaming
3) Long battery life
4) Not horridly expensive.
So I went with the SZ. The particular model I got is 4 pounds, fairly small, gets anywhere from 3-4 hours battery (with 3 full hours DVD battery life!) and.. get this... it has dedicated graphics!
Not only that, but it has integrated graphics, too. It has an Nvidia 7400 with 64mb of actual dedicated ram, but it appears to the system as 128MB because it will cache to system ram if needed. It works well for CS:S and the like, but anything like Stalker or Fear makes it chug a bit. Even Doom3 is acceptably fast. The dedicated graphics can also be switched off, turning on the integrated Intel 845M graphics for low power useage and cooler operation. Most of the time I just keep it on integrated graphics, and the few times I want to game i'll switch it and plug it in.
My particular laptop is the $1300 model on Newegg. Why so expensive? Vista.
If you keep your eyes peeled, they sometimes have an $1150 model that uses XP instead, but it sells out quickly.
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834117315" target="_blank">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16834117315</a>
My brother has some Asus A8 laptop. He says it's good, but he already sent it back for repair because the screen's casing opened slightly and it's only a year old. I don't have a lot of perspective seeing as I never had a laptop before, but doesn't that apply as "not that good" even though he had no other problems from it (even the screen was still working even after the casing opened)?
For some reason, the only Sony SZ I found has been over 2000 Euros (in France), which is way above my pay. I'm looking for a 1000 Euro price tag at best, but I'm ready to go up to 1500€ (with the chest pain involved at having a huge hole in my fortune). It looks really sweet otherwise, and if I can get it at around 1200€ I'll get it.
Drfuzzy, I've usually heard bad things about hp laptops, but now that you mention it, laptop/tablet PC hybrids do look appealing, even if I'm not sure I have a use for it. So do you work at hp? I don't know if I should take your advice as biased, but is all the talk about hp laptops being unreliable just unfounded slander? Consider I'm in France, too, so possibly we don't get the same laptops?
In fact, I'm suddenly very interested in a Tablet PC for 1000 euros and that actually has something other than an Intel integrated graphics card. But wouldn't that Turion run quite hot, especially considering the size of the laptop?
edit: Stupid question, if I decide I don't like Vista, can I turn back to XP while keeping the Tablet PC working? (I've heard that Vista can be quite the resource hog)