Purchasing a Laptop

[BoardBonobo]

I'm in the market to purchase a decent laptop that is good for gaming as well as more serious activities (Dreamweaver etc). There seems to be more choice than ever now but I think in terms of spec the minimum I would be looking at is:

Core 2 Duo
Either ATI 2400HD or GoForce 8600
Wifi
1+GB of mem
120+ GB HD.

Any suggestions as to brands etc? I'm looking at spending under £2k.

I just splashed out on a Quad Core G80 desktop, the PS3, and 2 HD TV's, so my wallets feeling a bit battered!!

 

[ERP]

Decide what you want to use it for and how much you want it to weigh, and start there. My first laptop was a desktop replacement with a 15+ inch screen, and everyone since has been smaller and more portable. I just didn't play games on it, and 7lbs is a lot heavier than it sounds if you have to carry it somewhere.

There are a lot of serviceable laptops if you don't need something very robust. I've owned Dell, Sony, HP, Toshiba and Lenova laptops, I'd stay away from Sony's (I actually have one as my primary right now) unless your willing to re-install everything from scratch. I like Lenovas for the build quality and minimal add ware pre-installation. The rest are pretty much all the same to me, and I'd imagine the Asus/Acer/etc etc are all comparable.

 

[NovemberMike]

I am personally a fan of the business quality Dells. I have a Latitude D620 and it has great build quality, not a lot of crap software and surprisingly good performance in games. I think my card is a Quadro 110m, and while it won't play Crysis (at all) or pump up all the settings, as long as you are talking about CounterStrike, Half Life 2, Stalker or just about any RTS I have seen it is definately playable.

As long as you plan on gaming mostly on your PC/PS3 I wouldn't worry too much about the Laptop, and if you are looking for work related graphics stuff then a Dell with a Quadro series card is definately what I would look at.

I just put this one together at Dell.com for fun, and it came out surprisingly well. The Quadro 135m looks like it is basically an 8400 specialized for graphics work, and everything else is pretty good. Put it together for $1240 too.

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7300 (2.00GHz) 4M L2 Cache, 800MHz Dual Core edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition, SP2, with media edit
LCD PANEL 14.1 inch Wide Screen WXGA+ LCD Panel edit
MEMORY 2.0GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM, 2 DIMMS edit
HARD DRIVE 80GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 5400RPM edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 24X CD-RW/DVD w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD™ edit
VIDEO CARD 128MB NVIDIA® Quadro NVS 135M™ edit
WI-FI WIRELESS CARD Dell Wireless™ 1390 802.11g Mini Card edit
FINGERPRINT READER OPTION Standard Touchpad edit
My Accessories
BATTERY 9 Cell Primary Battery edit
PRIMARY POWER OPTIONS 90W A/C Adapter edit
ADDITIONAL POWER OPTIONS 65 Watt Additional AC Adpater with 3' Power Cord edit
FLOPPY DRIVE No Floppy Drive edit
My Software
BACKUP OS DRIVERS AND SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION Resource CD - Contains Diagnostics and Drivers edit
My Services & Warranties
WARRANTY & SERVICE 3 year Limited Hardware Warranty with Mail-in Service edit
PURCHASE INTENT Purchase is not intended for resale. edit
ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM
Ship Group US - System Documentation, Power Cord
OS Labels Windows XP Label
Internal Keyboard Internal English Keyboard

 

[Geo]

I like my Lenovo ThinkPad T61p, it's a sturdy beast, and you can get it shipped with Vista Business x64 (if you care about such things, and I did). Costs a bit more tho.

 

[Albuquerque]

Can't argue against Lenovo Thinkpads -- if you've got the extra cash, they're an excellent descision. I had a Thinkpad 600E for about eight years that was fantastic, never had any problems with exception to replacing the ancient battery. I sold it a while back, and I still miss it

Through work, I've also had a Thinkpad R50 which was a great box, which was recently lease-refreshed for a Thinkpad T60 now which is quite a bit faster but still every bit as good. I also personally have a Dell Inspiron E1505, which has been an excellent box, but the casing just isn't the same and it's notably bigger than the IBM (the Dell is widescreen model.)

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Fujitsu-Siemens & Panasonic Toughbooks are the best laptops out there. Best build quality in the world for both, and most durable for Panasonic.

 

[Albuquerque]

We brought in some toughbooks for eval purposes -- looking for what kind of hardware to deploy to a very hot / greasy fast-food quick-order restaurant environment. They survived admirably, but were ridiculously expensive for the actual hardware underneath.

We opted for a far less expensive Dell Lattitude option instead. There's no arguing that they're "tough", but the form factor, weight and cost were simply not acceptable for our needs.

The only Fujitsu we've had on-site was a few convertable tablet eval units; they fared quite well, but we ended up getting a better deal from IBM on their X60 line.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

True, they're both rather expensive compared to the competition, but if "the best" is what you want, then you're likely to pay a healthy premium for it.

 

[Albuquerque]

Well, therein lies the connundrum. What's best for you may not be for me A perfect PC for me doesn't need to withstand a six-foot drop on concrete, but it does need some serious CPU power and 3D acceleration.

And preferably a price tag that doesn't equate to a new ATV

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Well, therein lies the connundrum. What's best for you may not be for me A perfect PC for me doesn't need to withstand a six-foot drop on concrete, but it does need some serious CPU power and 3D acceleration.

And preferably a price tag that doesn't equate to a new ATV

Fujitsu-Siemens offers some rather powerful portable workstations, last time I checked. Panasonic not so much, but again there you're paying for the durability.

The Celsius H line looks rather nice. C2D T7700, up to 8GB RAM, a Quadro FX 570M and a WSXGA+ (1920x1200) 15.4" LCD ain't half-bad, and it's still rather durable (not rugged-class like a Toughbook, but better than average). Celsius H datasheet
highlights:
magnesium LCD lid
spill-proof keyboard
shock sensor
vPro
dual sets of mouse buttons

 

[PC-Engine]

Toshiba's higher end notebooks are pretty nice, kinda pricey though.

 

[Albuquerque]

The Celsius H line looks rather nice. C2D T7700, up to 8GB RAM, a Quadro FX 570M and a WSXGA+ (1920x1200) 15.4" LCD ain't half-bad, and it's still rather durable (not rugged-class like a Toughbook, but better than average). Celsius H datasheet
highlights:
magnesium LCD lid
spill-proof keyboard
shock sensor
vPro
dual sets of mouse buttons

Not bad at all; pricey obviously, but then again you're certainly getting the goods! Lord knows I could've used the spill-proof keyboard a year ago when I dumped nearly a full cup of hot tea into my R50 But true to IBM's reputation, other than some sticky keys, the laptop lived through it without any issues.

I eventually replaced the keyboard

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Whatever you do, make sure you read this:

DO NOT BUY THE NVIDIA 8600m GS as this is in reality a 8400m GS (16shaders) with a small overclock. The 8600m GT however, has 32 shaders, and is a downclocked version of the 8700m GT.

Dont be a sucker, buy a 8600m GT and just overclock it to 8700m GT performance.

Or, better yet, buy a laptop with a 7900GTX, as that one will run all DX9 games better than the before mentioned gpus