New laptop advice

yeah i'll be looking into that model, its seems pretty good and relative cheap. I believe the promotions for my country ended last week but dell has them often so that shouldnt be a big deal.
 
You can have a look at the Dell XPS M1530, there are some promotions from Dell now, they are good gaming machine.

yeah i'll be looking into that model, its seems pretty good and relative cheap. I believe the promotions for my country ended last week but dell has them often so that shouldnt be a big deal.

I just got one of these. They were offering a 40% off promotion at the time so I was able to get the 1900X1200 screen, 2.4 Ghz C2D, 4GB RAM, larger battery and integrated Bluetooth for ~$1500. It's really more of a DTR then a true laptop, though, IMO. It's heavy enough that you're going to want to have a desk/table to put it on for any extended use.

That having been said I've found performance is really, really good in this configuration. In some ways comparable to my (admittedly aging) dual-core desktop rig. I haven't run a lot of games on it yet, but Portal, at least, runs well @ 1900X1200.
 
My laptop has a 2.5Ghs dual core penryn chip and a lowly 8400 graphics card, but I have to say it performs far more poorly than my desktop with a 2.66GHz dual core and x1900AIW in games.

Laptops have slow HDD, and I suppose the optimizations for power savings also cut into performance, but it is far far worse than my desktop, though it has more memory.

Desktop Vista x32
Laptop Vista x64

Dunno if that makes any real difference though.
 
Not suprising with a 8400 vs a x1900. On the cpu it shouldnt be such a big difference but you are right about the hdd. Wonder why there is still such a lack of 7200rpm disks.
 
Not suprising with a 8400 vs a x1900. On the cpu it shouldnt be such a big difference but you are right about the hdd. Wonder why there is still such a lack of 7200rpm disks.

Maybe, but I was playing a quake3 mod and I thought they were more CPU limited. I was getting 10-30 fps on laptop at 1280*800

Vs.
100fps steady and 1680*1050 on the desktop.
 
I doubt your going to be cpu limited with a c2d system and a game made to run on 350Mhz cpu's and slower.

I would tend to agree, but it scaled amazingly well compared to contemporary games. I haven't looked of course since p4 2.8ghz era, but it was still scaling faithfully back then.
 
in quake3 (this is the game your refering too ?)
i get 1000 fps at 1280
 
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Hi,
Size: I think I want a 15(.4) screen, 17 is to big and the others are to small to look at nice for a couple of hourse at school I think but I also want the case to be as small as possible.

You won't get a light laptop with this screen size. I'd consider light to be something <2Kg, but anything with this screen with be ~2.5K.

If you want portable look at the 13" wide-screen laptops.
 
I sold my Macbook recently and I've replaced it with a Thinkpad T61p. It was either that or the 1920x1200 M1530, and although the M1530 could have been had for about 30% less than I paid for the T61p, I plumped for the T61p in the end. Geo has one and convinced me. 1920x1200, Core 2 Duo, 4GB, G84, blah blah blah. Really sweet machine.
 
I would have got a thinkpad for sure, but they did not have a digital out unless you got the base station...
 
Having HDMI output was one of the things I really liked about the M1530. I'm wondering....maybe the T61p's dock is a useful thing to have near my TV. If it'll somehow let me charge a 2nd battery then I'm mostly sold.
 
I dunno if it does that, but I truly don't understand why so many manufacturers refuse to offer an HDMI output. They are so small it is not as if it is terribly difficult to find a place for it on the chassis.
 
the DVI connector is more useful (compatible with VGA, DVI and HDMI displays, w/ HDCP)

I wanted a DVI, but HDMI is far smaller so it is not as difficult to find a spot for it on the case. And you can go hdmi-->DVI so it is just as compatible IMO. Some of the laptops that are smaller really don't have room for many more ports especially if the battery is along the backside getting rid of all that real estate.
 
I myself am perusing reviews for the perfect laptop. Since I've almost always built my computers, I've never really paid attention to laptops, so I'm a little out of the loop. I need something with a nice mobile GPU, for school, meaning it needs to have no issues with PS, and for my life long gaming interest. Also something with a nice processor. What companies should I be looking at? Even better, anyone have a model recommendation?
 
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If you want gaming then battery life is zilch.

Asus has really quite decent laptops for gaming, they have terrible battery life though, but they tend to score better than laptops with same specs from other manufacturers b/c they don't make a real effort on battery life. In other words they are not always dipping into power saving mode or whatever. They are really cheap for what you get as well as far as gaming is concerned, but quality may not be as high. Their warranty though is pretty dogon good I think.
 
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