New Laptop, should i

Drazhar

ok, im givin serious thought to getting my mits on a lapper. Which one, well teh Alienware Area51m has my eye (yeah i have the dough)

Question: Is there anything about to come along in the next six months to make current laptop architecture more akin to a 2 slice toaster? What i mean is, is there something like PCI Express coming for laptops? Should i hold off on getting a laptop?

I wont be getting a Desktop again for some time, have much travelling to do (Kerry, Donegal, Vietnam, ya know, the usual sunday drive like)

joePC

I dont think there is much in the way of architectural change for lappys, only better processors e.g. 64bit processing.........I'd get one now......

Alienware outstanding company but you get what you pay for, if your gona be traveling alot go for a Intel Centrino processor system much better than the P4's in the laptop world.

Thanks joePC.

Pacifico

Got this one from dell reacently.

Its very good. very light if your gonna be doing alot of travelling...

Drazhar

forgot to mention, will be heavy gaming, and heavy image manipulation (32sMax, Paintshop Pro 8, etc) and heavy web dev

jesus_thats_gre

If you are going to be doing that sorta work, combined with games. Make sure it has a Radeon 9600 pro in it and comes with a decent screen. Most 15 inch screens have a max resolution of 1024 x 768 so watch out for that, I am guessing that you liek workin with a his res for graphics work.

useeme

got this last week.

Happy enough with it this

Its heavy but 3-4 hours of battery life.

raphaelS

There's the GRT series from Sony, this is a desktop replacement (not a great battery life) with nice 16" screen, Go5600, DVD burner, TV tuner card with Mpeg encoder... expensive though but nearly same price range as the Alienware.
http://www.vaio.net/models/notebooks/grt/index.html

I asked for that one to Santa... but the old man probabily mixed up the boxes!

Raphael

CyberGhost

if you have money, get Sager from pctorque.com, it has an option of P4 3.2 EE, 400MHz Ram.... very very fast laptop

chabsey

Try these guys...

They ship internationally and as far as I remember they have the exact same machines as the Alienware ones but just without the alienware branding. They're also quite cheap considering the specs.

raphaelS

Very interesting article about ODM (Original Design Manufacturer)... to know who makes what! Or as they call it the "Dirty little secret of the Laptop Industry".

http://www.powernotebooks.com/Name_Brand.php3

Raphael

jesus_thats_gre

I was just thinking about getting a new laptop come the summer, after seeing these bad boys, my decision has been made for me )

str8_away

Originally posted by raphaelS
Very interesting article about ODM (Original Design Manufacturer)... to know who makes what! Or as they call it the "Dirty little secret of the Laptop Industry".

http://www.powernotebooks.com/Name_Brand.php3

Raphael

And they probably all made in Taiwan

Drazhar

im not planning on paying crazy shipping charges, i could just get a friend in Athlone pick up the Alienware one, or i could grab one from Dell in Limerick.

So far ive got to say, Alienware are coming out ahead of everyone else. Maybe its just their advertising and stylish website, but im havent found myself even interested in reading the specs of any of the other suggestions.

Oh well. Tanks for the opinions

thegreek

I am responsible for deciding on the hardware standards for the org I work for.
Biggest part of the decision is supportability.

We continue to stick with Dell as they have excellent support. I would recommend buying the additional warranty which will cover all the usual stuff plus the unlikely event of coffee spills.

They will also have an engineer on site almost anywhere in the world regardless of where you bought the machine. This has proven rock solid with call outs in the UK and US for machines bought here in Ireland.

IBM on the other hand ask you to return the machine and have a turn around of greater than 10 days.

Don't know what to recommend from a tecnhnology standpoint as our requirements are reasonably basic.

Hope this helps in your decision making!

Gerry

Laptops are generally not very upgradeable. The advancements coming in processor technology will pass you by anyway, as it is next to impossible to physically change the cpu's in most laptops, and even if you could, you'd be looking at a 3.2ghz ( or maybe 3.4 ghz ) p4, not worth it.
Laptop architecture generally follows pc architecture, a few weeks behind, and with some cutbacks in speed to save power. ( so for example, most p4 based laptops do not use ddr 400 ram ).
Pci express won't make much difference to home users until there are mainstream peripherals out there to make use of it, and it will be some time before it filters through to laptops.
With whatever sort of laptop you buy, you will be able to upgrade the ram, and the hard drive, so thats not too bad.

I'd recommend a widescreen ( 15.4" ) centrino laptop, such as those made by hp and dell. The pentium m ( used in centrino laptops ) is not quite as fast as a p4 for games, but even though you say you will be doing "heavy gaming", you should try a centrino machine first, as the benefits in weight, noise, heat and battery life are worth considering.

Drazhar

good man gerry, informative and too the point. Probably makes sense your the tech mod!!!

Well, looks like its a toss up between the Dell and the Alienware. Wont be buying till the end of may, but hey, might aswell get the ground work done now as then. Just have to see if Alienware and Dell will support the lapper in Australia!!

tanx lads