Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests I want to buy a Laptop

basically a good processor is nothing without cache and lots of ram. Most people think the if they get a fast processo, then the computer will be fast. But its not true, what you really need is a good processor (not something fast as hell) and a good amount of ram. That way your computer will have more pages and frames in the memory so that when the processor calls for the pages then it will all be loaded in the memory and not on the harddrive (virtual memory). Virtual memory is good but u dont want to rely on it. What you want is lots of memory. Something like ddr 2700 or if you can get a laptop with a centrino processor and lots of ram. The processor speed shoulnt be your choice maker. By the way, have you looked at toshiba yet?

You have to list the things you want to do with it, and then decide what model does most of them well.

The Pentium M models are better for mobility, battery life and efficiency, but they are generally couples with weaker video cards to conserve power.

The Pentium 4M laptops, at the higher speeds, are faster, have larger screens and faster drives. They also have more video card choices.

The true desktop replacements, like the Sagers, use actual non-mobile Pentium 4s and have the fastest video cards, but are heavy (up to 14 lb.) and have terrible battery life (maybe an hour).

No matter what though, laptops will lag behind desktops in game performance. There is always a trade-off to package soemthign in laptop form factor. The Sagers come close, but still lag. The main culprits are slower drives, slower memory and video cards with fewer rendering pipelines.

If you're not buying immediately, i'd wait until the Mobility radeon 9700 debuts in laptops. The benchmarks show it really closes the gaps with desktop video cards. Dell and Sager are usually the first to adopt cutting edge video and 3D. Compaq and IBM lag behind. Sager has also adopted the newer 7200 RPM laptop drives, which help a lot. Then again, do you really want a 14 lb laptop? The Dell Inspiron 8600 lets you configure a 128 MB ATI Mobility 9600 Pro video chip and a higher resolution screen. While the 1.7 Ghx Pentium M is a shade slower than the 3.06 P4M available in the 5150, the video card will be a lot more of an impact to your gaming experience, with a side benefit of being in a lighter package and letting you have very good battery life when not gaming.

If you wait for the ATI mobility 9700 Pro though, the jump in performance will be even greater, but still only in the Inspiron 8600 line. Sager will adopt it, but it's a behemoth.

Thanks, that actually makes good sense. Right now I pretty much narrowed it down to these two laptops:
----1----
Sager 4080v -- $1745.00
3.0GHz Pentium 4 processor
15" SXGA+ Screen
512Mb PC3200 DDR 400 memory (1 DIMM)
Radeon 9600 Pro 128Mb Video Card
60Gb Ultra DMA HDD (5400 RPM)
8X DVD/24X10X24 CD-RW Combo Drive
7.5 lbs. w/ battery

----2----
Dell Inspiron 8600 -- $2013.00
1.7GHz Pentium M
15.4" WSXGA+ Screen
512Mb DDR 333MHz memory (1 DIMM)
Radeon 9600 Pro 128Mb Video Card
60Gb Ultra ATA HDD
24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive
No Weight Available

I've been reading the reviews about each of them, and what I've come up with is this:
Sager:
+Nice build quality
+Great power
+Nice screen
-Can get pretty hot at times
-Short battery life (esp. playing games)
Dell:
+Great battery life
+Usually stays cool
+Widescreen
-Cheaper physical feel
-Keyboard flexing issues
-Hit or miss on screens

I am a college student so I do need SOME mobility and enough life to last through 1-2 classes, plus it is MANDATORY for me to get a 128Mb video card. I looked at Toshibas, Sonys, e-machines, and IBMs, and none offer a 128Mb video card (and some are more expensive anyways).

P.S. Anyone know the ETA on the Radeon 9700 Mobile cards?

Mobility 9700 Pro Availability

Looks like very soon. Dell and Sager will be the first to adopt them. IBM probably won't. Compaq, Toshiba, et al, will be later.

For gaming though, this will be the biggest factor, as there is not real change coming in laptops, except for incremental speed increases.

I know that I am going to get shot down for this, but I have used an Apple ibook for the past two years and I love it. The software is pretty much compatible with a PC and it has much better protection against virusses, hackers and whatnot. I looks a hell of alot better too, and you don't get sucked into the Microsoft web of deceit and shitey software glitches. If I had $2k to spend on a laptop, I would get a 17" powerbook with superdrive (DVD-r). Most of the laptop PC's are a couple years behind Apple as far as overall value, b/c what most laptop PC's have as "amazingly new" has been on my computer for years. Just my 2c. Let the naysaying commence

Of the two I would go with the dell err I mean I went with the dell

For the dell I would drop the memory down to 256 megs and save yourself $225 Then buy some memory from crucial/kingston or somebody and save yourself money over buying it direct from dell (it takes one screwdriver and about 5 miniutes to install the memory) I think when I was looking it was about $100 - $125 or so get get an additional 512 meg of memory (so for the price of your upgrade you could almost toss what came with the dell and buy a gig of memory to install (2 X 512) and toss/ebay the 256 meg chip.

Like I said before I get about 4 hours of battery life from my 8600 with the ATI 9600 card in it just doing normal stuff with the standard battery. If you get it I would also reccomend getting the media bay battery so you can get up to 7 hours of life if you need it. You would have to remove the CD-ROM to put this in but if you rip your games to the hard drive and emulate the CD's you will not need the CD-ROM that much anyway.

If you decide to go with the dell you might want to think about the faster speed hard drive. If can greatly improve your access speed for games if you are worried about they type of thing. It will kill a bit more battery but it might be worth it if you play lots of games.

Widescreen - How well do the games you want to play support the widescreen like you would have on the dell ? I am not much for most gaming right now but NFSU looked ok playing for me. When you are running in a resolution that is not the native for the LCD things can look a little bad.

The 8600 is Starting at 6.9lbs according to the dell site.

Chuck, I have nothing against Apples, and in fact run three systems at home. One is Fedora Core, one is FreeBSD and one is Windows XP, and then have a home server running Windows 2003. I really like the G5s. Would not mind getting one sometime.

But Bronco said he's into games, and that makes the Powerbooks a non-factor. If it was different in terms of games on OS X, I would have no problem recommending one. Personally, I don't game on a laptop ever, so I ordered an IBM T40 as my laptop for work. Gaming is terrible on them, but you can't beat IBM quality and support. They do everything but give you fellatio when you buy through their corporate department.