Buying a good laptop
- Thread starter Meck
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The Merlin
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Check out the Dell website, they have refubished ones and new ones for around a $1000
Qiranworms
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Problem with Dell laptops is often the portability factor. The lighter ones have much less power. Gateways, in my opinion, are better designed, but are definetly more expensive.
If you've definetly decided on an Intel CPU you probably should consider whether you want a Centrino or a Pentium.
I have heard mixed feelings about the Centrino. It is definetly better for the extremely portable machine, but I have also heard from an owner that despite its processing optimizations, it is simply not as fast as a Pentium...which seems to imply that if you want a gaming laptop, you should still lean towards the P4.
If you are probably going to get a Dell machine, my brother recently purchased an Inspiron 5150. Nice machine. On the heavy and bulky side, but it features a P4 (desktop version) clocked at 3.06 GHz and the machine still seems to keep an incredible 4 hours of battery life (I really don't understand it). On the Centrino side of things they have the Inspiron 8600 with a widescreen display.
Whatever you get, I would highly recommend at least 512 MB of RAM, and a 64 MB Graphics card (NVIDIA or ATI). Oh...and one more thing. Dell's support is not what they used to be. My brother's machine was shipped with a defective WiFi card, and they bounced him around from department to department and call to call just to "make sure" the thing was actually broken. After 6 weeks and many, many calls, (and long, long hours of waiting on hold) they finally agree to send a new one.
If you've definetly decided on an Intel CPU you probably should consider whether you want a Centrino or a Pentium.
I have heard mixed feelings about the Centrino. It is definetly better for the extremely portable machine, but I have also heard from an owner that despite its processing optimizations, it is simply not as fast as a Pentium...which seems to imply that if you want a gaming laptop, you should still lean towards the P4.
If you are probably going to get a Dell machine, my brother recently purchased an Inspiron 5150. Nice machine. On the heavy and bulky side, but it features a P4 (desktop version) clocked at 3.06 GHz and the machine still seems to keep an incredible 4 hours of battery life (I really don't understand it). On the Centrino side of things they have the Inspiron 8600 with a widescreen display.
Whatever you get, I would highly recommend at least 512 MB of RAM, and a 64 MB Graphics card (NVIDIA or ATI). Oh...and one more thing. Dell's support is not what they used to be. My brother's machine was shipped with a defective WiFi card, and they bounced him around from department to department and call to call just to "make sure" the thing was actually broken. After 6 weeks and many, many calls, (and long, long hours of waiting on hold) they finally agree to send a new one.
The Merlin
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I'm getting mine for college(studying computer programming and computer graphics), but can't find any good laptops around $1000 with anything bigger than a 32mb ATI card??
I probably won't be playing many games on it, but is 32mb good enough for programs like 3dsmax?
I probably won't be playing many games on it, but is 32mb good enough for programs like 3dsmax?
3ds max 6 System Requirements:
Primary Operating Systems: XP Professional (SP1), Windows 2000 (SP4), and XP Home (SP1)
DirectX 9 Recommended (DirectX 8.1 Minimum), OpenGL
512 MB RAM and 500 MB swap space minimum (1GB RAM and 2GB Swap Space Recommended)
Graphics card supporting 1024x768x16-bit color with 64mb ram. (OpenGL and Direct3D hardware acceleration supported; 3D graphics accelerator 1280 X 1024 32-bit color with 256mb ram preferred)
concentrate on OpenGL and Direct3D support & 256MB ram. these are recommended not required. any graphics card would work with 3DSM
Primary Operating Systems: XP Professional (SP1), Windows 2000 (SP4), and XP Home (SP1)
DirectX 9 Recommended (DirectX 8.1 Minimum), OpenGL
512 MB RAM and 500 MB swap space minimum (1GB RAM and 2GB Swap Space Recommended)
Graphics card supporting 1024x768x16-bit color with 64mb ram. (OpenGL and Direct3D hardware acceleration supported; 3D graphics accelerator 1280 X 1024 32-bit color with 256mb ram preferred)
concentrate on OpenGL and Direct3D support & 256MB ram. these are recommended not required. any graphics card would work with 3DSM
The Merlin
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OK, so 32mb graphics will do, but I need 64mb if possible, cool
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