Talk to me boys.

[thehoodedsmack]

Smack wants a laptop. Something with 2 gigs of RAM, a 120 GB hard drive at least, and a processor no slower than 1.9 GHz. You know, the stuff you can get at Best Buy of Futureshop. My father, who, as a father, needs to retain the effect that he knows everything, has advised me to wait until I enter university before purchasing one, stating that 18 months from now, these things will be obsolete. I call upon your professional opinions. Will there really be a great difference in whats available now, a year and a half from now? Should I wait for these predicted advancements, or purchase now, so that I have something for grade 12 and beyond? Please post advise here. Maybe I'll use this poll as covincing evidence. Thanks in advance.

~Smack :awesome:

[Zeph]

18 months and it will be obsolete. 18 months beyond that and the newer one will be obsolete. In short, you'll just be 18 months without a notebook. It may be obsolete, but that's only in the perspective on high end gaming. Buy one now and you'll be playing Crysis in a few months. Well, at least if you get a good processor and video card. Get one now. I mean, it's not like Microsoft Word will raise its hardware requirements between now and two years.

[Snowy]

Why not compromise, and buy one 9 months from now?! :eek:

Personally, I wouldn't buy one now... you've got the new Intel Penryn and AMD Barcelona CPUs coming up.

[Zeph]

Why not compromise, and buy one 9 months from now?! :eek:

Personally, I wouldn't buy one now... you've got the new Intel Penryn and AMD Barcelona CPUs coming up.

Yeah, they're comming up for you if you want to spend a premium on them.

[Snowy]

Yeah, they're comming up for you if you want to spend a premium on them.

You don't have to buy the top-notch, king of the crop, CPU. ;) Just something to consider. 18 months is very long in this industry. If you buy a laptop now, there's a good chance it'll still do the things you want to 18months down the line (besides games)... but if you don't need the laptop now, why not wait? You'll end up getting better or cheaper hardware. (most likely ;) )

[someone]

If you need one now, go and buy it. But if you don't need one right now, then you should wait, because there'll be better laptops for the same price in 18 months than they are today. And AMD Phenom and Intel Penryn should be avalable 9 months from now.

[thehoodedsmack]

Alright. Gaming isn't an issue. I just need something that runs my school-stuff. Let's suppose I'm in university until 2012. Will my laptop still be able to run 3DS Max 10, 11, whatever, Flash...10?, Photoshop, Word, etc on todays laptops?

[jahrain]

I suggest buying a laptop that uses standardized upgradeable parts instead of all proprietary parts. I have a 1.66ghz core 2 duo, which I will be upgrading to a 2.6ghz core 2 duo after I finish building my desktop pc. I will also be upgrading my hard drive from a 80GB to a 200GB HD as well. As for my graphics card, I can only order it from OEMs at the moment, but I'll soon be upgrading it from a 7600 Go to a 8600 Go later on if I feel necessary and thanks to a new bios update for my motherboard, I could upgrade my ram from 1GB to 4GB. I purchased my laptop over a year ago, yet nothing is really all that obsolete. Except for when vista came out, which turn the normal average PC into a shitbox of obsolete junk.

Upgrading graphics cards and processors on most laptops is out of the question, but with mine, its as easy and almost as versatile as a desktop PC for upgrades.

[Patrickssj6]

Slower than 1.9ghz?

What does the clock frequency have to do with speed?

My 2.0ghz X2 is faster than the 3.4ghz P4 :p

[thehoodedsmack]

You'll find I know little about hardware. But I'm clever enough to deduce that the bigger the processor number, the better it is for me. Now, I'd like to invite you gentlemen to look at this (https://ecomm.dell.com/dellstore/popups/popup_sys_details.aspx?itemtype=&s=dhs&l=en&cs=cadhs1&c=ca&item=331b384c-95eb-4f4c-9149-2b77991a5f28&cart=MySavedItems), and tell me if you feel it is a good choice for a laptop meant to last me at least five years. If y'all don't want to look it over completely, I'll list below some of the more important aspects.

OS: Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium Edition, English
Memory: 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 8400M GS
Hard Drive: 200GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7500 (2.2GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache)

So post your opinions, and I'll await suggestions on making a good choice.

[Patrickssj6]

Balance out the memory....increase the video memory...it won't hurt the laptop in size, weight or heat.

Oh by the way, the link doesn't work the way you want it. You also may want to go for a bit more quality than 4GB of RAM. Dell is not really the first choice. But that's only my suggestion and I know that you are on a tight budget for a laptop there. :)

[Mr Buckshot]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834280004

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834210004

Both have AMD Turion 64 X2 processors and only 1 gig of RAM, but they're $780 and $850 respectively. Both have Geforce Go 7600s as well. The Geforce Go 7600 is a great laptop card for the price and can push high settings in games these days, and run your 3D programs very well. I'm afraid I couldn't get you any C2D-configured laptops (at least those with dedicated video cards) because they'd cost more than $1000. If all you wanna do is run 3D programs, though, you can find C2D-configured laptops with integrated Geforce 6150s for less than $800.

If you buy either I recommend you get a second gig of RAM too since they both have Vista installed (unless you have an XP CD). Personally, I'd go for the $850 laptop because it's 15.4" as opposed to the 17" notebook (first link), plus it has a webcam and other features that the $780 notebook lacks. Anyway, buying a laptop that is 17" and larger is kinda ridiculous since that huge size negates the purpose of a laptop - to be a portable PC that can sit on a small surface and run off a battery.

Newegg rules. Dell's Inspiron 1520's have great specs but they're DELLS...you have to be wary of them.

[Atty]

Get a Macbook and Vista it. ;)

[Mr Buckshot]

Standard Macbooks don't have dedicated video (Intel GMA 950s). The Macbook Pros have great cards (Geforce 8600M GT, older ones have Radeon X1600s) but are way overpriced (base price of $2000 USD). If you're getting a laptop for games, you might as well get one that's natively Windows-based and cheaper. I mean, for $1200 these days you can get a C2D T7300 (2 Ghz, 4 MB cache), 2 GB RAM, Geforce 8600M GT, 2-MP webcam, 120 GB 5400rpm hard drive.

If you're seeking the most powerful laptop video cards (i.e. Geforce Go 7950 GT) you have to look in 17" and above, but I think such sizes are ridiculous because when it's that large, it's not really a laptop any more, and in that case you might as well have gotten a desktop.

[thehoodedsmack]

Well, who would you guys consider to be the leading laptop manufacturer? In quality, not quantity. I should probably look at a reliable brand, because I know Dell isn't super-dependable. I was considering one of Sony's Vaios, but let's hear what y'all think.

[Snowy]

Now, I don't really know the most quality laptops, but if I'd ever buy a laptop, I wouldn't necessarily buy from the biggest company... you generally get better attention/faster problem solve when you buy from a smaller company. (They're small, so they want to keep your business, duh). Maybe look at ABS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834224074) or ibuypower (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2030260032+50011210&Configurator=&Subcategory=32&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=). Idk, just something to consider. :)

[Mr Buckshot]

Well, who would you guys consider to be the leading laptop manufacturer? In quality, not quantity. I should probably look at a reliable brand, because I know Dell isn't super-dependable. I was considering one of Sony's Vaios, but let's hear what y'all think.

Cyberpower, Toshiba, ibuypower, Sager, MSI, Clevo, etc.

http://www.xoticpc.com/ has the best prices I think.

For Toshiba, their products listing is very sneaky. You have to browse through quite a bit to find their 15.4" Satellites with Geforce Go 7600s, but it's worth it. You often find Geforce 7300s in their 15.4" Satellites, but the 7600 is an affordable option, even in Canadian dollars. My mom has a Toshiba (with an Intel IGP) and it's been the most reliable out of all the brands we've tried.

Dell has good specs/prices, but you gotta be wary. I am impressed by the pricing of their Inspiron 1520 though.

Gateway, HP/Compaq, and Alienware are must-avoids.

I own a Cyberpower notebook from early 2006 and I like it. It lacks dual-core CPUs since Intel didn't have their laptop dual cores at the time, but it's a capable machine with a Geforce 6600 and a 7200rpm hard drive.