Maximum PC

I am looking for a laptop for college. Right now I am considering building a gaming desktop to go along with the laptop, so I need to buy a midrange(ish) laptop for college.

Necessary specs.
Core 2 duo at least 2.0 Ghz
2 gigs ddr2 ram
wireless N capable
dedicated video card, hopefully a nvidia 8m series, but not necessary


would like if possible

solid screen, like 17" and 1920x1200 resolution (not possible for midrange laptop but I can dream ya know?)


around 1000 dollars.
I have seen toshiba hp dell and gateway that come pretty close, but I am looking for more help... I am even considering a macbook with vista, but I am not sold on that....

Any advice? Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Note: I'd steer away from Toshiba. The laptops are NOT durable. Moreover, their tech support and customer SUCKS. VERY customer-hostile.

You could probably get a decent deal on the cow box (Gateway), I'm just not sold on their durability either.

Pretty much what you're looking for can be found in the Dell 1720. But it starts at the top end of your rage. Were I you, I'd wave off on the "gaming desktop" for right now. ESPECIALLY for your first year of college.

Take the money and invest in as much laptop as you can reasonably afford. A gaming desktop will be old in 6-18 months. The laptop should last you your entire 4 years at college.

Moreover, you can do light gaming on the laptop without many problems.

Cost-cutting measures.

Spend money on all the decent stuff you CAN'T upgrade.

* Better screen
* Better processor
* Long warranty


And you can skimp initially on stuff you CAN upgrade.

* Start with 1GB of RAM (though if you gotta go vista, get no less than 2)
* Start with a smaller hard drive, to heck with SSD right now.

This way, even though your machine isn't THE world-beater, you can upgrade it down the road and improve performance when component prices come down.

Also, talk SERIOUSLY with the people at your college (including the teachers of the courses you're taking), and see what the recommended OS is. If they say Vista, you gotta go Vista. If they say Vista, but all their stuff is XP, you may have some choice. If they say "get XP", get XP.

Also, check with the college you're going to for deals or codes they have with various OEMs. They may have a program in place for laptop purchases that'll shave off some additional percentage points on the final price (though compromises might be necessary). In some cases, the university portals for places like Dell even tell you what OS you want to buy.

That's actually why I want to build a desktop. I know I can do it, my entire family does, and I can upgrade it at will over the next four years so it is however cutting edge I need it to be- I can't do that with a laptop... but I don't know what I am doing yet...
thanks for the toshiba and gateway advice. How do you feel about HP? I'll look into that dell too, thanks.

there have been talks from asus and AMD to release external graphics for laptops that hook up via the express slot. the front page has something on this right now

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/daily_ ... os_nehalem

you will want to be careful with shopping. Bear in mind that your laptop is going to be primarily for school use.

case in point, a friend of mine went to college and spent his savings (from working that summer) on a kickass laptop. He got to school for Music Tech and found out that he was REQUIRED to have a MAC computer. Education department at this school requires MAC as well. and if you are serious for video and photo editing, you may need mac.

I'm not saying you should get mac, however your school may have requirements for a specific department. the laptop doesn't even need to break the bank either.

a laptop with Intel 2ghz dual core w/2gb of ram should do the job and shouldn't cost more than like $700.


Wasn't AMD's fusion mobile platform supposed to come out soon as well?

The only reason I suggest foregoing a gaming desktop machine right NOW is that you need a working laptop more.

You can always build said desktop machine later on.

Northwestern lets you have either a mac or pc, but they prefer a PC because I'm going to be an engineer. Off topic, but why does everybody say that you should use a mac for media editing? I've always done it with a PC, but professionals always seem to use a mac, but we both use the same software.

I have no clue i think its just brand loyalty. All adobe products will run just fine on PC's, and the 64bit version of CS4 is going to be released for PC first.

as far as the music goes, its manufacturers sticking to one platform. All MIDI is built around MAC from the software to hardware.

SoundHack is a great open source tool, and they only support MAC

as far as photo and video editing, again it is sticking to a platform. + the hardware that apple produces is geared to professional work. The screens aren't worth crap for games (14ms response rate) but they are top notch if you need to pay attention to colors and fine details. Obviously there are screens compatible with windows that do just the same, but again its sticking to what works for the professionals.

I'm sure there might be more, but meh... not something an engineer needs to be concerned with

here in the publication biz where on Magazine can run up to 3 GB worth of files (not including advertisements) We had to Go mac, all the other editors are on mac and we had font conflicts when i was on PC

The IMAc we first got did fine for the first year but as we ramped our our photos to a minimum 300 DPI for ALL pictures the Imac with maxed out ram died.

now we use a 2x3 GHZ quad core (with doule screen set up) MAc pro with 8 GB (of 32) RAM

And some programs are still slow at times.

Vista 32 bit reconizes a max of 4 MB of ram (same as XP and the 64 bit version are buggy like all get out)

Mac uses that full 8 cores and 8 MB of ram.

So that one reason production people swear by mac. Its the install base and the Tech Spec needs.