Maximum PC

I'm looking into getting a new laptop. My previous laptop was one of the infamous HP dv9xxx paperweights, and after calling tech support and getting the run around (I apparently don't qualify for the extended 1 year warranty, I guess they start counting at the time its actually made not when you buy it, nor the 90 days after a previous repair, 30 days too long).

Anyways before I rant too much, anyone have any brands or models they recommend? When it worked the HP served my needs just fine
Specs:
Vista 64 Ultimate
2.0Ghz Turion 64-X2 TL-60
2 GB DDR2
17.0â€

Asus.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 8044029168

Asus and MSI always make good laptops (find them on newegg). Acer will give you the best bang for your buck (again, newegg). Dell isn't bad either. I saw this (refurbished dells) recommended in another thread not too long ago. Pretty good bang for the buck there too.

For your price range, your probably going to want to go with a core2duo, as they tend to have better battery life and are a bit more powerful than the AMD's. For a 17" screen, you'll probably see mostly Geforce 9600M GT's or the ATI HD 3450's and 3650's. They're not bad as far as performance goes. Battery life shouldn't be bad either, especially if you get a laptop with a 9 cell battery. Heres something to get you started

Thanks, I actually saw the Asus machines at best buy the other day, they seemed nice, i"ll have to take a closer look, maybe head out to a Fry's or something.

And I wasn't sure exactly what to be looking for as far as GPUs, those model numbers at least give me a guide line. For as many different names and model numbers they have for desktops that seems to quadruple for laptops.

Anyways have any luck with gateway's or should those be stayed away from?

What's your budget? this will determine what GPU you should be looking for.

Gateway is OK. Their new Gateway FX system is very nice, but their regular consumer laptops are just average.

damit that is a sexy deal, wait till the mobile 200 series comes out tho, or get a 4000 series vga

Not for 900 bucks, lol.

The mobile GTX200's are basically rehashes of the 9800m GTX and GT with a slight overclock. Yeah, they're using the G92 core.

My range is about $1,000 or less. It'd have to be a spectacular deal for me to pay more $1k

It looks like a lot of mobile GPUs will be better than what I had. I found this http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Gra ... 844.0.html when searching on the subject. I don't put much stock in the benchmarks because I'm sure they came a large variety of setups, but at least its something.

Yeah the 7600 is pretty bad nowadays.

For $1000 or less, you should be aiming for any of the following: Nvidia 9800m GS, 9600m GT, 9650m GT, ATI 4650, 3650, 4670, or 4850.

CPU-wise, go with an Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GHz or faster.

I'm thinking about getting this one: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 8012519873

Local store had it for $850 as opposed to the $950 price on their web site. I swear the one in store was a 9800M GT as well. Anyways checking around to make sure there's nothing horrible about them.

EDIT: Well after doing a bit of searching the laptop is apparently a 9800M GS. It seems the model, along with the harddrive speed gets incorrectly reported by a few programs. The killer for me is the bestbuy shenanigans I found. Apparently when you buy the machine at BestBuy (An increasingly inappropriate name), the manufacturer warranty turns into a BestBuy warranty. So if something happens to your machine within the 1 year warranty instead of sending it off to Asus for repair you have to take it to BestBuy and GeekSquad. I have heard way too many geeksquad horror stories, and have personally helped coworker get out of their GeekSquad horror story. Asus apparently also offers a 1 year accidental damage warranty and a stuck bright pixel warranty, neither of which are valid if the machine was bought through bestbuy, microcenter, or the now defunct circuit city.

Guess I'll comb newegg some more, at least I won't get screwed out a warranty by going through them.

EDIT2: Looking this Asus machines now. I guess they're brand new so there isn't much out there on them. From what I understand the GT 120m performs about the same as the 9600 GT which would be just fine with me. the 2 year parts and service warranty and the 1 year accidental damge warranty look great though.

I really need a laptop and considered this Asus. I don't need or want lightening bolts but could live with them. But the LED lights on it can't be turned off. I don't want to look like a cylon at work.

What about this?

ASUS N80 Series N80Vn-X5 NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo P8600(2.40GHz) 14.1" Wide XGA 4GB Memory 320GB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce 9650M GT - Retail
NVIDIA 9650M GT 1GB + 320GB 7200RPM hard drive

Original Price: $1,149.99
You Save: $150.00
$999.99


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834220488

It's a little small for my tastes, but people seem to be going crazy over the fact it has LED backlighting. I'd hazard a guess to say the video card wouldn't be too bad for gaming, specially at that resolution. If you carry your laptop all over the place the smaller size would definitely be a boon.

That's the exact reason why I didn't buy that laptop a few months ago: The warranty sucks. I ended up buying an Asus N50Vn.



The lights can be disabled by physically unplugging the cables.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=318551



I bought the 15 inch version of that same laptop instead of the G50. It plays games beautifully. Every game except for Crysis can be nearly maxed out, without any AA.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834220489

I bought this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834220520 and it came Wednesday. Now that I've had a little time to play with, I must say I'm happy with it. Looks nice, no 'I'm a 13 year old boy' lightning bolt design. It runs WoW well, I had almost everything maxed out and was getting playable frames in Dalaran. Filtering was turned to 4x, shadows down some and the new graphics thing off. I ran the Lost Coast video stress and it hit around 78 FPS avg, with everything set to max. TF2 ran great as well, though I didn't have any demo to run to get an FPS score for that. So on that front I'm pretty satisfied.

It doesn't have as many bells and whistles as my old machine, it lacks s-video, though oddly the included an s-video to rca adapter, but it does have an hdmi port and a vga port so its not completely without video-out options. It also doesn't have firewire, which would have been nice but I can't recall ever using that port on my old machine, nor do I own anything with firewire. My biggest complaint is probably the speakers, and I think a lot of that has to do with their positioning. They're on the front side, which is tapered, so its more like they're on the bottom of the laptop. So the sound is directed towards my abdomen rather than my head, where my ears happen to be. The upshot is headphones are a 110% improvement.

It runs fairly cool, an ice block compared to my old machine. That said I'll probably pick up a cooler for when I'm running games, a fairly cheap investment to hopefully keep my machine running longer. I ran some action scenes from the Dark Knight batman movie to test out its video. I can't say I noticed anything out of place. Then again I'm not much of a videophile to notice minute differences nor pretentious enough to pretend I can.

I'm sure I could have spent more to get something better, but for $814 after shipping I gotta say I'm happy with this.

Nice buy. I have a question for you. Do you know if the video card has DDR2 or DDR3? Download GPUz and check if you don't know.

Lol my N50 was the same way: No S-video, but it has an s-video to RCA adapter.

This is a new design I've seen several manufacturers doing recently, the reasoning behind it is so when using video or audio conferencing the speakers won't feedback into the built in mic.

I have mixed feelings on the design.

It shows a lot of unknowns, and shows nothing under memory type. It may be cause the GPU is so new. Nvidia doesn't have drivers up for it yet, and Asus's are from Feb. I'm assuming notebook drivers aren't as global as their regular drivers, aka I can't just download the driver for the 9xxxm series?

I did get some lock up in WoW today, not sure what the issue was. Could be driver issue, overheating, or program bug. Just WoW locks-up, I can't go to task manager and close the program and go back in. Everything else seems to run fine. GPUz is reporting the highest its getting is 65c, but I'm not sure that's grounds for overheating. I really should pick up a cooler though...

Asus updates the notebook drivers about once every 1.5 months, so they're not very recent.

Download this driver:

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/ind ... opic=23485

It's the best one I've ever used.

65C at 100% load? That's GREAT. Right now, my 9650mGT is overclocked about 20% and the GPU and both CPU cores are at max load. I get 73C for the GPU.

If you still want a cooler, get this one. It's pretty much the best one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834997340

At Newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220518

I need a machine to use for surfing at work and movies in flight. I also want it capable of streaming to a 40" HDTV in my bedroom @ 1080P.

I wish this had a Blue-Ray drive but...

Do you think it can handle streaming Blue-Ray's from an external HDD to a HDTV via HDMI?

I liked the Asus G50Vt-X5 at BB but didn't want the LED light display. I don't want to look like a Cylon and I intend for this to run all night in a bedroom and don't need the light show. Is the N50Vn-X6 a good deal for $799? With shipping it's about $850 to me so I could get the G50Vt-X5 for $50 more.

Thoughts on this lappy for the bucks?