Laptop purchasing advice

[c3k]

Gents,

I'm thinking of purchasing my first laptop. The most stressful application I'll use will be the forthcoming CMx2 series. I know the requirements for CM:SF haven't been released, but I'd like to solicit opinions on how to best "future proof" a laptop with that game in mind.

Any advice on processors, chipsets, screen sizes and resolutions, video cards, etc., would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ken

[Andreas]

I looked around yesterday and Fujitsu-Siemens does what looks like a nice system for a decent price.

You can also do a search, I have asked this question before.

I think you have to expect to shell out at a minimum of €1,400.

All the best

Andreas

[civdiv]

Originally posted by c3k:

Gents,

I'm thinking of purchasing my first laptop. The most stressful application I'll use will be the forthcoming CMx2 series. I know the requirements for CM:SF haven't been released, but I'd like to solicit opinions on how to best "future proof" a laptop with that game in mind.

Any advice on processors, chipsets, screen sizes and resolutions, video cards, etc., would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ken

When it comes to laptops you can't skimp on anything, due to the lack of upgrade options. Sink every dollar or spacebuck (EU) into the thing. I've got a DELL XPS Gen 2, which is pretty much the top of the line laptop out there. I'd look at Sager also;

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.html

or here;

http://www.pctorque.com/

and here's some more info;

http://www.notebookforums.com/

These are the top-of-the-line models out there, every bit as good as Alienware (I've been told Sager actually makes Alienware), but a lot cheaper. These are desktop replacement laptops. They also have a limited upgrade ability depending on which model you go with.

[Redwolf]

I agree that the Fujitsu notebooks are the best overall offer right now.

The problem is that they, along with Thinkpads, do not have NVidia graphics options available. I would never buy an ATI-equipped notebook ever again.

I had a Dell 9300 for a month but the display (the non-glossy 1440x900) was horrible. Dell exchanged it several times, getting worse, and finally said that their non-glossy 17" displays are "not likely to come up with anything better at this time" and they game me my money back.

Sager makes some of the Alienware models.

Personally, if you'd force me to buy a work/movies notebook today, I'd get a 17" Fujitsu, or if it is supposed to do games I would go into the local Microcenter and buy one of the cheap brands notebooks with NVidia chip (Winbook, Averatec, Gateway etc).

[Andreas]

Fujitsu with Nvidia

Asus does a cheapo one with Nvidia Go 7300. Euro 1090 here in France. Asus Nvidia

All the best

Andreas

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Fujitsu with Nvidia

Asus does a cheapo one with Nvidia Go 7300. Euro 1090 here in France. Asus Nvidia

Both of them look excellent as far as my French goes

The 7x00 NVidia cards are preferrable as they take less power. Not sure how fast the 7300 is.

But that aside, I take any of these over ATI any day.

[c3k]

Guys,

Thanks for the words. I'm liking the nvidia 7800GO, but I'm wondering about the benefits and drawbacks between the various processors. Specifically, Pentium M (760), Pentium 4 Mobile, and the various AMD flavors.

Regards,

Ken

[Andreas]

If someone could mention something about difference in displays, that would also be appreciated.

All the best

Andreas

[c3k]

Yes!

I'm just trying to wrap my head around all the abreviations and what the resolutions are. WSGXT++Ultra? I'm a bit old-school: I like seeing the numbers, 1024x768, that kind of stuff.

If I get a laptop (TFT seems to be the standard LCD technology) with a 17" wide screen, it will have a resolution of WUXGA, or 1920 x 1200. (If I'm butchering this, that's due to my ignorance.) Assume that's the native resolution - the actual pixel count. Will the CMx1 series scale up to that? Would I want it to?

Any words of wisdom would help.

Thanks,

Ken

[Andreas]

Or to put in different terms, is the Fujitsu with a 17" screen, 1GB memory, and dual 80GB HDDs worth the €500 more that it costs compared to the Asus?

Has anyone got experience with the Asus screen technology?

Cheers

Andreas

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by c3k:

Guys,

Thanks for the words. I'm liking the nvidia 7800GO, but I'm wondering about the benefits and drawbacks between the various processors. Specifically, Pentium M (760), Pentium 4 Mobile, and the various AMD flavors.

Regards,

Ken

Pentium-4 mobile (or P4M) is a Pentium-4 with some power-saving features, derived from the 130nm P4s (Northwood) that were not as power-hungry as the awful prescotts (90 nm). But the saving are not great and mostly apply when the box is idle, so useless for gaming. In pretty much no event you want to touch anything Pentium-4 anymore, especially not in a Notebook. Same goes for Pentium-4 based Celerons and Xeons.

Pentium-M and Celeron-M are part of the centrino architecture which not only comes with the power-saving processors but whole chipsets with powersaving wireless, optional graphics etc. Certainly the most attractive platform out there right now.

The difference between the Celeron-M and the Pentium-M is not mainly speed, it is power savings. The Celeron-M misses some of the advanced power saving features of the Pentium-M and will hence lead to less battery life, especially when the machine is mostly idle. It will be fine speed-wise.

Note that many time Pentium-4 based Celerons and mobile versions thereof have been mislabeled as "Celeron-M". Don't fall for this trap, a P-4 based Celeron, "M" or not, is a piece of slow power-hungry trash.

The latest AMD mobile CPUs are about as good as Intel's CPUs in the power-savings deperatment and faster in a few areas. However, they lack the power-saving chipset of the Centrino package, so the battery life is still not as good. Chipsets are a weakness driver-wise, too.

The latest AMD mobile CPUs do 64 bit computing, though, from a raw CPU standpoint they are better than the Pentium-M which is basically a Pentium-III. The chipsets are not as nice as Intel's though.

[civdiv]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by c3k:

Guys,

Thanks for the words. I'm liking the nvidia 7800GO, but I'm wondering about the benefits and drawbacks between the various processors. Specifically, Pentium M (760), Pentium 4 Mobile, and the various AMD flavors.

Regards,

Ken

Pentium-4 mobile (or P4M) is a Pentium-4 with some power-saving features, derived from the 130nm P4s (Northwood) that were not as power-hungry as the awful prescotts (90 nm). But the saving are not great and mostly apply when the box is idle, so useless for gaming. In pretty much no event you want to touch anything Pentium-4 anymore, especially not in a Notebook. Same goes for Pentium-4 based Celerons and Xeons.

Pentium-M and Celeron-M are part of the centrino architecture which not only comes with the power-saving processors but whole chipsets with powersaving wireless, optional graphics etc. Certainly the most attractive platform out there right now.

The difference between the Celeron-M and the Pentium-M is not mainly speed, it is power savings. The Celeron-M misses some of the advanced power saving features of the Pentium-M and will hence lead to less battery life, especially when the machine is mostly idle. It will be fine speed-wise.

Note that many time Pentium-4 based Celerons and mobile versions thereof have been mislabeled as "Celeron-M". Don't fall for this trap, a P-4 based Celeron, "M" or not, is a piece of slow power-hungry trash.

The latest AMD mobile CPUs are about as good as Intel's CPUs in the power-savings deperatment and faster in a few areas. However, they lack the power-saving chipset of the Centrino package, so the battery life is still not as good. Chipsets are a weakness driver-wise, too.

The latest AMD mobile CPUs do 64 bit computing, though, from a raw CPU standpoint they are better than the Pentium-M which is basically a Pentium-III. The chipsets are not as nice as Intel's though. </font>

[c3k]

Thanks,

That kind of concise info, with comparisons between AMD and Intel, and your experience running various programs with them was just what I was looking for.

Regards,

Ken

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by civdiv:

Personally I'd go for a laptop with a Centrino processor. I don't know what the conversion is, but I am told my 2.13 GHZ is equivelent to like a Pentium 3.6-3.7.

There is no equivalent that you can name. Both processor families have entirely different performance characteristics and the Pentium-4s suck more on some applications than on others.

For games the AMD processors are usually best suited, characteristics-wise, closely followed by Pentium-Ms, with Pentium-4s farer behind.

[Andreas]

Since I just sold my G4/400, what are the experts views on good quality laptop brands, and on the Geforce 7300/7400 series of cards?

Also, what is preferable, AMD Turion, Celeron?

Finally, is 1GB memory sufficient these days?

E.g. This Fujitsu goes for €849 in France.

All the best

Andreas

[Redwolf]

My girlfriend nearly killed me for all the trouble she had with the Fujitsu she bought after my recommendation.

1 GB I dunno. Google Earth alone can kill it quickly. But I use Linux and FreeBSD, so I have different demands.

Celerons are only good if you are usually plugged into the A/C since they miss a bunch of power saving features. Pentium-Ms, CoreDuo, Core2Duo and Turion have better power-saving features. The Intel chipsatz are often nicer driver-wise than what is used in AMD notebooks. Core2Duo is a kill performance chip. Question is do you need anything faster than a Pentium-M?

The 7300/7400 are pretty lame ducks. Without looking at the benchmark numbers I think they get beaten by the higher end 6800s easily.

My girlfriend has very good experience with Dell but here's another one:

http://forum.useless-microoptimizations.com/forum/dell-service-attacks.html

Great it's so nice and easy, right?

[Andreas]

Arrrrggggghhhhhhhh...

What is the view on quality of Toshibas?

Here is one?

All the best

Andreas

[Redwolf]

Unfortunately the shop that repaired my girlfriend's Fujitsu said that Toshiba is worst quality-wise. The Fujitsu caused trouble by not only breaking, but Fujitsu USA would wait three weeks to send one bloody part.

You need to buy a Thinkpad is you want something solid. Maybe Panasonic, too.

Dell, as my link shows, can have issues but they don't seem to break often and the service, if you spent $300 on a service package, just keeps replacing it. And quickly so.

[Andreas]

This is not getting more encouraging.

What about Asus? Dell's with Nvidia cards are outside the budget.

All the best

Andreas

[Redwolf]

Asus?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=103199&highlight=warranty

Good hardware, many people like the Asus notebooks. But service? I have my doubts.

But I feel with you. Thinkpads are not made with NVidia and of course nobody in their right mind would buy anything with an ATI card for anything that uses 3D other than this month's games.

What you want is one of these huge-money-off coupons from Dell:

http://www.gottadeal.com/dell.php

(currently empty, though)

[Andreas]

Okay then, it now looks like an Acer, with the extended warranty package. Only a Geforce 7300, but since I do never play FPS games, it should do the job. All I care about is that it runs CMx1, Il-2, and CMx2 (the last at low settings), and it should do this.

Acer Aspire 5611AWLMI_GF1010 :

Processeur Intel Core Duo T2050 (1,66 GHz) - Ecran 15,4'' WXGA TFT CrystalBrite - Résolution de 1280 x 800 pixels - 1024 Mo - Disque dur de 100 Go - Carte graphique NVIDIA GeForce 7300 128 Mo / 256 Mo TurboCache - Graveur de DVD Dual Double Couche - Modem 56K - Réseau Ethernet - Réseau sans fil WiFi - Lecteur de cartes 5 en 1 - Poids de 2,95 Kg - Windows XP Edition Media Center

800 Euros the machine, 120 Euros the extended warranty.

Will get this after christmas. I look forward to the horror stories about Acer support.

Thanks for all the help!

All the best

Andreas

[ramagel]

Make sure you *DO* get the extended warranty if you buy the Acer. Make sure you have a spare machine to use *when* it goes phut - it's going to have a lot of downtime in my experience from about month 13.

My Mrs' Acer went "tits up" about a month outside the warranty period: the HD failed, the internal WiFi card failed, the 7in1 card reader failed. 4 months on, the power circuitry is acting up: sometimes it will turn on, sometimes it won't.

Reaction from Acer or Savacentre (whence I bought it): nichts, nada, rien, sweet fa, maafi - couldn't care less.

I would NEVER buy an Acer again, or indeed anything from Savacentre (Watford electronics).

In my 20-odd years of buying and using computers, that single machine represents all the failures I have ever had, except for one monitor that was 10 years old, and just a wee bit too expensive and out-of-date to repair again.

I’d now buy from a local ‘mom and pop’ store, and get as generic a model as I could.

What is pathetic, is that you have to pay 15% of the purchase price just to have peace of mind the thing might last more than 13 months ....

And, unless they've changed their policy, the “Recovery and Windows Installation" disk or disks you egg come with totally unintelligible instructions, require the HD to have a tiny (non-NTFS?) partition to work from (so you’re doubly screwed if your HD goes phut outside the warranty period) and contains the Windows files (for which you have paid) in some silly encrypted/buggered-up way that only the Acer recovery programme can use them.

Totally hopeless: avoid like the plague, in my experience.

[Andreas]

That didn't take long. Back to the drawing board.

Cheers

Andreas

[ramagel]

Sorry

[ramagel]

I've got to say that I'd wait until the specs are released from CMx2 - IME there's nothing worse than having a great game you can only play at its lowest settings.

I'd wait for the couple of years it'll take for the game and its first two patches to come out and then buy a suitably specced laptop.

Laptops are great, sure, especially if you have wifi in the house. But for performance, cost and reliability get a desktop built for you at a local store using generic parts, each of which will have their own warranty, as well as that the retailer / local legislation might offer you.

Fit some castors (little wheels) to the bottom of the case, get a flat panel LCD screen, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and it will be very nearly a portable .....