Recommendation for Laptop

[Kaijos]

It's a reasonable price - mid-range toward the lower end (3rd of the 8) from the sites I checked using a similar hardware configuration (www.dell.com www.ibuypower.com www.cyberpower.com www.alienware.com www.newegg.com www.gateway.com www.hp.com) in the last five minutes.

[.::.Dubble-Bubble.::.]

LOL I laugh when I see people recommend Dell or HP or whatso... It isn't the brand that makes a computer good, it's what inside. As for me, I got a boosted up, home-hand made pimped up HP G60... It's shitty stock, but easily boostable to make my life very easier... I run any game, any program, and most importantly, Itunes, Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and MSN all at the same time, without lagging.

That being said, look for a comp with minimum 3 gb of ram, minimum 250 gb hdd, a good graphics card (for nvidia aim for 8800 and higher) ((im not too geeky in gfx cards)). Take an hd soundcard and definately go for the processor you like the most. (This may make people laugh and such, but i'm a die-hard AMD guy, because of past experiences with intel...)

So,

Minimum Requirments:

3 gb ram
250 gb hard drive
hd soundcard
> 8800 nvidia or ??? ati (ask the gfx gods)
AMD _ _ _ _ _ _ (Athlon, Phenom etc. whatever) dual core 64 bit x2 (take 64 bit)
12 cell battery
I personally dont give a fuck about my wireless card, all i know is that i have an atheros lol

[Kaijos]

I don't understand why you would laugh. Most people don't reinstall Windows beyond what comes on the computer - a computer loaded with a lot of extra stuff (sometimes even in the BIOS) that is not needed and hogs resources that is put on by HP, Dell, etc. That is the main beef with them after price (beyond sometimes generic, low quality parts but that isn't an all of the time thing like the software thing is). For instance, against my protests, they bought a Toshiba laptop with 1GB of RAM (WinXP) and 250GB hard drive. Toshiba put (by themselves, by the way, not asked for) 12.5GB of extra crap (mostly involving the Toshiba name, but not all) and took up 650+MB of RAM at start up. See the beef now? Not about hardware, on the whole, it is the stuff they put on it.

[.::.Dubble-Bubble.::.]

That's what I said...

It's not the brand, it's the part. Even if you go for Dell, Toshiba, Fujitsu, HP or Alienware, you'll always get generic programs and shit on your PC. It's the user's job to uninstall and/or reformat the computer, to their own personal liking. I know I reformat my comp every month and a half.

[brotherluke]

just for a small idea.

The new dell inspirons sell for about 400-500. and they come loaded. 3 gb ddr2, 2.0ghz dual core, 15inch screen, 250 gb hd. integrated graphics is the only downside. I mean cmon, for 400-500 dollars, you CANNOT beat that. I know dell sucks ("YEA FUCK DELL") But thats what i am about to get.

oh, and if your parents are getting you the computer, and you can spend under 1100, go check out cyberpowerpc.com under their laptops. i've purchased my desktop from their. pretty good stuff

[.::.Dubble-Bubble.::.]

tigerdirect is good too

[nunslaclo]

tigerdirect is good too

Very cool, looking great so far. Keep going, I wanna see it finished!

[F.U.B.A.R.]

^Laff at the spam.

Dubble, "boosting" aka, part swapping in a laptop is not a viable options for any major laptop manufacturer. Unless you build a whitebox laptop or go the barebones route, you're stuck with a very specific set of components and the only leeway you have is with ram, harddisk, and if you're really invested, secondary hardware components like your lcd panel, wireless card, etc. Aside from that, you buy a laptop, you're pretty much stuck with the processor, video card, motherboard, and clocking capabilities it came with.

Between manufacturers, few exceptions aside, you're going to be able to find whatever component set you want, so if you have a favorite maker (particularly if they're known for quality or reasonable pricing), that's not something to scoff at. Moreover, the brand most definitely matters for laptops. Some manufacturers are known to use low-grade parts, particularly when it comes to cooling solutions, so while the individual components work very well, the machine as a whole fails to function. Even more importantly, a lot of gamers have rather tight budgets and future, costly "upgrades" - regardless of their supposed benefits - simply aren't an option.

Specifications are just numbers, and numbers don't mean everything - not by a long shot.

[LADY_LYSA]

Its not really the brand that your looking for.. its really what is inside the computer that you should look into aka the specs. Really what your looking for is for 4 GB of RAM because vista takes at least 2 GB, and since your also using it for school maybe getting something with a 320GB hard drive would be good pretty decent if not big enough look into getting an external hard drive? then to game you obv need a good graphics card.. and since you are in canada like me right now i would say that HP's have a lot to offer and good prices too.

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pro...0125147&catid=

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/pro...0125252&catid=

try best buy too, tigerdirect is also good sometimes you can come by really good prices look into the daily flyers for future shop and best buy.. you can come by a good deal too sometimes..