Help me pick a laptop

Well, I have never purchased a laptop or bought a prebuilt computer before, but now I have the chance. It’s for work, but I still want the best video I can get, just in case I have to, uh, help out the test team in the games group.

Are there clear winners or losers from the following list of mobile video solutions:

[ul][li]ATI Mobility Radeon 9000
[/li][li]ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
[/li][li]NVidia GeForce FX Go5200 32/64MB
[/li][li]NVIDIA GeForce 4 Go 420
[/li][li]NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 32MB DDR[/ul]
[/li]
I also have to decide between laptop or tablet. I am leaning toward laptop, but I could be talked out of it. Do any of you use a tablet? What do you think?

If I go with laptop, here are my choices:
[ul]
[li]Dell Lattitude D600
[/li][li]HP NC600
[/li][li]Toshiba Tecra M2[/ul]
[/li]If I go with a tablet, here is what’s available:

[ul][li]HP TC1100
[/li][li]Toshiba Portege M200[/ul]
[/li]My gut feeling based on the specs other than vido is that it’s a choice between the two Toshibas. Does anyone actually have one of these?

What, no inspiron 9100 on the list?

heh, nope. No Inspirion 9100 on my list. But thanks for the search term. I knew we discussed this not too long ago when you were trying to decide, but I didn’t pay attention and couldn’t find a search term to zero in on the discussion.

It looks like ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 is the best of the bunch. That means that the HP NC6000 is the clear winner. Bluetooth, wireless, and decent video. Thanks!

FWIW, while it’s not on your list, I’m having a heck of a time running games on my Dell XPS with an ATI Radeon Mobility 9700 - Tiger 2005, Sims 2, just about any modern game and 5 minutes into the game I start getting all kinds of video corruption. I suspected it was overheating of the video card, but I can’t confirm it (and it seems to happen awfully quickly once a game is started up.)

That does sound like video corruption, it works fine for me in Thief 3/etc. Call Dell and demand they comp you a 9800 replacement. :D

From what I’ve seen, tablets don’t have nearly as much bang for the buck. I spoke to a guy today who had one with a pentium m in it, and he said that it cost him $3000 for similar specs to my laptop and a crappy video card. I got a laptop about a year ago, and it had a 1.3 pentium m and an ATI 9000 for a little under $2k.

My ATI seems to work for most low things. Most of my gaming consists of strategy titles on the pc, so I really haven’t given it a full work down. It played Guild Wars decently, but that’s not saying much.

Oh, a note. Don’t expect too much battery life when playing 3d games. They start to suck the power like a hoover once you do that.

I got the M200 as my work machine, Tim, so we can do lunch one day if you want to check it out. I really, really dig it as a work machine. Small, light, great screen. Much better rig than the HP tablet that’s on the list.

Haven’t actually installed any games on it though.

Since the tablets don’t have optical drives, though, they’re not exactly optimal for the “game testing” you claim you want to do… I don’t think IT would be real happy about virtual drive utilities or NoCD patches on a company machine… :-)

Thanks Denny, but a guy across the hall has the M200 so I was already able to check it out. I can see why you went for it. Because it looks so cool, I was really tempted too. In the end, I decided I would ever use the tablet feature much and went with the HP. It’s got some great reviews and it has a built in optical drive. Backing stuff up can be a bear without a burner.

Speakiung of work machines, I got my new desktop: Dual Xeon, ATi Fire GL 7100, 2GB RAM. Teh SEX-AY.

They got you a dual xeon DESKTOP? What the hell?

I thought Thief 3 did not support laptops?

I’m probably too late with this, but a friend of mine is an exec with Cognos (big company, does databases or something) and his department has had awful trouble with its Toshiba laptops the past couple of years. Reliability has been disastrous. Lots of screen failures, plus MBs dying, HDs failing, etc. Different models, too.

I thought Thief 3 did not support laptops?[/quote]

Works fine on mine. I have to use that driver hack that lets you install the regular ATI drivers, rather than the manufacturer’s, but no big deal.

Take a look at Sager

This one in particular is a good deal.

Are there clear winners or losers from the following list of mobile video solutions:

* ATI Mobility Radeon 9000
* ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
* NVidia GeForce FX Go5200 32/64MB
* NVIDIA GeForce 4 Go 420
* NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 32MB DDR

Definitely try to get a notebook with ATI Mobility Radeon 9600, 9700 or 9800 if it’s an option. The 9000 and the GF4 Go 4200 should be avoided unless you don’t plan playing more modern games as they’re based on the Radeon 8500 line and GF3/4 chips respectively. (Thus, only DX8.x compliant.)

I got a 9800 replacement. Very sweet. I’ve never had a notebook that could run games as well as my desktop - of course, perhaps that just means it’s time to upgrade the desktop. ;)

Was there anything fancy-talking you had to do? I called a couple weeks ago and got the run-around about “oooh, the warehouse is soooo empty and no we can’t put your order in and just wait bye”.

Yeah, I did some schmoozing, nothing in particular, just talked about the cost of the machine and my dissapointment that it could not play any games without this problem, went through the diagnosis, let them know how dissapointed I was in some of the run-around I’d received from tech support, etc. I never acted like they owed me the upgrade, and tried to stay civil and talk as if I assumed they wanted to help.

And I suppose I got lucky in the “which support person do you get” lottery.

I’ve seen that, I will try it out, thanks!

Sarah’s been very, very happy with her Sager - lots of gaming (granted, girl gaming*), and no down time or tech probs.

*Diablo 2, Broken Sword, etc. No real edge of the envelope stuff.