What To Look For In A Laptop?

I guess that’s another issue - your tolerance. If you will be happy playing a game on minimal settings with eye candy turned off and mediocre frame rates, your purchase will be very different than if you expect to crank FSAA on F.E.A.R. at 1600 x 1200.

Mike

Has anyone had any experience with sub 3 lb notebooks? I’ve already got a game PC, and I’m mostly looking for something to type on in the La-z-boy or Starbucks. Mostly, I just covet these things, like the Ipod Nano and the Gameboy Micro. I was thinking of the Sharp Actius MM20 http://store.sharpsystems.com/product.asp?sku=2488398, because it’s only $899. Any suggestions?

I’ve had excellent functionality and much pleasure from my Dell 700m. It’s 4lb, which means calling it an Ultraportable is a “wince and make skeptical cooing noises” affair. The point, however, is that it basically fills a particular niche perfectly: as small and light as you can go without losing functionality or paying a premium price. It lacks nothing (though it isn’t for gamers.) except maybe long battery life. (mine gets 2 hours only)

I can hold it with one hand just fine.

I got a Dell 6000 last year for my wife. It runs everything, has a wonderful screen and cost just under $1200. I personally would rather use it that the $3000 desktop I’m typing this message from.

For work I’m supporting pixel shader 3.0 though, so if I buy one for myself I’m going to have to blow close to $3000 to get a machine that will let me do that. Very hard to justify.

Are there no PS 3.0 laptops on the horizon, e.g. GFGO 7400 or X1700?

Dell has some. I was looking for one on Friday. But the cost!

DiscountLaptops.com carries several machines that have SM 3.0 support I think, but you may have to wait another month or two for the 7x00 and X1700 stuff to show up.

My 700 with the 8 cell battery gets 4-4.5 hours per charge.

Yep, I wish I’d got the big battery…

Unless you’re planning on using your laptop in class (not a bad idea, but not always feasible. I’ve seen a few lecture halls that were too cramped, for example), I’d suggest a standard desktop. With the couple hundred bucks you save you can pick up a PSP, which plays movies and games just fine. It’s also easier to lug around, and there’s less worry if you forget it at work after being low on sleep or whatever. Can also be used as a half decent MP3 player, too.

I tried to do the whole laptop-to-class thing in college, but a lot of my professors hated it, so I eventually just gave up. That was like 10 years ago though, so things may have changed.

Yeah, but a PSP doesn’t let you play WoW in class.

Just don’t go to class, heh. It’s college, they don’t usually take attendence.

A lot of times they do. Even if they don’t, you can learn the class materials and still level your Shaman. Please, if I can play FFXI, watch Star Trek, eat a bowl of ramen, and do my Russian homework all at once, he can do at least that much.

Some of the new Sony VAIO FE’s and the new VAIO SZ’s are coming with the GeForce Go 7400.

The SZ series seems pretty sweet, in that it has a manual switch to turn off the NVIDIA card and use the Intel internal chip to save battery life if you so desire, that and the nice new Intel Core Duo chipset. Supposedly up to 6 hours of battery life in a nice 13.3" screen at 4lbs.

Man, what a difference 6 months makes in the world of computers. I had been looking for the ‘perfect’ laptop for almost 6 months to upgrade my old one, but tech had moved so slowly that there wasn’t a clear win.

My old laptop: Gateway M505XL, 1.5GHz Centrino, 1GB RAM, DVD-RW, 15.4" 1280x800, Radeon 9600 w/ 64MB, 4200 RPM HDD, ~6.5 pounds.

For over two years after I got that basically there were moderate changes to processor speed, maybe a little weight loss, and faster drives. That’s it. Then in the course of the past 4 months a flood of significantly better laptops have hit the market (coinciding with the Core Duo).

Even so, I was finding that I was getting my same machine but w/ Core Duo and that was it. What I REALLY wanted was a system that was clearly better – smaller, faster, DVI output, etc. Nothing like this existed, except the MacBook Pro, but it suffered from two major problems – single mouse button (the control-click and two-finger tap hacks aren’t acceptable for me) and underclocked X1600.

FINALLY Asus released their A8jm in the US like a week or two ago. This is what I ended up getting:

2.0GHz Core Duo, 2GB, 100GB 7200RPM HDD, 14.1" WS 1280x800, GeForce 7600 w/ 512MB dedicated VRAM (no shit), DVI output, DVD-RW, and 5.25 pounds. Integrated Web cam and microphone even, along with 5 USB ports evenly distributed around its exterior (2 on right, 2 in back, 1 on left).

So – smaller, WAY faster (faster graphics, CPU(s), and HDD), and battery life about the same. SWEET.

Does it run OS X?

(Sorry.)

Congrats Bacon!

Obviously not, but for me that’s not a huge issue. Running OS X would be nice, but even when I owned a couple Macs I rarely ran it. And as a developer, supporting OS X is a bitch because of the dual binary formats.

So while I do like OS X, that’s not a deal breaker for me. If I end up needing to port to OS X I’ll just pick up a mini.

I was joshin’.

It’s a good point nonetheless – OS X support was a point in favor of the Mac, but the mouse button thing and underclocked X1600 were pretty major points against. =)