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Thoughts on this laptop?

B

blue

boob hater
Jan 24, 2004
10,160
2
california
Buying a cheap off-brand laptop with a short to no warranty is just asking for it.

Three options, IMHO:

-Buy a Macbook/MBP with an AppleCare warranty
-Buy a PC laptop from a well-regarded local builder with a warranty (we have one nearby, they're gold for fixing stuff and the like)
-Chance it with a Dell and an extended warranty (my gf went this route. more or less a giant fail. i guess inspirons suck?)

Laptops are not the place to cheap out. If you can't deal with the cost or out-of-warranty unreliability, buy a desktop.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,162
1,261
NC
blue said:
-Chance it with a Dell and an extended warranty (my gf went this route. more or less a giant fail. i guess inspirons suck?)
Click to expand...
Excellent. Now we have a syadasti vendetta against Macs and a blue vendetta against Dells.

That's definitely what we needed, another ridiculous war waged on a brand :nopity:
 
dan wask

dan wask

Turbo Monkey
May 11, 2006
1,463
0
B-More Maryland
Understood. I had some sort of resistance against looking into the Alienwares, but after checking them out, heres what I came up with:

Area-51® m9750

Video/Graphics Card: 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7950 GTX
Chassis: 17" WideXGA+ 1440 x 900 LCD - Stealth Black
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHz 2MB Cache 667MHz FSB
Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 1024MB
Operating System (Office software not included): Genuine Windows® XP Professional
Notebook Tuners and Remotes: Media Center upgrade options are not available with Windows XP Professional.
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 120GB 5,400RPM (8MB Cache)
Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW)
Wireless Network Card: Internal Intel® PRO Wireless 3945 a/b/g Mini-Card
Sound Card : High-Definition Audio with surround sound
Warranty: 1-Year AlienCare Toll-Free 24/7 Phone Support w/ Onsite Service

Area-51® m9750
 
Tenchiro

Tenchiro

Attention K Mart Shoppers
Jul 19, 2002
5,407
0
New England
Alienware PC's are either re-branded Arima, Clevo or Uniwill laptops depending on the model. Do some research to find out which model is which and you can save some cash and essentially get the same PC minus the branding.
 
H8R

H8R

Cranky Pants
Nov 10, 2004
13,959
35
Transcend said:
Alienwares are ridiculously overpriced.
Click to expand...
They are pretty much boutique versions of the Dell XPS anyway.

(Dell owns them)


If you want to play newer games with decent frame rates, get ready to pay out the ass for a laptop.

If you want to play older games and do video and/or graphic editing, you don't need the most bleeding edge machine.

Go with a Dell XPS or an Asus.
 
Tenchiro

Tenchiro

Attention K Mart Shoppers
Jul 19, 2002
5,407
0
New England
No matter which laptop you go with, make sure to buy from an ODM like Asus, you will get more bang for your buck.
 
SK6

SK6

Turbo Monkey
Jul 10, 2001
7,586
0
Shut up and ride...
Compaq/HP makes some good stuff, and the new Gateways are nice. And if it's in warranty and something happens, Gateway is awesome to deal with. They figured if they wanted to stay in the market, their service should be revamped, and they did.

I like the Compaq/HP laptops, but those are geared towards travel and business. These are the two brands as of late I've had luck with.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,162
1,261
NC
dan wask said:
Whats the real verdict? How much of a pain in the ass will it be to strip the OS off of the new lappy?
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Is there any particular reason you want to do this, or are you following the sheeples who all bleat about how terrible Vista from third hand anecdotes?
 
Tenchiro

Tenchiro

Attention K Mart Shoppers
Jul 19, 2002
5,407
0
New England
dan wask said:
Not really. Just from reading articles about how much vista sucks etc. etc. Can you put my mind at rest?
Click to expand...
It doesn't "suck" but it is a lot slower and has a lot more background tasks running that XP does. It may be better with SP1 but I haven't used that yet.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,162
1,261
NC
dan wask said:
Not really. Just from reading articles about how much vista sucks etc. etc. Can you put my mind at rest?
Click to expand...
I've done about a dozen Vista installations now, including three on my home computers that I've used extensively. 4 have SP1 on them.

They all run quickly and with no bugs.

My friend who is a sys admin for a racetrack has another dozen machines with Vista, 5 with SP1, and they, too, all run very well.

It's not a guarantee, but my experience is a lot of the bitching about a new OS has nothing to do with actual flaws in the OS.
 
M

Mike B.

Turbo Monkey
Oct 5, 2001
1,522
0
State College, PA
In general, Vista on my XPS has been good. I did have several crashes which were referencing a USB issue when I hadn't even plugged anything USB into it yet. Somewhere in the last few updates, it seems to have been fixed as it's not been a problem for a while.

Haven't gone for SP1 yet, taking the wait and see approach on that.
 
SK6

SK6

Turbo Monkey
Jul 10, 2001
7,586
0
Shut up and ride...
There are flaws. Drivers being a big one. As to who is to blame that would be up to the device manufactures or MS, and let them fight it out. And for the processes in Vista, unless you know what to shut down, and the basic home user does not, the OS is cumbersome and bloated.
 
dan wask

dan wask

Turbo Monkey
May 11, 2006
1,463
0
B-More Maryland
SK6 said:
There are flaws. Drivers being a big one. As to who is to blame that would be up to the device manufactures or MS, and let them fight it out. And for the processes in Vista, unless you know what to shut down, and the basic home user does not, the OS is cumbersome and bloated.
Click to expand...
ugh. I'm not the basic home user, but I do screw sh!t up every now and again. We'll see how it pans out.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,162
1,261
NC
dan wask said:
ugh. I'm not the basic home user, but I do screw sh!t up every now and again. We'll see how it pans out.
Click to expand...
Your laptop would be running Vista out of the box, so all the drivers are going to come built right in. SK6 found a couple driver problems with a vendor releasing some incompatible drivers, but they are not the majority.

The background services are not that significant, either. We're talking about a difference of maybe 50-60mb of RAM freed up if you turn off all of the unnecessary services. I've done it both ways (turning off services or leaving them running) and no install has shown significant improvement either way.

Vista is fairly memory hungry, though. 2gb of memory is good, but you may want to just go ahead and pick up the 3-4gb, either when you buy or afterward as an upgrade.
 
Tenchiro

Tenchiro

Attention K Mart Shoppers
Jul 19, 2002
5,407
0
New England
I would say that 2GB is a bare minimum for Home Premium. I would go 4GB though. Don't be fooled by Readyboost either, it does make a difference but just barely.

If I were you I would go no lower than Home Premium, and the upgrade to Ultimate or the Downgrade to XP Pro should cost about the same. If you buy a PC w/ one of the business editions or Ultimate on it already, then you get a free downgrade to XP though.

I still think XP has a huge performance edge over Vista so if you are a serious gamer you will want to downgrade.
 
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