Laptop suggestions

[Kurisu]

Figured I would appeal to the vast knowledge and experience of this group of people to humbly garner advice.

My laptop is nearing it's end and would like to get a replacement. I've been using my laptop (Gateway Tablet CX2618) for watching videos, archiving,
and, of course, Internet usage.

Now, I would love to play WoW on it, as well as keeping up on my archiving and videos. ...and Internet usage too.

I look forward to seeing what you suggest.

(Bob, didn't you just recently pick up a laptop for CoH?)
_____
DEATH is Certain. The hour, Uncertain...

[Bob Schroeck]

We were talking about it, K, but haven't actually gotten around to it yet.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[jpub]

How much do you want to spend?

[Epsilon]

My laptop is a Hewlett-Packard Pavillion Entertainment PC. It's relatively cheap, has decent memory, can play online games (though it lacks a numpad which
means that it doesn't work well with some game that don't support the goddamn arrow keys your BASTARDS, erhhem... yes) and so on. I got mine for less
than $1000 about a year and a half ago.

--------------

Epsilon

[CattyNebulart]

Keep in mind the next version of windows will probably come out by the end of this year. sure Win7 is just Vista 1.1 but from what I hear it's going to be
a big upgarde in performance and usability. So it is worth thinking if you are considering buying a vista laptop if you want to wait 8 or so months more for
something that is probably better.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[jpub]

I can't recommend Windows 7 over Vista enough.

That said, I'm going to mention the following from Dell, because having bought their stuff for 7 years at my workplace, I've had nothing but positive
experiences with them.

Bare minimum:

Inspiron 15, with ATI Mobility Radeon 4330.

This is a bare decent card. Will probably run WoW okay, but will probably lag out heavily in Raids. Should perform CoH okay.

Better:

Studio 15, with ATI Mobility Radeon 4570

Much better card. Very nice for gaming, but there's better. Has some nifty options on this one.

OR

XPS M1330, with nVidia Geforce Go 8400M

We got one of these (well, the Vostro equivalent) and I can tell you it's quite a decent machine. Good balance of performance and size. You'll give up
some FPS to the above, but if you want to have a couple pounds, its the way to go.

Even Better:

XPS M1730

Wow. Ludicrous laptops, but only $2k-ish.

Beyond:

Go to Alienware, my friend.

Things to remember:

1) Intel Graphics Adaptors suck, as do any on-board integrated video card (IGA).

2) Go for 4GB, even if you're running a 32-bit OS

3) I recommend extra power adaptors. Leave one at your desk, and one in the carry case.

4) Bigger Battery=Good, but remember that in a lot of cases the bigger battery will increase the size of the laptop and weight.

5) 15", while being decent as a general purpose laptop, suck on planes.

6) Laptop screens have ludicrously high dot pitch. At my work we have 15" screens that are 1920x1200. That's like 150dpi. GAH.

7) Get everything you're going to want on it now - microphones, webcams, etc. Buying aftermarket add-ons sucks.

Edit: I do not recommend the "Studio XPS" machines, as IMO they're overdue for a refresh.

Edit 2: How very odd, apparently it won't recognize the "{/list}" command. (yes, I used square brackets)

[Kurisu]

Thank you very much for the information so far, it is much appreciated.

I was considering a laptop with the OS 'Vista Business' and/or up, because of the option of 'rollback' to XP Pro. But I'm curious... is
this Windows 7 going to be a whole new OS, or is it going to be one MASSIVE service patch?

Also, XPS machines... ?? I take it the Special Edition that came out a while back is majorly lacking now?

...and to answer Angel's question: $1000, maybe a little over. (I'm a Christopher too. Hence, the romanji name.)
_____
DEATH is Certain. The hour, Uncertain...

[Wiregeek]

Windows 7 looks to be very interesting to me, but I wouldn't even consider Vista... I'll stick with XP until I'm happy with 7.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[CattyNebulart]

Win7 looks to be to Vista as Win98 was to win95. My only experience with it has been hearsay, though I think May 5 MS will release a copy for testing if you
want to try it yourself. I'm happy in my little linux world.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[jpub]

We're a subscriber to the MS TechNet at work, so we had a copy to play with for a while. As I've said before:

"Imagine that Vista never happened. Imagine that MS took all the things of XP that were bad, and made them better. Imagine they took the parts that were
GOOD, and didn't screw with them. Imagine that they realized people didn't want bloat on their system.

Got all that?

That's Win7."

[Kurisu]

Okay...

I feel that it would be better if I waited until Win7 comes.

Thank you very much for your feedback on this...

...I just have to be diligent and be patient.

('sides, I've got a lot of archiving to get done... Doctor Who brick, I looking at you...)
_____
DEATH is Certain. The hour, Uncertain...

[Black Aeronaut]

Kurisu, one other thing that the others didn't mention directly:

You'r better off with an AMD solution over an Intel.

It's not just because my Dad was part of the K-7 project that yielded the Athlon processor. I've kept tabs on things and time and time again, AMD has
managed to put out products that perform better than Intel's at gaming apps and usually cost less as well. My own Toshiba is packing an AMD Turion 64 x2
Ultra and I can't say that I'm displeased with the little champ - just the lackluster driver support from Toshiba (probably the last laptop I'll
buy from them if they don't get their act together).

[CattyNebulart]

One thing on the performance side for intel chips; using hyperthreading kills performance on some tasks because it results in more cache flushes, so you can
sometimes get better performance when turning hyperthreading off, but this is very application dependent. if you have a multi-core chip never use
hyperthreading since you will see almost no gains but can see hughe hits in performance for practically all real applications.

This behavior is not often seen in benchmarks because most benchmarks take great pain to test things in isolation, ie: they do their best to avoid cache misses
when looking at how fast the CPU is, and they try to cause cache misses during the cache test.

For real world applications however the bottleneck is the most important part and cache is often the bottleneck.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[jpub]

Kurisu, one other thing that the others didn't mention directly:

You'r better off with an AMD solution over an Intel.

It's not just because my Dad was part of the K-7 project that yielded the Athlon processor. I've kept tabs on things and time and time again, AMD has managed to put out products that perform better than Intel's at gaming apps and usually cost less as well. My own Toshiba is packing an AMD Turion 64 x2 Ultra and I can't say that I'm displeased with the little champ - just the lackluster driver support from Toshiba (probably the last laptop I'll buy from them if they don't get their act together).

Wrong. Or rather, out of date.

This was true when it was Intel Pentium D vs AMD Athon X2s. In the days of the Core, or even the I7s, it is not true. Basically, since the short-lived Core 1 line (replaced by the Core 2), Intel retook that crown, and has maintained it since, especially with the I7.

The current Athlon X2 QL line has been pretty good, but there's a reason the no one uses AMD in performance laptops right now. Intel's offerings are not just better, they're quite a bit better.

(desktops are another matter)

Re: Hyperthreading

I'm of mixed opinion on hyperthreading.

In my to-be-built new computing node for work, I'm planning on taking advantage of the hyperthreading, because it works well for the types of calculations they do really take advantage of it - so being able to run 16 simulations at once instead of 8 can save us a mint.

However, for home use, I just don't know. I mean, really, all the I7 procs are Quad Core ANYWAY, do you really need to fake another 4 for home use? Seriously, what takes advantage of that? Most games barely take advantage of 2 cores, let alone 4.

I'm currently looking at getting a new machine. Something with a nice beefy proc, 4-6GB RAM, one of the 200 series Geforces, all good. I'd like to go Intel for the performance (the I7's show wicked game performance) but I'll probably get a Phenom II (one of those new AM3 ones). It depends on what things are like when W7 hits. Of course, my main aim is to get something QUIET. Maybe water cooling.