A Land Far Away

Well ............after a severe trauma to my last laptop I am now in the market for a new one.

I plan to have this new one for prolly 2-3 years. I do a fair bit of travelling and love to play a bit of NWN on the road. Would like to do the same for NWN2.

I'd like to stay around a $2K ceiling for price and get as much bang for the buck as possible.

Recommendations?

http://VoodooPC.com

In any event, I'd go with AMD64 and at least a gig of RAM. I'm not sure if there's an OEM out there that makes user-upgradeable video cards, but that'd be a nice feature if you can find it.

dergon darkhelm wrote:Well ............after a severe trauma to my last laptop I am now in the market for a new one.

Wha happened to it, drop it into a lake full of aligators, who subsequently became addicted to solitare?



-Charlie

Fionn, you don't heart Alienware? *horror*

mxlm wrote:Fionn, you don't heart Alienware? *horror*

AW used to be teh shiznit. Then they became mainstream namebrand. Then I tried to find a 64 bit CPU on their site and noted they didn't carry any AMD64. Sell out to Intel and I *heart* far less. VoodooPC 4tw.

...they don't carry AMD? Ok, I'm right there with you; Voodoo PC for me, baby.

mxlm wrote:...they don't carry AMD? Ok, I'm right there with you; Voodoo PC for me, baby.

Note the past tense. I've not checked, but I'd hope AW has figured it out after two anti-trust suits.

Fionn wrote:

mxlm wrote:...they don't carry AMD? Ok, I'm right there with you; Voodoo PC for me, baby.

Note the past tense. I've not checked, but I'd hope AW has figured it out after two anti-trust suits.

when you say AMD64, are you refering to the CPU as opposed to say a model of laptop? i'm gonna be in that 'boat' so to speak so i NEED a good gaming laptop that still allows me some work time...

PensivesWetness wrote:when you say AMD64, are you refering to the CPU as opposed to say a model of laptop? i'm gonna be in that 'boat' so to speak so i NEED a good gaming laptop that still allows me some work time...

AMD64 is the CPU itself. Common descriptor for the range of 64 bit CPUs avaliable from them, which shit all over standard 32bit CPUs in almost everything. Go AMD64, even the cheapest ones rock the hizhouse (so to speak)

OK -- I have an IQ of 90 and still use graph paper for my PnP games.

Maybe you can dumb it down a notch?

$2K

I'd want an external flatscreen for gaming, but the stock size/weight is great for portability.

$2.6K

Big enough to game on if you wish.

For both, check the ATI chipset used - I know crap about them and you don't seem to be able to put nVidia in until you hit their $3,400 model. Unlike Dell, the rest of the specs look pretty good stock. More RAM is always better, and I'd pony up the $61 to upgrade to XP Pro.

Fionn wrote:
For both, check the ATI chipset used - I know crap about them and you don't seem to be able to put nVidia in until you hit their $3,400 model. Unlike Dell, the rest of the specs look pretty good stock. .

What problems with the Dells off the shelf?

ATI vs nVidia .... compare & contrast?

Ati sux balls, nVidia's stable as a hippo! =)

Avoid ATI. There are compatibility issues with quite a few games, unfortunately. It seems almost all game designers design with Nvidia in mind primarily.

I went with ATI last time, and I'm quite disappointed. No real performance edge over Nvidia cards in the same price range, plus these compatibility issues.. There's no real reason to go with ATI at the moment, IMO.

ATI reached their peak with the 9600 and 9800 cards. Not much else to speak of, really

Avoid them like the plague that they are