Laptop advice

[Gypsiyee]

So I know it's only August, but before I know it, Christmas will be here, and the plan is to get Scott a primo laptop within a reasonable price range

I would need some way to finance it more than likely, so keep that in mind.

What I need is going to primarily be for gaming, and I know he's dying for a widescreen. Every time we go to Sames, we see these about 22 (at least that's what it looks like) widescreen laptops that he just drools over.

Obviously, you guys know what type of specs I'm looking at for gaming, so I'm not going to bother listing because I'm flexible.

Any ideas? I don't want to spend too much more than 1k.

[Tacks]

I don't think you'll find a laptop that is good for gaming with a big screen for anywhere near 1,000. You MIGHT be able to find one with a 17 inch screen but even then it won't be the greatest for gaming. Laptops are expensive as hell.

[Lyion]

Well, the trick is to find a 50-75% coupon from Dell and you can get in the 900 ballpark for a pretty good laptop that can game decently. You just missed an assload of deals in July, so it might be a bit before then reappear.

Last year when I was doing some shopping I nabbed an Inspiron 5160 loaded for 900 shipped, that can play EQ2, WOW, and HL2 decently. It was retailed for around 1900.

[Gypsiyee]

The ones at Sam's we saw were actually pretty decent looking at the specs.. actually using them I'm not sure, though.

What I can spend all depends on the way I can pay for it.. up front just isn't going to happen if the price is too high.

[kaharthemad]

I prefer the ACER Ferrari series. These little beast have a very fine video card and enough processor memeory to play just about any MMORPG obn the market.

[Gypsiyee]

Link to a site Kahar? Pricing, etc?

[Tossica]

I have a DELL laptop that kicks ass for gaming. I paid like $1150 for it.

CPU 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 540

Screen size 15.4 inches

System memory 512MB of DDR400 SDRAM

Hard drive 60GB

Graphics 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9700

Pointing device Touchpad, eraserhead

Bundled removable-media drives One multipurpose bay with DVD+RW drive

Floppy drive None

Ports Four USB 2.0, FireWire, microphone, headphone, S-Video, one PC Card slot

Communications V.92 modem, 10/100 ethernet, Bluetooth, 802.11a/g

Business suite Corel WordPerfect Productivity Pack

Other features DVI port


The only problems with it are the battery life and how big it is/how much it weighs.

[Gidan]

Wait until November and see whats around then. With a computer system, what you see now is not what you will see when you goto buy it.

A simple look would say dont get anything that does not have a Nvidia or ATI graphics card with atleast 128M If you can find something with ATI Mobility RADEON X800 with 256MB DDR3 or NVIDIA GeForce GO 6800 with 256MB DDR3 you would be golden but your going to be looking at a good chunk of change for the system.

Operating Systems
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

Processors & Chipset
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with Hyper-Threading Technology - (2.8GHz , 800MHz FSB, 1MB Cache, Socket 775)

Intel 915P + ICH6 chipset

Graphics and Video
NVIDIA GeForce GO 6800 ULTRA with 256MB DDR3

Memory
Starting at 256MB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz.
4 dedicated SO-DIMM slots for Dual-Channel DDR2 Memory

Drive Bays
Externally accessible and easily removable:
Dual bays for Optical Drives
Dual Bays for Primary and Secondary Hard-Drives

I/O Ports
Externally accessible:
Parallel: One parallel port
Serial: One serial port
Video: One DVI connector
TV-out: One S-Video out connector
TV-In: Video-IN Ports (TV-Tuner required, not included)
Keyboard: One PS2 connection
Mouse: One PS2 connection
IEEE 1394: Two mini IEEE 1934a (4-pin) ports
USB: 4 Hi-speed USB 2.0 ports
Headphone: 1 headphone jack
Audio: 5.1 channel out (SPDIF) / Line-in, Microphone in
Network: Integrated Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45
Modem: Integrated 56K V.92 modem RJ-11
Infrared: Infrared port for Data transfer

Internally accessible:
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE
Dual SATA 150 connectors

Slots
One PCMCIA Single-slot ACPI Card Bus (Type II)
7-in-1 Memory Card Reader (SD/MS/MMC)

Case and Chassis
Dimensions (H x W x D): 2.1" x 15.6" x 11.7"

LCD Panel
17" WideXGA+ 1400x900 LCD Display

Power
Primary Battery: 12 Cells, 6600 mAH
180Watt Auto-Switch 220/110 AC Adapter


That would run you about 2K right now, and you would want to upgrade the ram so your probably looking 2200 for something like that

[kaharthemad]

Link to a site Kahar? Pricing, etc?

Ill do what I can...give me a sec.

[kaharthemad]

http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/fr4000.htm
thats the highend girl...the F3000 or 3200 should be plnety for your gaming needs. as for price...

http://stores.tomshardware.com/search_attrib.php?topcat_id=&form_keyword=Ferrai&Search=Go&page_id=13&lo_p=0&hi_p=0

prices are a bit high on them but main reason is they are a gaming laptop. You can find a few notebooks from ACER that are equivalent to it in speed and video capability. Main reason I like these guys for laptops is they are quite easy on warranty issues should something happen. I have run into about 3 RMA's with these guys out of the 50 or so I have sold and all of them were taken care of inside 1 week.