I'm going to be buying a new laptop soon (Yaay!!! ), since my old one didn't cut it and I sent it back to the retailer. So now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to get. I wanna get as much machine as I can get for the money I get for my old laptop. I think it lands on about 1600 Euro. I'm also a little picky about the native resolution on my laptops. I wouldn't wanna settle for less than 1680x1050 if I could avoid it. I like to have lots of space when I'm messing around in PS and stuff.
I've heard some good stuff about it, and it fits my price range neatly. (Though I have to settle for the lesser gfx card on 256mb instead of the 512mb one) So, has anyone experience from this machine? Is it worth the cash? Or is there some better laptop for less? I've been looking at HP and ASUS machines too, although they feel a little... 'iffy'.
Just got for that with the 256mb GPU option. Dells are fantastic with their returns policy so if something goes bad then you're covered (case in point, I bought a 2405fpw monitor off Dell, broke it and they sent me a brand new 2407wfp!). I went for the hi-res MBP laptop at 1920*1200 'cuz I'm a fan of resolutions too, and it's only 3kg. I don't know how much they are in Euro's mind.
HP, Asus, Rock, Gericom are all naff with hardware quality and guarantee policies. *got burned with a Gericom laptop when the HDD broke within the first year. They wouldn't do anything about it unlike Dell and friends*
I just read through a, very, thorough review of the machine. They sounded positive about it through the entire review. I'm aaaalmost entirely sure nowm, that I'm gonna get one. Though I'd still like to see opinions on the matter. The good thing about buying from Dell, as you said, is that they have good support. Some friends of mine bought Inspiron laptops, I think the 9100 series or something, well over 2-3 years ago. And just last year they changed to the newer Inspirons, and they seemed happy about those as well. So, from what I've seen, they're reliable.
My old laptop was an LG one. Lot's of defects and faults with that one. I've had numerous "Stop" errors, bluescreens and other shit I don't know how to describe, with that machine. It was fine at first but after a few months the machine started acting up. The worst thing about it, the engineering of the screen/gfx-card connection is by default flawed, and you can't fix it. The problem with that is, you can't run fullscreen applications and games in widescreen. Imagine my anger, "WTF?! I have a widescreen, but I can't use it?!! !!!"
I'm told the newer LG laptops are an improvement, but I'd still stay clear off from them. I don't trust them. It also damaged my trust for Ati gfx cards, since the card in the laptop was an Ati Mobility x600 128mb.
Dell make pretty good computers, sounds like you know this is a good pc for you. My old laptop was a Toshiba 1680 x 1050, thing was unstable as, but it was a good screen res.
Jimmi! You just had to match my screen didn't you .
Anyone now anything about Zepto laptops? Found one on a site and it looks kinda neat. Although I dunno if the gfx card is better or worse than the one I'd get with the XPS. (Dell - Geforce Go 7900 GS 256MB vs. Zepto - Geforce 8600M GT 516MB)
the zepto laptop one is also smaller, which is nice. And has 4gb ram which is kinda awesome. It's zeptos own brand of memory though, so it could be both woot or shoot =/
The 256MB GeForce Go 7900 will probably give you better DX9 performance than the 512MB 8600M since the 8600 is a mid-range card and the 7900 is a high-end card (even with the generation boost to the 8XXX series). However, the 8600 will support DX10 gaming and may provide better performance down the road as games are coded from the ground up with DX10 in mind.
I don't know anything about the Zepto brand to give you any real advice for or against it. However, I'd be hesitant to pick up another Dell laptop. In my experience (granted this was 3 years ago), they're somewhat underpowered for the price and Dell always packs their systems with bloat-ware.
My recommendation, if you're looking for a DX10 compatible notebook, would be to go with a MacBook Pro. I don't know what kind of price range you're looking at, but the 15.4" 2.2 GHz, 2GB/120GB model with a 128MB GeForce 8600M is only $1799 USD with the education discount. The model I own is the 15.4" 2.4GHz, 2GB/160GB model with the 256MB GeForce 8600M and it goes for $2299 with an education discount. You don't have to provide any proof of enrollment, just purchase it through the Apple Online Store for Education. Plus, right now you get $200 off an iPod if you buy one with it. Even if you don't use it, you can grab a Nano for free then sell it on eBay.
I know you're probably thinking, why the hell is this guy talking up a Mac when it's obvious I want a PC. BUT... the kicker is that it's also a really solid Windows machine. Gaming performance under XP (which you can dual-boot) is phenomenal for a notebook. I can run World of Warcraft with all settings maxed out and still pull 60FPS. It can also handle Half Life 2 without any hiccups with all the detail settings cranked.
Best of all, if you don't need bleeding-edge 3D performance all the time, you can opt to run Parallels instead of booting directly into Windows which will allow you to run Mac and PC applications at the same time. Great if you do a lot of media work where the normally competing platforms both have a lot of really great exclusives (run Multimedia Fusion 2 and Garage Band simultaneously for example). If you need to game, just reboot, hold down the Alt key, and run Windows natively. Parallels and Boot Camp can share the same Windows partition.
Bottom line is that the best Windows gaming laptop for the price is actually a Mac. At least look into it before you go out and get a Dell or some off-brand. I used to be a staunch Mac hater, but since Microsoft screwed up Vista so bad, it's nice to have a choice and have the best of both worlds (XP and OSX).
Funny thing, I was fully aware about the capabilities of the new Intel Macs. My friend has one (she got it for her birthday, free =O) and she could play company of heroes smoother than I could on my laptop when I had it. Her mac has a 128mb card in it, and my laptop had as well (allthough a muuuch crappier one truthfully).
I have been thinking about getting an Intel Mac. Before I started university I was off and on thinking about getting a Mac. I'm not a Mac hater, I am sooo envious about OSX's boot time (I mean, if that gets any better, soon a Mac will know when you need it and boot up automatically in advance fer chrissake) compared to the boot time of XP/Vista. The only thing that's really holding me back in buying a Mac is the price. They are a bit pricey (you cannot deny that ). They are however the most awesomely small laptops. When you dualboot into Windows on a Mac, Windows can only read its own partition, while OSX can read both. So if you want to maximise your HDD space on the machine it'd be a smart move to make the windows partition the bigger one.
Sort of right. OSX can read HFS (Apple's file system) and Fat16/32. XP can read NTFS and Fat. You can get an application called MacDrive to view HFS drives which is ossom.
That application and Windows on Fat32 means both sides will read each others drives.
Price isn't too bad. MacBook Pros are very pricey yes, but iMacs and Mac Pros are very well priced. We were building a power desktop and a Mac Pro (with edu discount) was much cheaper than even building the machine ourselves, let alone comparing to a Dell.
I would not go for GF8600, pretty sure the 7950 gtx is better.
GeForce 8800 go should arrive this fall. If you like playing high end games, I'd wait for this card. It also supports DX10 games.
Advertisement
Post Reply
), since my old one didn't cut it and I sent it back to the retailer. So now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to get. I wanna get as much machine as I can get for the money I get for my old laptop. I think it lands on about 1600 Euro. I'm also a little picky about the native resolution on my laptops. I wouldn't wanna settle for less than 1680x1050 if I could avoid it. I like to have lots of space when I'm messing around in PS and stuff.
.
). They are however the most awesomely small laptops. When you dualboot into Windows on a Mac, Windows can only read its own partition, while OSX can read both. So if you want to maximise your HDD space on the machine it'd be a smart move to make the windows partition the bigger one.
Edited by the Author.
