Going to be traveling quite a bit, so I'm getting rid of the desktop. Looking for a good laptop, under 1k, which would also be good for games, ie decent amount of ram and good video card.

6/8/2007 1:16:17 AM

i like ibm's and dells, also hp & gateway have some good ones
you cant go wrong with sony but for the money emachines has a few to choose from
so any of those or a decent compaq would do

6/8/2007 1:24:43 AM

did you just recommend every brand?

6/8/2007 1:28:03 AM

haha...

What do you mean "good for games"?

Like what kind of games?

6/8/2007 1:42:51 AM

WoW, the new command and conquer, etc

6/8/2007 1:57:04 AM

Quote :

"did you just recommend every brand?"

the ones' that matter for under 1k. lol

For a small budget like that and wanting to play games, you'll be hard pressed with that task with a good build quality. Pretty much for the budget, I would probably look at Dell. They just had a sale on the e1505 with x1400 256mb video cards, which is find for the occasional gamer, but doesn't have the real power of mid-range or higher end cards.

Actually the sale is still one:
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=528089


Toshiba makes a better laptop, as in build quality IMHO. But their low end laptops in that price range all have integrated graphics. Sony also makes excellent build quality laptops, but then again, they don't meet your requirements and are expensive. IBM/Lenova is about in the same boat as Toshiba, but probably a bit cheaper.

The only problem with dell laptops is that if your planning on traveling a lot, like moving your laptop from site to site every day, it's very hard on the chassis. Although, I've been impressed with the quality of the e1705 I have as I transport to work, school, and home almost everyday, but I've only had it for a year and its' scratched and dented up to high heavens. I would be even more surprised if I don't start encountering hardware problems in the next 6 months, but I opted for a 3 year warranty because I know I was going to be using the laptop a lot, that and I've heard bad stories of things breaking down exactly after the 1 year warranty went up.

6/8/2007 1:58:31 AM

My main beef with Toshiba laptops and some Compaqs is that they put fans on the bottom, which is completely retarded, because when using on your lap, you're likely to block the vent. Which means if you try to play games or do anything processor intensive, you risk freezing it.

Sony is the best about NOT doing this. The other brands usually don't do it.

But, most laptops in this price range will be about the same, just look for one with a real GPU (that doesn't say turbocache or hyper memory).

6/8/2007 2:05:03 AM

^yeah, that's harder then you think. Just the margins of low-end laptops is almost worthless to make it more powerful then what the general user would need. Even if you custom order a laptop and request a graphics card in it, they charge you a lot just to have that option, unless you can get a sales deal or promotion with it.

Fuck if I'm paying an extra $150+ to go from built-in to turbo cache graphics card. Shit, my 5 year old Ti 4400 is faster then that shit... (of which x1400 does have), but you can play games on them, just you'd have to be reduced to low graphics and low res. WOW shouldn't be a problem as that's very playable, even on a low end gpu.

6/8/2007 2:11:06 AM

I just looked around, and you're able to get a low end non-shared memory GPU in a Dell and an HP at least for around $1000.

WoW will play on integrated graphics, but newer 3D games sometimes will just refuse to run on integrated graphics.

6/8/2007 2:17:53 AM

C&C3 is pretty graphic intensive.

6/8/2007 2:20:50 AM

Yeah, but if it's a DX10 compliant card (which the low-end Nvidias are at least), it'll run, just on reduced graphics (like you said).

he's not going to get desktop-class graphics for less than $1000 in a laptop.

6/8/2007 2:29:31 AM

they don't make dx10 low-end laptop gpu's... at least not for e1505's

Here's a list of where the new 8 series mobile gpu's are in:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/wtb_notebooks.html

[Edited on June 8, 2007 at 4:42 AM. Reason : ]

6/8/2007 4:38:45 AM