Decent Laptop

Just wondering if anyone can suggest a decent laptop for under $3,500 - closter to $2,500 is preferable.

Lack of 2+ month waiting period for delivery is ideal as well - frickin alienware *mumble* *mutter*

Cheers

what do your need it for?
games? word processing? dvd encoding? wardriving?

ah yes, good point - work primarily (web development), must be able to burn dvds, needs wireless for the office network (god only knows why), needs to be able to handle decent sized photoshop documents, and of course, should a lunch arrive in which time is available (or a blue moon, whichever comes first)- it absolutely must be capable of running BF2... but we wont tell my boss that ;P

I bought a Toshiba P100/801 from Harvey Norman. It will meet your needs.

Has Core Duo 2GHz, 2GB Ram, 120GB HDD, Nvida Go 7900 GS, 1440 x 900 17" widescreen, wireless, bluetooth etc.

Runs BF2 with everything turned on, smoothly. You will love this.

Go see Steve in computers, he'll sort you out.

if you're gonna buy from hardly normal please don't get it on consumer finance and end up another tard i have to call @ work because they didn't read the contract and are now in litigation. being called by debt collectors is never fun.

/some what off topic

Nice specs choc... but it's Toshiba, have had nothing but pain with Toshiba lappys for the last 12 years, ditto Dell. Was looking into Asus, Gigabyte (funny about that buyout), and MSI branded laptops - only thing is, none of them seem to have a clear comparison between their own laptop ranges the way Dell etc do. And to make matters more difficult, they'll have wildly differing price brackets with systems that seem to overlap in capabilities. 'tis bizarre!

Uber: LOL - finance is all sorted ready to go :P

Toshiba or not - you will not find better specs for the price of that P100 (and yes, I hate Toshiba too).

I did see one advertised a while back with a 7900GTX (512M card) with similar "everything-else" to what choc got for around $3.5k

good thing about toshiba is they have a local warrenty agent.
i think hp do too but im not 100% if its done locally or not
asus will pickup the laptop and ship it south and then return it (as far as im aware)
any other brands i know nothing about

Dell have local repair agents also, who come and visit you onsite.

Dell is also still shipping with those batteries that they KNOW are the cause of their exploding laptops :)

This is turning out to be academic though.. I had placed an order for an Alienware system months ago and was going to cancel the order, apparently our finance company has already paid though and wont allow me to cancel it now. On the plus side i get a free upgrade to the next version of the laptop I ordered since they cant source the one I had ordered. Oh, and I get carte blanche to bitch about their delays so.. woo.

Quote from Xaine;276053:
Dell have local repair agents also, who come and visit you onsite.

Just thought I'd post again to make sure anyone thinking of buying Alienware that reads this post has a good hard think first.

Ordered the laptop on about the 15th of June - it's now the 11th of September and they don't even have the parts in to stock yet to build the thing. Just got off the phone with them and they're *STILL* saying the standard "2 more weeks before we get the chasis". I can't believe our finance company wont let us cancel the order and get something else... on the plus side, the warranty will still be live long after it's paid off I guess.

I use Dell at work and I think they are great plus you can get something like 4 years extended warranty.

Think we covered the whole immolation thing in earlier posts =)

but Dell as a whole hasn't impressed me lately, current lappy is a Dell, and while it's a dinosaur it runs all right - just needs a format. However newer Dells I've used around the traps haven't been up to scratch.

My dad's got one that doesnt get hammered, but it's flakey as sin, some clients have them too and not one has missed out on niggling issues - dodgy wireless drivers, usb ports failing, stuuuuuuuuuuuupid cd drives that dont like certain brands of blank media etc.

It depends which Dell you get. I always go for the XPS systems (laptops) and they've never been a problem (except for one track pad failing, and one DVD unit failing). All easy and minor repairs. We have three.

I have serious doubts wether you can get decent laptops with graphics power under $3k. I think you're after something called "Desktop Replacement" or the mobile desktop series which will either be strong in computing power, strong in graphics, so so in drive and memory capacity and an absolute power hog,

or

so so in computing power, so so in graphics, strong in memory and drive capacity and just about right in battery life...

If graphics and computing power is your priority, prepare to spend lots of $$ cause the job is generally for dedicated workstations.... You'll have to spend a premium on those attributes coupled with mobility.

yeah, that alienware is about bang on what i need spec-wise - Kernal's dodgy MITAC lappy can do everything I need mine to do, and doesnt have anywhere near the specs of the AW system.. so it should be fine.

$2750 -$2800 depending on the supplier :)
Asus A7JC model
Dual core t2400 1.83 ghz Mobile processor
2X512 DDR2 667
100 GIG HDD
17 inch Colourshine monitor
DVD dual layer Drive
Discrete ATI x1600 256mb ddr2
1.3 Mega Pixel Camera
xp Pro
802.11 g wireless 10/100 lan bluetooth, gigabit lan and 56 kb modem
multi card reader
5usb 1Xiee1394 1Xsvideo 1xParallel port
Digital & Analogue tv tuner
notebook carry bag and mouse
2 year pick up and return warranty :)

$2800

Well the laptop has finally shipped... when it arrives i'll be sure to hunt down that thread here with 3dmark scores in it for laptops to see if Alienware machines are as good as they claim. :)