Looking to buy a Laptop...Any suggestions?

[WillShrdForFood]

I need to buy myself a laptop for school. Actually I've wanted a laptop forever, I'm just using school as an excuse to go ahead and buy one hahaha. I'm going to use this for everything, basically. Recording music, general use, and gaming. I want something with Windows Vista that has a good amount of hard drive space, around 150 gigs or so, I dont see myself needing any more than that. If so, I have a 200 gig external hard drive as well. I'd like to get something that will be able to run some of the new badass PC games that are going to come out this year. I really know nothing about computers from a technical aspect. This is the one I'm currently looking at.

http://alienware.com/product_detail...PC-LT-SENTIA-3450&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT#pdp-nav

I'd like to find one around the same price range or cheaper than that one.

 

[nwright]

I think Alienware comp's are expensive in general. I configured that model to the specs of the laptop I just picked up and it was 1389 with a 14.1" screen. Mine was 1400 with a 17" widescreen, a seperate NVidia GeForce 7600 Graphics card with 256 dedicated DDR RAM, built in 1.3MP camera, Lightscribe DVD burner, 5in1 media card reader, TV tuner Card with remote and a few other things. You may not need those features, but I think it illustrates the higher price for lower specs from the Alienware. I love the look and the fact they don't bog them down with stuff you don't need (which could be the case in my laptop), but I still think they are overpriced.

 

[WillShrdForFood]

I think Alienware comp's are expensive in general. I configured that model to the specs of the laptop I just picked up and it was 1389 with a 14.1" screen. Mine was 1400 with a 17" widescreen, a seperate NVidia GeForce 7600 Graphics card with 256 dedicated DDR RAM, built in 1.3MP camera, Lightscribe DVD burner, 5in1 media card reader, TV tuner Card with remote and a few other things. You may not need those features, but I think it illustrates the higher price for lower specs from the Alienware. I love the look and the fact they don't bog them down with stuff you don't need (which could be the case in my laptop), but I still think they are overpriced.

So what kind of laptop did you buy? Are there any brands/models you'd recommend?

 

[NickL]

My friend has this and I was impressed with how well it runs nuendo

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529664156.php

 

[nwright]

I bought an HP Pavilion dv9235nr.

I paid around 1400 for it, but you could get comparable specs in a 15.4" screen or smaller for much less.

The 17" widescreen is very nice when viewing my mixer in Nuendo!

AS far as brands/models go, to me they are all pretty much the same these days. I don't know a whole lot about laptops, I just went with what others around me have tried. My dad has a toshiba satellite for business and it's worked great for 2 years, I have a friend who has an HP like mine only with XP.

I like Sony, Toshiba, HP and Fujitsu for laptops just based on the limited research I did. Gateways don't look too bad. Really the only laptops I've heard that have been less reliable were Dells, but that could be because there are more people with them around here. When you get to Alienware and stuff like that, I think you end up paying for the name and flashy cosmetics/aesthetics as much as anything. I could be wrong, though. Also, I think Sony VAIO's tend to be more expensive with the same or comparable specs to other companies, but that's Sony.

 

[NickL]

I bought an HP Pavilion dv9235nr.

I paid around 1400 for it, but you could get comparable specs in a 15.4" screen or smaller for much less.

The 17" widescreen is very nice when viewing my mixer in Nuendo!

AS far as brands/models go, to me they are all pretty much the same these days. I don't know a whole lot about laptops, I just went with what others around me have tried. My dad has a toshiba satellite for business and it's worked great for 2 years, I have a friend who has an HP like mine only with XP.

I like Sony, Toshiba, HP and Fujitsu for laptops just based on the limited research I did. Gateways don't look too bad. Really the only laptops I've heard that have been less reliable were Dells, but that could be because there are more people with them around here. When you get to Alienware and stuff like that, I think you end up paying for the name and flashy cosmetics/aesthetics as much as anything. I could be wrong, though. Also, I think Sony VAIO's tend to be more expensive with the same or comparable specs to other companies, but that's Sony.

My stepdad's VAIO is... crap. Slow as a mother, even with a 2.5 Penium 4, but it is a bit older. My friend has the same HP as you, I've only used Photoshop on it, it seemed good enough but it's hard to gauge as Photoshop always gives me issues on PCs.

 

[nwright]

I've got Photoshop CS on mine and it's been working great.

 

[TheDude]

The bottleneck is always the harddrive. Get one with a 7200rpm and you won't regret it. That's frankly the only tip I'll give you, since most of the laptops today are able to do whole productions musicwise. As for the gaming thing, I'm sure you know what you're looking for.

Edit: but that alienware has no dedicated graphics card. You need that to be able to play games. In the end it's gonna cost you more

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

My vote if you want one running vista or XP would be one of these:

http://www.rainrecording.com/products/livebook

They are meant to be portable DAWs.

However I don't know about the gaming aspect...

 

[JBroll]

I have had great experience with a Gateway tablet convertible (using it right now, use it for almost 99% of computer-related stuff not involving actual recording to tape because the desktop has a 2496) CX210X - dual core (incredibly helpful, trust me), X1400 graphics card (256MB video, runs everything extremely well), incredible service (keys started falling off my keyboard because I'm not very gentle with things, they just sent me a new one no questions asked) and if you're looking for a neat little toy the tablet functionality helps immensely (plus, the physics and math departments at UTSA use tablets for a lot of things, so I can just do homework hand-written on the tablet, send it in to them, and have it back within the hour) both for school and home tinkering.

Hell, Gateway is the one brand I'd actually trust to last a significant period of time - years back we had a computer built with a 60mHz Pentium 1 (ah, those were the days...) and the thing went strong (if a wee bit slow) until we donated it a few years back. Fucking computer lasted eight or ten years and there wasn't a single thing wrong with it anywhere. My current laptop has survived through eight months of nine-hour days at school crammed in a tiny backpack with three or four books that obviously want to kill it, and the only thing that's happened to it is a key coming out because I basically hit the underside of it with a pointy something-or-other.

I cannot, however, recommend Windows Vista any more than gonorrhea, so if that's a serious requirement then good fucking luck.

Jeff