The Best Laptop...

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Ok, the time when I buy my own laptop is fast approaching, and I want to know which brand/model is the best. I have heard good things about the Alienware desktops, but nothing about their laptops; I hear the Dell 8100 series is pretty good, and a few people say that Toshiba is also a good brand. Also, give me some ideas on what to look out for when buying/using a laptop.

 

My baby is a Packard Bell. they make good, lon-lasting PCs even if they haven't got the highest spec, they can easily be upgraded, customized and bought new and strong.

 

Pretty much all the laptops nowadays you can game on. At least at 800x600 with all the options turned down.

Get the largest display you can get. %50 (or more) of the price for your laptop goes toward that display. A high quality 15" display is nice to have, at 1024x768.

But then, it really depends on how you're going to use it. If you're wanting a very compact "desktop", then weight isn't an issue, and neither is power. Laptops in the dorms are nice, because they take up so little space.

If you're wanting something that you can literally carry around with you and has a long battery life, then yeah; the Toshibas and the Imacs are just about the longest lasting ones out there. You can considerably lengthen your battery if you pull out every single component that you do not need. If you're not using your cdrom and PCMCIA cards, yank those out; the electronics still drain 15 minutes off your battery, even if they go unused.

Also, look into how much memory your laptop can hold. Most come with at least 128meg, but you seriously need to consider getting a 256meg stic, with one open port for another 256meg later. Anymore, all the OS's chew up memory like it was candy.

Don't sweat all the stuff that's "built-in". In fact, you really don't want that. Because the laptop manufacturer is responsible for the drivers, and there is a point at where they just stop supporting an OS. NT6.x is going to be putting a serious damper on NT5.x support, pretty soon.

 

Erm, I'd suggest staying away from ALL laptops produced by sony, compaq/hewlet paccard, and toshiba. I know this rules out almost all the major brands, but they all have some serious issues.

Toshibas have good battery life yeah, but they've been known to commonly have thermal problems, and also they're a bit expensive for what you get just so they look a bit more sleek.

Sony Vaio's are notoriously unreliable, and they... well.. stop functioning quite easily, I ended up making the mistake of buying one a little while ago, and about 100 days later the hdd died out on me, and I discovered that a good deal of the integrated circuitry had burnt out. This may have been a fluke, but I wouldn't take the chance.

Hewlett Paccards/Compaqs are probably the worst of all of these. Firstly they look quite unseamly, and the keyboards are extremely uncomfortable. If you plan on switching OS's at any point, they have about the worst driver support I've ever seen, especially for *nix. On top of that, the LCD displays are of a fairly cheap quality, and this is definitely noticable as compared to other laptops. I have a Toshiba Sat Pro from 3+ years ago and its LCD is a hell of a lot more reliable.

If you're going to buy a laptop, stick with Dells. The Alienware Area-51m whether standard or custom setup I've heard good things about, though it's terribly pricey. So I'd stick to good ol' Dells or you can go with Empire laptops (which provide *nix pre-installed optionally) and just stick whatever OS you want on them.

 

I plan of have at least 512Mb of ram, so ram isn't an issue. I'm going to be using it for gamming mostly, as well as using the internet.
Here is a link to a laptop that I'm thinking about:
EBC Computers