Help me choose a laptop!! I am lost!!

[Abhi]

Hello, this is my first post, so if i am doing anything wrong, sorry!!

Well, basically I am looking for a laptop within 1500$-1600$. I do not need a DVD Burner. CD/RW and DVD combo is a requirement though. I have looked at all the brands like Dell, Toshiba, HP, Compaq and IBM... am well am absolutely confused.

I need a desktop replacement, with good gaming capabilities. 8 lbs is not too much of a problem, and 3 hrs battery life is enough.

Although the laptop will be purchased in US, i live in India! This means that although the warranty will be valid for me, the customer service i get here in India will be in short.... crappy...

Hence, the laptop has to last for 2-3 years, without upgrades, and without for too much support as well! I need something sturdy and long lasting.

Right now, the Dell Inspiron 5150 seems promising. The config I am getting is Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 processor, 3.06GHz, 15in SXGA+, 512 Mhz DDR Ram(333 MHz), 60 GB HDD, 64MB DDR NVIDIA® GeForce? FX Go5200, 1 year limited warranty. This barely makes it into my budget, after the 200$ rebate that is!

I can wait till November btw, if that helps.

Help!

 

[Duvie]

My niece just got the 5150 with the 2.66ghz p4 and it is quite nice and the battery says 4hours when it is fully charged. However I think that is like cell phone battery as it probably under heavy loading does less then that...

My centrino 1500 with both batteries will last me all week since I only use it in the field maybe 1 hour or less a day and when it hibernates it is like shuting down completely yet only takes less then 10seconds to put me back in the program I was running....I have tested it at another forum and the number crunching of the centrino acts like a 1500mhz cpu, but in multimdia apps like Divx and autocadd it performed up with a 2.4ghz cpu....

 

[bacillus]

if you do get the dell 5150, don't update the bios till dell sorts out a bug-free bios update.

 

[GGabus]

I have owned Dell, Toshiba and Gateway. They are all pretty good, get whtever model fits your budget. If battery performance is important should consider a Centrino based unit. Dells can be customized in regrads to vid card etc.

 

[RollWave]

Go with a DELL with Centrino and at least the 64MB video card coupled with as much ram as you can afford. I had one of these systems with 1gig of ram and it ran all sorts of games at 1600x1200 and all options on without a hitch. It was killer....but then I sold it and made a P4C 3.0ghz/1024mbRAM/256mbGPU system soI could do more multi-tasking.

 

[Abhi]

provided i get a laptop with 512 megs of RAM, and a graphic card with 64 MB RAM, will there be much difference if the processor is a Centrino or a Pentium 4 3.06 Ghz?

How much does the processor effect gaming anyway?