Laptop Recommendations

wviperw

Senior member
Aug 5, 2000
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Its that time of year again--college is starting up, and its time to buy a new laptop. :) I've got about 1200 bucks to burn, although I could go a bit higher if need be. AMD seems to be the way to go in my price range, as the Duron/Athlon performance beats out the equivalent Celeron/P4 performance. So far, I've looked at CUSA and BB, and like HP's Athlon 1.2ghz system for 1199/1299 pretty well. Also, I found a 1400/1600+ on pricewatch for only around 1100, although I'm not sure I'd trust the site with the purchase of an entire laptop.

So what do you guys recommend for my price range? Speed is good. Low weight would be nice too. :) Oh, and maybe a good graphics card? (GF4) :p
 

Soulkeeper

Diamond Member
Nov 23, 2001
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good luck finding good graphics on an athlon based laptop
i tryed and ended up getting a P4 laptop
the major sellers are trying to market the athlon laptops at the budget and therfore they have cheesy graphics
ati just released an athlon laptop chipset so if you get one try to get that chipset cause the older VIA one only has pc133 support
I got my laptop from powernotebooks.com
they don't have any athlon ones tho unfortunately
ohh well good luck
 

Utterman

Platinum Member
Apr 17, 2001
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The best AMD notebook I have found is the Compaq Persario 900 series. It uses DDR memory which is more energy effiecient than SDRAM (also great performance) and also has ATI's IGP. Here is more information about this laptop. It cost $1,650, but with that you get a 1800+ Athlon XP processor
 

MWink

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
3,642
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So what do you guys recommend for my price range? Speed is good. Low weight would be nice too. Oh, and maybe a good graphics card? (GF4)

Sorry to burst your bubble but you're very unlikely to find a laptop with those features for anywhere near that price range. If you want a good ultra-slim OR desktop replacement (good video) you will probably need to almost double your price range.
 

Derango

Diamond Member
Jan 1, 2002
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Yea...I'm not even sure you're going to even find a really bad cheap laptop with those features in that price range :)
 

gf4200isdabest

Senior member
Jul 1, 2002
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i give a second to seeing if you can find what you need at powernotebooks.com

but yeah...athlons aren't really cheaper in the notebook market because AMD has so little market share...You'll probably end up with an Intel....

Good graphics don't come in light weight laptops. That's just a matter of fact right now. Also, the graphics even on desktop replacements are subpar. No laptop will run Doom3 well at 1024x768x32...

This is my best advice as far as conventional laptop purchasing based off your question. However, I'd like to propose an alternate plan that i think might work out for you ;)


With that in mind, here is my recommendation: get the cheapest laptop you can find. You can get "Desknotes" for about 700 bucks. Use the laptop for portability, not gaming. Take the 500+ bucks you just saved and put it towards a nicer desktop. Upgrade your CPU at least...maybe even pick up a GF4 4200...that would run you 150+143=~300. You'd then have 200+ bucks (depending on how much you saved from your laptop; more like 400 probably if you compared laptops with good video) to save towards the "buy an NV30 when it comes out because it will 0wn j00" fund.

I hope that helps!