Need help on choosing a laptop

[Blurry]

I need a new laptop since I will be traveling a lot in the near future. I prefer something with good gaming, and audio, and not too heavy. My budget is anything under $2500. Any suggestions?

 

[ojai00]

The Dell Inspiron 8100 line can meet all your needs, but it is a little heavy because it is a desktop replacement. If you want to play games on your laptop, just look for a Geforce2 Go or ATI Mobility Radeon in a laptop with enough CPU and RAM to suit your needs. A 700 MHz or higher and 256 RAM should be good enough, and well under your budget. Hope this helps.

 

[ShadowDJ]

If you are not fixed on a PC, the Apple iBook is an extraordonary laptop. Great screen and only 4 lbs, with internal CD rom drive. About the size of a magazine. The 8100 is very good, but I would also go with the IBM thinkpad, having personal experience with them.

 

[gsaldivar]

"...Apple iBook is an extraordonary laptop..."

LOL... good luck getting any games to run on a Rage 128, let alone MacOS...

A friend of mine just picked up one of Sony's laptops with the Mobility Radeon in it, and it is sweeet. Max Payne is all we've had time to test on it so far, but the graphics are smooth, responsive and very playable. He didn't care about the weight, so he got one of the 7 lb. units, but if you look around a bit you should be able to find either the Mobility Radeon or the NVidia chipset in a lighter model...

Good luck!

 

[Derango]

I would tend to stay away from sony. From all of friends that have bought sony in the past, they tend to fall apart after about a year or so. And good luck getting Sony Support to help you with it...they're about the least helpful people you can find.

You're going to be hard pressed to find a laptop with "good gaming" thats not too heavy. The lighter laptops need to have smaller batteries, because thats where most of the weight comes from. With a smaller battery, you need to start desiging components that have lower power draws than that top of the line graphics cards so the laptop will stay on for more than an hour 🙂 For under $2500, you can pick out pretty much anything reasonable.

Oh, and I would stay away from AMD based laptops. The only thing they're good for are leg warmers that last about an hour on batteries. 🙂 In the mobile market, Intel still rules.

 

[MWink]

Power Notebooks is an excellent place to shop for a laptop. They have top quality service!

BTW, I recommend Toshiba Laptops.

 

[bacillus]

the high end dell inspiron 4100 should also be considered!

 

[Athlon4all]

I've always liked Dell.

 

[stingbandel]

based on the requirements, I would probably suggest you either Dell 8200 or Toshiba Sattelite 550. Both of them are good, however, Dell is kinda heavy. I don't know how heavy the toshiba one is but it's a pretty good one too imo.


hope that helps.




Darno

 

[Draco]

I too would recommend the latest iBook, but that doesn't really apply here since you want to play games and want something that is not to big, the Inspiron 4100 seems like a great option. I have a Inspiron 4000, and it's excellent.

The Dell 8200 or the new Toshiba's are probably the ideal "gaming" laptop though.