Talk to me
Rather than burying this in the comments of the Alienware post, I'd like to start a fresh discussion of portable computing love.
I am in the market for a lappy. Powerbooks give me a hardon, but then so do the Alienwares. Alienware support in Oz is an unknown. I can get a Dell through a Dell staff member, so possibly discounted, but I haven't played with one nor dealt with their customer service. Thinkpads are engineered as well as the Apple gear, but often seem underpowered.
If I'm going to buy one I'm happy to blow a fair amount of cash (I can tax it and don't have kids or a girlfriend). The thing needs to be sexy for starters and powerful enough to run a web browser and putty... It actually needs a fair amount of juice, I'll probably game on it a little, but that's not a priority as I have the desktop. I'll need to: run 3D stuff (game maps and models), run vmware (linux, works SOE, my SOE) or run a boot loader and have room for multiple OS's, plus all the ususal crap. It needs to age well, as from memory the 'lease and upgrade in a year' deal fucked 8ball over and wasn't worth it? Obviously it needs wireless, bluetooth and dildo attachments.
I guess, aside from the brain dump above, I'm more interested in the experience you and your friends have had with each brand, pricing is an equation I can deal with later. Who's good at making laptops and providing support, who's shit, and where can I find more info from users rather than marketing? i.e. Stompy mentioned forums discussing the Alienware lappys, and I know 8ball and Stompy are running Dells right now.
I am in the market for a lappy. Powerbooks give me a hardon, but then so do the Alienwares. Alienware support in Oz is an unknown. I can get a Dell through a Dell staff member, so possibly discounted, but I haven't played with one nor dealt with their customer service. Thinkpads are engineered as well as the Apple gear, but often seem underpowered.
If I'm going to buy one I'm happy to blow a fair amount of cash (I can tax it and don't have kids or a girlfriend). The thing needs to be sexy for starters and powerful enough to run a web browser and putty... It actually needs a fair amount of juice, I'll probably game on it a little, but that's not a priority as I have the desktop. I'll need to: run 3D stuff (game maps and models), run vmware (linux, works SOE, my SOE) or run a boot loader and have room for multiple OS's, plus all the ususal crap. It needs to age well, as from memory the 'lease and upgrade in a year' deal fucked 8ball over and wasn't worth it? Obviously it needs wireless, bluetooth and dildo attachments.
I guess, aside from the brain dump above, I'm more interested in the experience you and your friends have had with each brand, pricing is an equation I can deal with later. Who's good at making laptops and providing support, who's shit, and where can I find more info from users rather than marketing? i.e. Stompy mentioned forums discussing the Alienware lappys, and I know 8ball and Stompy are running Dells right now.
posted by skaffen at 10/21/2004 02:12:00 pm
12 Comments:
The forums I'm on about are 3D artist forums, where people discuss what laptop to buy to run 3D apps, generally lightwave. I know some 3d card brands work nicer with some apps, so 3d dorks research that before buying.
Dell have a new inspiron out in the states, that might be worth a look at. The 3d card is sweet in mine, I maxed that out, it doesn't render well as I specced down the processor but for realtime shit like modeler and Warcraft 3 its sweet (until you overload it with a hugely complex model in lightwave, but that will bring anything to its knees.
The dell m60 is basically an inspiron in a metal shell, not worth the extra $ and heavy too. If you were a journo in Iraq the m60 might be justified, everyone else inspiron will do. Heath has an m60.
One thing worth thinking about with the inspiron is you have an option for one of 2 different 3d card, one is nvidia and the other has an "A" in it. "Assboy" or something. I went with assboy as the nvidia doesn't play well with lightwave. You might have a preference based on the games you play.
The alienwares look too fucking sweet for words, if the specs are good and you have the $ go for it. Just make sure the screen is as good as an inspiron widescreen. I think they might actually both come from the same manufacturorerour (the screens.)
Dont spec down the processor, max everything out and you'll be sweet. I think 8ball has had average experiences with customer support, I havent dealt with them. Keep us posted
ATI Radeon that's it.
If I was you I'd write out the specs, maxed out, for the latest alienware lappy, and same for dell. Talk to 8ball too making sure you don't miss out on any of the tricks like making sure your hard drive is "fastass" variety and other shit. Dells mostly have wireless etc built in now, mine does, and its no longer the latest one out. Write out the thinkpad specs too. If money isn't much of an object, just see what you can make the raddest, and bear in mind you can order dell custom plates (sight unseen though unfortunately) or alienware you can customise also to look fucking sick, and see how it will look before you order.
If you're thinking of game modding further down the track it might be worth some forethought on what 3d app you might use. LW likes ATI, MAX is popular though with modding crowd and might (?) prefer nvidia. If you have some thoughts I could point you to some places to look and ask.
With 3d cards and 3d apps you have to have your wits about you, because hardware dudes who don't use 3d apps will say "nvidia is raddest, look at these pages of benchmarks where an nvidia card reams the ATI" but then you go to say a lightwave forum and it's full of posts about "nvidia driver support sucks ass, insert into own anus before installing in laptop." MAX and MAYA I think work better with different cards to LW. You probably want a game/3d app hybrid type thing? Sure you can game on desktop, but come on, if you want the best laptop in the world you might as well get one you can bring over and network halflife 2 against me on.
These are gleaned from a forum thread I saw a while back. Apparently Sager provide Alien ware with their systems.
SagerNot sexy, but cheap, prices are US so that means importing etc
Voodoo PCSexy but I haven't loooked too hard as how they compare to Alienware.
Remember there is never going to be much you can do to a lappy to upgrade it short of maxxing out the RAM & slotting in a 7200RPM HDD (works a treat).
My advice would be have a gander at your local 'notebooksRus' (I assume they have branches in Fuckhole) Silver shiny laptops have been hip for quite a while now so you might find something decent for under 1500. The good thing about those places is they often are serious when tehy way refurbished. that means they'll whack a new Battery in it & in alot of cases a new screen. (LCD's lose brightness over time, go in say, Screen's pretty dull, whack a new one on it & I'll buy it)
IBM's have gone from ugly to cool without actually changing their design. Glen at DF got a 2nd hand IBM a while ago (nbRus) & it was great. mainly because it was the size of a VHS cassette, black silky finish with wireless & bluetooth built in. IBM's are not designed for grunt, but they are rock solid & if you're using as a web - development tool I say good buy. They are also the only laptops still using 'the nipple' which to me is great as I think trackpads are shitful
http://au.asus.com/products/notebook/w1series/w1000n/w1000n_overview.htmhowever if you do want to blow 4.5K you could do worse than this.
You've probably thought of it already, but see if there is a shootout between something like this, & a few other models at Toms Hardware. Then you get a nice quick list of powerful sexy notebooks & just have to check prices to decide what to go for.
Personally my money would be dropping 1K on a tiny refurbished IBM & save all the flat out stuff for the desktop. 3K saved will give you desktop upgrades for quite a while.
Or buy an iBook, it wont be super powerful, but the price has always been decent, it will interface with your ipod nicely & they look pretty slick in the white plastic.
http://apple.com.au/ibook/ & the hits keep on comin'.
New ibooks are out (nto sure exactly whats new) built in wireless (airport, I assume will hook up with your linksys shit oK) & built in bluetooth (option) for all my bitching OS X isn't that bad, but running unix/linux on a mac is supercool in my eyes.
fuck man I don't know, you can blow 4.5K in all sorts of ways, but in 6 months time you'll wonder why your shits slow, or you'll use it to just surf the web & shit & then you pissed away 2K
that said I still love my lappy for 2 reasons.
1. the screen, 1600x1200 is the res of the gods & it's the only reason I haven't dropkicked this heavy creaky piece of shit off a balcony.
2. I upgraded the HDD to something quicker (& bigger) which gave it a whole new lease of life
the thing is ugly as a broken cunt, but it works. still runs photoshop & illustrator without a hassle & could be picked up for a grand these days.
Fuckme. TML's reasonably quiet, cruising along (losing ground to 3dpotatoe) until 'hi guys, any advice to help me blow an arseload of cash?' and fucking WHAM! 84 bagillion responses in 4 fuckites of a second.
Thankyou. Nice work.
Fuck. I can't be bothered fully reading all of the shit above, but:
I've been running a Dell Latitude at work since end of 2002. ATI graphics chip, P4M 2Ghz processor.
Does the job nicely - firefox, putty, outlook, thunderbird, cisco CNR, Visio.
Dell hardware support is good, but the software/question side hasn't left me impressed. We had some redundanty power supplies fail in a few servers. Asked why they kept failing - no answer. Hassled them - all were replaced with new fixed hardware a bit later.
On the desktop front at home I've just upgraded to an ASUS R800 Pro. Now I'm shitted off that Dawn of War doesn't run too well with all settings maxxed, as it is more CPU reliant. I want to upgrade to a 3Ghz processor, new ASUS board and DDR RAM.
Fucking compueters.
I think that's a little rude, not to mention inconsistant. If this thread was 17 posts about anime girls crapping in each other's mouths you would have been all over it like a rash.
Can anime girls get rashes?
I went back and read it later.
Sorry for the rudeness.
I especially liked the bit about inserting Nvidia cards into anuses. I'm sorry I missed it now. It makes me feel good about the almost-two-thousand-fucking-dollars I've spent on ATI cards in the last two years.
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