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xcalibur

xcalibur

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sup guys,

i've been wanting to get a laptop for a while to help out with school and for entertainment reasons.

so my question is, what is the best laptop to get? i know the macbook pro is a top laptop but im not looking to spend 2grand or more. im around the 1100-1200 range MAX. i was told to look at the Dell XPS series and the MacBook. i'm not computer savvy so words don't throw big terms at me.

main purpose for this laptop: schoolwork, video editing and gaming once in a while when im bored.

thoughts? thanks.
 
If video editing is what you want you will want one with high RAM and a good processor, like a quad core. In Europe, XPS laptoms will set you back £649 for the base model, which is about $1300, so if the prices are similar in the US you might need to look elsewhere.

I think in your price range you can get a good-to-top of the range Inspiron laptop from dell, with a duo-core 1.5Ghz processor, 2 gigs of RAM and 120gb hard drive. Shop around at apple and other places, though, to get the best deal, but this should let you know the ballpark you're in.
 
Stay away from Dell- I've had 3 bad experiences with their laptops, they're really unreliable, and all 3 slowed up siginificantly not long after purchase, and technical support was no help.

Look for a good non-integrated graphics card- you're going to have to look up the video or graphics cards for the laptops you find. If you're going for a PC, it'll run Vista and an integrated card will steal your regular RAM which Vista needs. You'll also want a nice card for games. I've got an HP Pavilion dv9027 or something- it was 900 and is pretty decent.

The processor is important- Intel makes a couple with similar names, but think the Core 2 Duo is better than the Dual Core- you should look that up, too. In any case, the newer one will run more efficiently, meaning your laptop won't get as hot, which can be kind of a big deal, and it should last longer on battery. I have to put mine on some styrofoam when I put it on my lap.

I'd go with either widescreen, or a tiny, very light one. Widescreen might add an extra pound or 2 to a regular sized laptop, but it's much better for movies.

I don't know much about Macs, but they run really queitly, which can also be important. That's another problem with Dells- the fans are very noisy.
 
When I clicked on it, I thought this thread was about Marcus Williams.
 
I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 (which they don't make anymore, from what I know) and I haven't had any problems with the actual laptop, itself. The only negative I've experienced is the fact that my battery started to die only 4-5 months after purchase (I bought it in February of 2007). About a month ago, the battery failed completely and I'm now on life support so to speak, forced to be plugged into an outlet whenever I'm on. If you have a warranty though, the battery is covered, so it's not the end of the world (their batteries are expensive as hell though, if you don't have a warranty). As far as the fans being noisy like lukewarm said, I can hardly ever hear my fan, unless it's midnight, my house's heater is off, and the TV is off, and I'm not playing any music. Fan noise isn't a problem for me. Also, the computer has not slowed down a bit since I got it. Everything else about the laptop has been great. I don't do any video editing, but I do do quite a bit of image editing/designing for my graphic design class on here, using both Photoshop and Illustrator, and I've experienced no problems with running both of them at the same time. These are some of my specs (I don't remember everything) :

Windows Vista Home Premium
Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 (1.83GHz/667MHz FSB/2MB Cache)
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz- 2DIMMs
15.4 in display (don't remember the exact specs)
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 (Video Card)
80GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
85Whr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell) (the crap battery)

I don't know exactly what type of programs you would use for video editing seeing as I've never done it, but you'll definitely want at least 2GB of RAM, and will definitely want to avoid an integrated video card. As far as the processor goes, I don't really think you'll need a core 2 quad; that's a bit overkill in my opinion. For the display, I don't know what size you'll want. Go look at some in person to get a feel for screen sizes. My 15.4 inch is fine for me, though I guess it is a little bigger; a 14.1 inch might be good enough, but again, go check some out in person to get a feel for what you like.

As far as companies/brands go, like I said, my dell has been fine for the soon-to-be year I've had it aside from the battery being not so good. My desktop is a dell as well and it was fine up until about a year ago, but by that time it was 6 years old, the hard drive was almost full, and the thing only has 256MB of RAM, so you can't really blame it for going downhill like it did. The only other computer company I've had experience with is HP, which was our desktop before we got the dell. I honestly don't remember a thing about it, it was so long ago, and it probably wouldn't be all that relevant today with the time difference anyway.

And I can't tell you a thing about Mac's aside from the fact that I personally am not a fan of them.
 
I've got a MacBook this year, my first Apple product. Before that, I had an IBM Thinkpad for about 4 years and then it started to die on me. Blue screens, battery dying even with the cord in, etc.

I've converted to MacBook mainly because we use Macs in my college for editing videos and sounds (Final Cut/Avid and ProTools) . I got so used to using Macs in school that it seemed logical to do the same at home. I've really have no complaints with this at all. I much prefer this over my previous laptop and the other laptops in the house (a toshiba and a sony) .

Sure, you can use final cut/pro tools whatever on PCs, but I much prefer the macbook. I don't have the pro, I ain't that rich but the normal one is just as fine.
If you're wondering, it's very light, the battery life is long, the fan isn't loud, and I've had very little internet problems with this (I've had alot of pcs) . Also, after owning it for about a half year, not one virus or freeze has happened, something I also couldn't say about the other laptop.

That's my two cents. Everyone else all has great choices as well, and there's tons of stuff out there. My main advice would be to research research research! Even though I've used Macs in school, I still researched for a good month or two on my own if getting a Macbook was the right choice for my wants and needs. It seems my research has paid off. Good luck and keep us updated!
 
Dell's been fine for us, and we've bought two PCs in the past 5 or so years. I would second that advice to go to a computer store just to have a look at some laptops so you get to see the screen sizes, sharpness etc.
 
From experiences friends and family have had - Dells suck, Gateways suck, HP's are the shit, Sony's are the best, and Macs are pretty awesome if you're into that.
 
I just got a Lenovo T61 Thinkpad. It's nice and light and does everything I want it to do.

You probably want something a bit beefier for games and video editing, but I'm really happy with my guy.
 
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ly_yng @ Jan 1 2008, 04:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I just got a Lenovo T61 Thinkpad. It's nice and light and does everything I want it to do.

You probably want something a bit beefier for games and video editing, but I'm really happy with my guy.</div>

Nice, I have an r61, it's been sweet.
 
thanks for the replies guys.

well my cousins were over for new years and one has an imac and the other has a MBpro and they both love it. my uncle has a Toshiba laptop (hes a teacher) and tech op's at his school both said toshiba and that Dell's are crap and starting to fall down the computer chain. then again my other cousin has a Dell Inspiron and he loves it.

its nice to hear different opinions. i guess it comes down to preference as each company has its pluses and minuses. what i've gathered so far is that two musts would be: ram and a good processor, correct? i don't really care about having great above-and-beyond graphics, i just want my laptop to be able to run smooth, reliable and fast.
 
Dell's are shit computers. It's a rarity for me to know someone who's had a Dell over 3 years and hasn't had to reformat their harddrive. Plus, at least on the model that was sold through the college, the battery overheats.

My next computer will be a mac. At the very least, I can run windows on it.
 
my wife recently bought a sony vaio; it is super light if that is important to you.
 
I have always had PCs and thought Macs were crap (even after using them every day in my high school for 4 years) but because I am looking into minoring in something to do with video editing I thought I'd get a Mac. I have a MacBook Pro now and love it, I will never go back to a Windows computer. I spent over $5000 for mine but I really didn't need everything I got, a regular MacBook would be more then enough. Just watch out it gets pricey fast.
 
Okay, I'm going to revise my previous opinion of my laptop, and HP's in general. The hinge on the back of my screen has started to pop the back of the screen off, and even though it's under warranty, and I did nothing to cause this problem, HP won't fix it. I tried finding an online solution and found that HP's have frequent technical issues and their tech support sucks ass.

Even if I can get them to fix it for free, I'm not entirely sure I want to send it in to them, after reading the horror stories about receiving laptops back worse off than before and with poorly refurbished replacement parts.
 
I was going to recommend an Alienware Notebook. But seeing your Price bracket it will be about $900 over. I have an Alien Notebook as i needed a Fast reliable Laptop with good Gaming abilities, But In the Price bracket you've specified I'd say a Vaio or a HP is the best way to go. I haven't had much experience with Macs but they are meant to be good aswell if you want to dive away from Windows. But i much prefer Vista anyway.
 
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GMJigga @ Jan 1 2008, 09:37 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Dell's are shit computers. It's a rarity for me to know someone who's had a Dell over 3 years and hasn't had to reformat their harddrive.</div>

It's not a laptop, but I've got a Dell desktop that I've been using for 6 years now without a single issue (I mean, I just listen to music and go online with it more or less, but still)
 
I have an Acer laptop that I've been very happy with. My wife has a 3+ year old Toshiba that she has been very happy with. Both were low price point models, so they wouldn't be beefy enough for the video editing and the latest games, but they work well and have been reliable.

I was laptop shopping a few months ago and this is the process I followed.

1) I went through the Sunday ads and a few online sites to make a matrix of what the difference price points got me. Since this was going to be a Vista laptop, I eliminated anything that only had 1 MB of RAM. I did this for 3 weeks worth of ads.

2) I spend several hours researching the differences between the Intel and AMD processor naming schemes. Unless you pay attention to this, you can't reliably tell if you are getting a dual core chip or which chip is actually faster. I wanted to get the most chip for my buck.

3) Once I understood the processors, I went back to my matrix and started to eliminate the machines with the weaker processors. This left me with less than 10 "combinations" (manufactures like HP and Toshiba have similar configurations with different model numbers so that the Best Buys and Circuit Cities don't have to price match one another) in a wide list of price points from 700 to 1200

4) I ended up eliminating HP's and Compaq's off my list based up a personal recommendation and some research. This left me with Acer as the manufacture that was giving me the best bang for the buck.

5) I shopped a bunch a different sites for the best value I could find. I was about to purchase a model from CompUSA (although I would have had to driven 30 miles to go pick it up), but Circuit City put a similar model on sale for 20 bucks more and it was on my way home.
 
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (xcalibur @ Jan 1 2008, 06:37 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>thanks for the replies guys.

well my cousins were over for new years and one has an imac and the other has a MBpro and they both love it. my uncle has a Toshiba laptop (hes a teacher) and tech op's at his school both said toshiba and that Dell's are crap and starting to fall down the computer chain. then again my other cousin has a Dell Inspiron and he loves it.

its nice to hear different opinions. i guess it comes down to preference as each company has its pluses and minuses. what i've gathered so far is that two musts would be: ram and a good processor, correct? i don't really care about having great above-and-beyond graphics, i just want my laptop to be able to run smooth, reliable and fast.</div>

For games, make sure the video card has dedicated memory and not integrated.

I would highly recommend that you look in some of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....amp;srchInDesc=
Asus makes very high quality stuff. Newegg has great prices and shipping all the time.
 
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