Time for a seriously hardcore laptop.

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>Or so I hope.</p>

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<p>As an artist / graphics designer I'd really like to have a laptop with some kick in the graphics and performance department. There'll be multiple programs running, hulks like Adobe Photoshop. This laptop would need to be a desktop replacement, so I'm also concerned about storage capacity. Battery life too, because right now I'm working on an wide screen HP Pavilion and (perhaps the battery life has decayed) its battery life is probably around 2-3 hours. And it's important that this beast is actually portable and not gigantic. And the durability of a ThinkPad.</p>

<p>I'm not adverse to Macs at all, it's just that all the programs and games I've purchased are for Windows, so I guess I'll have to ride it out with Vista or XP.</p>

<p>Any advice?</p>

<p>Price is not a big factor, I'm willing to spend for something that will keep punching for four years. I'm thinking along the lines of Alienware, without paying for the name.</p>

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<p>..closest thing is the Macbook Pro, the more expensive 15.4" model specifically. you don't get performance and battery life in the same breath, typically. 17" laptops will get you the best performance and they're the true "desktop replacements," but they have no portability or battery life.</p>

<p>others to look at that i can think of right now: some Asus models, Acer Ferrari, perhaps a highly customized Dell Latitude or Vostro (i know Latitude has the build quality your looking for, not sure about Vostro)? i don't know which graphics cards are offered, and XPS/Inspiron don't have the same build quality. alternatively, just find some models that fit (minus the battery life) and see which ones have larger batteries available. storage can be solved with external hard drives, or just buying your own.</p>

<p>in the end, though, a desktop would be better in every category except portability.</p>

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<p>Thank you for the info! My friend got a Macbook Pro, and it seems nice to me, but I haven't looked at the tech specs partly because I doubt my parents will buy a Mac, ever. Which is a shame. And as far as portability goes, one way or another I'm going to try to not have to take a desktop to college.</p>

<p>Hm, I've actually heard a lot of good things about Acer, also that Alienware buys from them. Latitude sounds like a safe bet, and I would hope the customized Latitude would have better performance than those that I work with at school. Vostro I'll have to research. I've heard both good and bad things about the Inspiron, and my friend has one, so I should probably ask hers, although I guess that might be a biased opinion.</p>

<p>And you're right about external hard drives. Might as well buy a stack here in China before going to college. It'll be cheap.</p>

<p>And that's true about a desktop. Will have to think that over. I was thinking having both a laptop and a desktop might be overkill. But I don't know.</p>

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<p>OK, about power hungry laptops:</p>

<p>You sacrifice A LOT for power in a laptop.
-Portability. You're looking at 8LBs+ for the good ones.
-Battery life. Less than 2 hours for the good ones.
-Coolness (temperature). A lot of these suckers idle at 60C and go to 80C underload. You'll fry your equipment if you put it on your lap.
-Value. Getting power hungry components in laptops are not cost effective.
-Reliability. Limited area for heat to go + very hot components = issues.</p>

<p>My sanest recommendation is to buy a midrange desktop with a decent motherboard. You will get the SAME performance at a much lower cost. You can upgrade it over 4 years to keep it up to date (laptops are much less cost effective to upgrade and have less upgradeable parts). It will be more reliable and a better setup for extended periods of time. Plus, you won't put all of your eggs in one basket; if you lose your laptop/have it stolen/broken/it is defective somehow, you have a machine that you can do work on.</p>

<p>Vostros: Decent midrange, I don't know about powerful laptops.
Insprions: Just don't.
XPS: Build quality is MUCH higher than Inspirion, American support.
Alienware: Overpriced, overhyped, even more than Apple in my opinion. Apple has some reasons (backlit keys, Aesthetics, OS X) for price. Alienware doesn't. Newest problem? Cooling design is so bad the plastic on the laptops is cracking. Yikes.
Acer: Another poor reliability brand. They bought the Ferrari branding to attract non-tech savvy customers.
Falcon Northwest: Excellent laptops, exorbitant price.
Voodoo: Comparable to Falcon Northwest.
IBM/Lenovo: Not as cutting edge but they are built like tanks: highly reliable, highly durable.
Asus: I love their desktop components (good price, highly reliable) but I cannot speak for their laptops. I have a mini notetaker (the Asus EEE PC) that I love to death. In a few months I've put strain on it, hit the keys pretty hard, used it a lot, no signs of wear or problems.</p>

<p>My suggestion? If you decide to go for the powerful laptop, be prepared to lug it around with the power adapter. I recommend the 15.4 inchers because they are still somewhat portable. It is more convenient to maintain one machine. Get a docking station (~$60 for Dell inspirions on eBay) and use a decent keyboard/mouse/speaker/monitor setup on that to get a better experience at your dorm.</p>

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<p>My bro has a Latitude 830- heavy. It does the job enough to play games decently but it gets very hot (~75C under load, too hot to handle) and has had some reliability issues.</p>

<p>Actually, he originally had a Delll Latitude D820. When they botched a repair before he went to Italy (and he had to take the barely working laptop with him), they shipped us a brand new D830, had us ship it to Italy (about $600 USD after shipping + Value Added Tax @ 20% of Value), reimbursed us for that, and arranged a DHL International pickup to get the old laptop.</p>

<p>Whenever he has a problem, they come the next day to his dorm. He dropped it a couple times- and when the monitor cracked, they replaced it the next day, thanks to his CompleteCare accidental damage.</p>

<p>Buy whatever your school will support. It makes logistics easier and it usually includes a "Gold" level (vs. Malaysian support bronze- I'm serious, lookup dell, they use malaysian reps. I'm not a racist but the accents can be a bit difficult and Dell lets the American reps skip hours of troubleshooting to get you what you need) support that is the level of service described above.</p>

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<p>if anyone finds a laptop tat is at least a duo core 2.0, graphics equal to a 8800gt, has a 17 inch monitor AND has a battery life of at least 4 hours...i am listening. ^_^</p>

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<p>This is why I like my MBP... As was said, they are high performance machines capable of the graphics work you would need but mine very rarely heats up to 60ºC and generally runs at around 45-50ºC (56ºC is my average for when I'm doing memory, HD and processor-intensive audio recording and editing sessions). Did I mention it's also quite portable and light?</p>

<p>Just a thought!</p>

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<p>Guys he has already said he can't get a Mac because of all the Windows software he has. (and don't give me that crap about boot camp and Parallels, because most people don't want to deal with dual booting or VMs)</p>

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<p>You really should get a Macbook Pro.</p>

<p>Alienwares and the like are even more ridiculously priced than Macs. (I've also heard bad things about overheating)</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Acer: Another poor reliability brand. They bought the Ferrari branding to attract non-tech savvy customers.

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</p>

<p>actually, Acer is a mediocre brand with a few good laptops. the Ferrari is one of them, along with the Travelmate 8200 or something. both are in the business line of computers.</p>

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I've heard both good and bad things about the Inspiron, and my friend has one, so I should probably ask hers, although I guess that might be a biased opinion.

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<p>from what i can tell, Inspiron has hit-or-miss reliability, build quality is below average to average, and maybe my laptop is just thin, but i think they're also huge. it's not the 90s anymore, sheesh...</p>

<p>anyway, for any given brand, avoid the consumer line. this is why i would still rule out the Dell XPS.</p>

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<p>Look at the new Asus M52 lineup</p>

<p>Newegg.com</a> - ASUS M51 Series M51Sn-X2 NoteBook Intel Core 2 Duo T8300(2.40GHz) 15.4" Wide XGA 4GB Memory DDR2 667 250GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS - Retail</p>

<p>It has a great amount of power for the price, but it might not have the best battery life. Which is to be expected if you have a high end graphics card an processor to tell the truth.</p>

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<p>@the person who can't get a mac book because of OSX...</p>

<p>u can install windows on ur mac too. just a thought. ^_^</p>

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<p>Thanks for the replies! Time difference here in China so I haven't been able to reply until now.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Vostros: Decent midrange, I don't know about powerful laptops.
Insprions: Just don't.
XPS: Build quality is MUCH higher than Inspirion, American support.
Alienware: Overpriced, overhyped, even more than Apple in my opinion. Apple has some reasons (backlit keys, Aesthetics, OS X) for price. Alienware doesn't. Newest problem? Cooling design is so bad the plastic on the laptops is cracking. Yikes.
Acer: Another poor reliability brand. They bought the Ferrari branding to attract non-tech savvy customers.
Falcon Northwest: Excellent laptops, exorbitant price.
Voodoo: Comparable to Falcon Northwest.
IBM/Lenovo: Not as cutting edge but they are built like tanks: highly reliable, highly durable.
Asus: I love their desktop components (good price, highly reliable) but I cannot speak for their laptops. I have a mini notetaker (the Asus EEE PC) that I love to death. In a few months I've put strain on it, hit the keys pretty hard, used it a lot, no signs of wear or problems.

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<p>
[quote]
My sanest recommendation is to buy a midrange desktop with a decent motherboard. You will get the SAME performance at a much lower cost.

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<p>The over heating is definitely a recurrent problem. And this is definitely all pointing to the logical answer, which is to get a desktop and some laptop. IBM/Lenovo is the most durable, I'd think, if toughness was at the top of the list. Voodoo I've looked at, and I'd agree with you on the insane prices. With that kind of price range, I really might as well get a desktop. Which is not at all unthinkable, especially since I'm living in China and can get all kinds of PCs and monitors and you-name-it for really good prices</p>

<p>So right now I'm coming to think that I should get a laptop with graphics as a priority (but not this insanely amazing super-machine) and then get some kind of desktop to handle what the laptop can't.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Inspiron has hit-or-miss reliability, build quality is below average to average, and maybe my laptop is just thin, but i think they're also huge. it's not the 90s anymore, sheesh...

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<p>Yeah, from what I could tell from my friend's Inspiron, it's a beast to lug around all day. </p>

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Look at the new Asus M52 lineup

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<p>I'll be looking through that. Looks good so far.</p>

<p>And all those people adamant about the MBP, I hear ya! I love the MBP. And:

[quote]
@the person who can't get a mac book because of OSX...</p>

<p>u can install windows on ur mac too. just a thought. ^_^

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</p>

<p>This I know. I'm not that out on the goings on of the tech world. :) But, as I said in an earlier post, "I doubt my parents will buy a Mac, ever. Which is a shame." And since it is indeed their money that this laptop will be purchased with, I doubt I can steer clear of that pothole.</p>

<p>Thanks so much for the advice, guys.</p>

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<p>Will you be a graphic design major? If that's your career path, you might just tell them that macs are the industry standard in multimedia design applications (which they have been for many years now). You don't think they would buy you what you want if you have good reasons for wanting it?</p>

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<p>I will not be a graphic design major. I do know about macs as "the industry standard". I'm really not thinking strictly in terms of majors right now, since the schools I'm going to generally don't have traditional majors. I'm definitely going into something cutting edge artsy, but that might not be visual art, since I'm really into theater and all that insane art stuff.</p>

<p>So sure, they would definitely buy it if I had a legit reason, but seeing as I don't want to become your typical graphics designer, I'll have to find another way to coax them... especially if I want to switch over to the Mac OS all together.</p>

<p>Plus I think a lot of Mac aficionados would hate me for running Vista on a MBP, haha.</p>

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<p>I got an XPS for xmas, and I would highly recommend it. I ended up with the M1330 because I prefer portability to large screens, but you could go with the M1530 or even the larger ones...doesn't run too hot; the battery life is awesome; fullsize keyboard & DVD drive even on the smallest model; fast performance... I love Vista, too. I haven't run into any feature on the XPS that I'm unpleased with (though like I said, you might prefer the larger size and perhaps the upper end graphics cards, etc...)</p>

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<p>You can get a decent laptop with a NVidia 8400 for $800 or so. If you're getting something for the really hardcore stuff, get a desktop. Even the best laptop will be outdated pretty soon, but you can update your desktop in ways you can't to your laptop (at least not easily.)</p>

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<p>how about lenovo? they have 25% discount up till april 12th. so you better hurry.</p>

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<p>I recommend trying PC Specialist. Try one of their customised laptops. What you get is a build-your-own laptop, with options of which parts you want - and they are actually quite cheap!! I bought a laptop from them and I absolutely love it!!</p>

<p>I hope you do this…</p>

<p>Jinkie</p>

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<p>I second Jinkie’s idea.</p>

<p>For graphic arts, any modern video card is going to be overkill when running adobe, and gaming GPUs aren’t optimized for rendering 3D visuals.</p>

<p>What you want is a laptop with:
Workstation GPU
4 core CPU
6G of RAM</p>

<p>Something along those lines will allow you to run multiple applications, with more efficiency than a run of the mill laptop built for the at home/gamer user and should last well after you’ve graduated.</p>

<p>As for the old MAC vs PC myth…If your going to shout out the age old argument, at least state WHY you feel that way.</p>

<p>100th post \o/</p>