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[Gill Kaiser]

Hi guys!

I'm starting University at the end of September, and I'm thinking of getting a laptop for work and the occasional game. I was wondering if anyone could recommend a laptop that is relatively slim and light for easy carrying, but will also be able to manage games such as Medieval 2: Total War and Spore when they're released (I know there are no hardware requirements for Spore yet, I'm just looking for a ballpark. Usually Will Wright's games are pretty scalable). It doesn't need to be able to run games such as X3 and other hardware hogs.

For ease of recommendation, money is no object although I'd obviously prefer not to pay any more than I need to.

Thanks for your help!

[Aztex]

My suggestion i get a mac, will wright gmaes in thep ast have supported mac...

also with boot-camp you can always load up windows....

[Gill Kaiser]

That's an intreguing suggestion. I've never owned a Mac before, although my parents had an old Apple Macintosh II when I was very young. I'll step lightly here, as there's a thread about the virtues of a Mac laptop already, but surely the integrated graphics of the Macbook make playing any kind of game impossible?

[nihilist]

I'm gonna go ahead and suggest a Dell with one of their outrageous three year long four-hour on-site warranties.  Those things are awesome.  Any little failure, and a dude runs over to fix it for you.  It is love.

[Leon]

EWWW... Dell is gross. Get an Alienware. Very reliable and great for gaming, modelling, rendering, everything, really. They can be on the spendy side, however.

[Sarcasmorator]

Um. Dell bought Alienware.

[Leon]

The fact still remains that The alienware factories make and design different and superior systems.
"Alienware chief executive Nelson Gonzalez said that his company will remain a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, continuing its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support."
Simply because dell bought alienware doesn't mean that dell automatically makes the same computers as alienware.

[Sarcasmorator]

Fair 'nuff.

[greenMonkey]

My sister is heading off to college, and she got an HP Pavillion.  It's relativley compact, and is pretty nice for what she needs.  I'm pretty sure you can customize it for whatever RAM, video, processor you want also.

[Leon]

Yeah but you can't change graphics cards, or sound cards in most laptops, and if you can it takes a lot of know-how and work, and I know for a fact that hp, dell, compaq, gateway, all the shit manufacturers use 64mb and 128mb graphics cards that can't run anything more than solitaire. seriously, this laptop I'm on now can't even run Kotor, and it's got an ATI 128meg graphics card. Despicable.

[Aztex]

Um. Dell bought Alienware.

hehe dellienware

the itnergrated graphics don't make it that bad because it's dual core processor.....

you already have two chips there so having one handle graphics isn't that bad...

depending on the games you want to play you're fine!

[Catfish_Man]

Yeah but you can't change graphics cards, or sound cards in most laptops, and if you can it takes a lot of know-how and work, and I know for a fact that hp, dell, compaq, gateway, all the shit manufacturers use 64mb and 128mb graphics cards that can't run anything more than solitaire. seriously, this laptop I'm on now can't even run Kotor, and it's got an ATI 128meg graphics card. Despicable.

Amusingly enough, the vram size matters *very little* compared to what GPU it is. I can show you a 128MB card that's literally 10 times as fast as another 128MB card.

[Kana]

The fact still remains that The alienware factories make and design different and superior systems.
"Alienware chief executive Nelson Gonzalez said that his company will remain a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, continuing its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support."
Simply because dell bought alienware doesn't mean that dell automatically makes the same computers as alienware.

Just out of mention Alienware doesn't make laptops.. they are premade by a diff company where Alienware receives them and then paints them or does any aesthetical changes you ask for.

But as a reference for laptops if you need just a machine for basic stuff I'd go with the Dell because it wil ldeliver and do all that for a reasonable price.  On the other hand if you are going to do anything remotely graphic intensive I'd look at either Alienware or Sony VAIO's.  I'd look at the Sony first since while their top notch laptops can run up to 3-4k the Alienware can always go higher and not give that much better customization.  I have a VAOI bought in late 2000/early 2001 still runs up to par for everything excluding gaming.  Good enough for basic stuff like watching movies and basic editing of small movies and manipulating pictures, but nothing hardcore.  Use my tower for that anyways.

[Catfish_Man]

I'm amazed no one has mentioned IBM ThinkPads yet. I prefer Macs myself, but ThinkPads are generally regarded as the cream of the crop of PC laptops.

The fact that they're made by Lenovo now is a little worrying, but I haven't heard that the quality has decreased.

[Othilious]

Hi guys, i'm new

A few months back I needed to get a laptop for college. Since I was comfortable with Asus product such as their Motherboards and Graphics cards I tried looking for an Asus brand as a starting point.

After a bit of searching i came across the A8JA It's a awesome laptop, perfect for gaming, or anything you can imagine actually. The specs are:

-Intel Centrino Core Duo (A Dual core processor which comes in different speeds, mine is 1.6, but it goes up to 2.6Ghz)
-An Ati Mobility X1600 graphics card with 512 of Memory (Just wow this one)
-a gig of ram
-100 gigs of hardrive space
-14 inch screen (could be 15, it doesn't matter much to me, you could always attach a 2nd monitor))
-A very comfortable keyboard and touchpad.
-built in webcam, plenty of usb, card ports and extras.
-Just plain awesomeness

I got mine for 1300 euros, so you should be able to find one for a similar price. I think it's very good deal, but thats up to you.

So far it's run Battlefield 2 and Half-Life 2 at max with no problems. I haven't found a single gripe with it.

Look it up, I think it might be just what your looking for.

EDIT: And yes, it runs X3 fine