I am going to need a new laptop for college, and I was wondering what best I can get for these specs:

Relatively fast processor, I was looking at an AMD64 3000+ laptop for $950USD, which was about what I am looking at. Not TOP, but not celly or centrino.

512MB RAM
Must have a "decent" video card, aka at least a Geforce Go or something. I need better than intel or SiS. The graphics programs I'll be using require better. I don't need top of the line like Alienware offers, however. I'm not looking to run HL2 here
60GB+ hard drive. (Higher RPM always perferred! :D)
DVD/ CD-RW drive. (Doesn't need to burn DVDs, but its a plus)
Must have all the standard ports, like usb2.0, VGA Out, and PS/2.
MUST have wireless 802.11G (with support for B) (If it doesn't have this, forget it. And no, I cannot get PCMCIA cards for this lappy, that'll be taken up by other stuff)
Decent speakers are a plus, but I know it's a hard find.

I'd REALLY like to have a widescreen LCD also, but if I have to make a sacrifice to get the other stuff, I will. Widescreens are just so niiiice
14-15 inch screen, I'm not particularly picky on this, I've delt with a 13" for a long time with no qualms.
An okay battery time, something like 2-3 hours is okay with me. I'm not looking for miracles.


If anyone has any ideas on where I can get something like this cheap, lemme know.

Oh, and I will not be getting Dell, with their recent Class Action lawsuits and stuff. Nooo thank you.

How do you feel about macs? The iBook fits those specs pretty well if you're willing to switch, and you did say you weren't looking to game on it. With the education discount you could get it pretty cheap too.

If you don't get a centrino...I'll be severely disappointed in you.

Seriously, centrinos are the best processors out for the laptops. Period. Power consumption is very very low, and performance is very very high.

yeah, my next will probably be a centrino. this pentium 4 GUZZLES power. battery time is 2 hours max.

Do they beat out with speed against such things like AMD64?

If not, don't bother. I need some speed, this sucker will be running Adobe Premiere.

(Which is one of the MANY, MANY reasons I will not be getting a Mac.)

1) OMG YES. Especially on Adobe Premiere.

2) WTF? Adobe products run about 10x faster on macs, and macs come with great authoring software

I vaguely remember something about Adobe Premiere not being released on the Mac anymore, but I could be wrong.



I have a Compaq R3000Z. The specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3400+ with PowerNow! 2.2Ghz, 1MB L2 Cache, up to 1600MHz System Bus
15.4" WXGA High-Definition Definition BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) Display
1GB DDR333 SDRAM (512MB x 2)
100GB HDD (4200rpm)
DVD±RW and CD-RW Combo Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 4 440 Go with 64MB DDR (dedicated)
101-key compatible
Touch Pad with On/Off button and dedicated vertical vertical Scroll Up/Down pad
Internal speakers (JBL Pro Performance)
AC audio link
Volume control button and mute button
High Speed 56KB modem
Integrated 10/100Base-TX
54g 802.11b/g WLAN with 125HSM/SpeedBooster 125HSM/SpeedBooster support
One PCMCIA Type II/Type I card slot with CardBus support
USB & IEEE1394 3 x USB2.0, 1 x IEEE 1394
-1 Parallel SPP/ECP standard interface
-1 headphone-out
-1 microphone-in
-1 VGA (15-pin)
-1 TV-Out (S-video)
-1 notebook expansion port
-5-in-1 integrated Memory Reader for Secure Digital Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Sticks, Sticks, Memory Stick Pro or SmartMedia cards

Physical Specifications
Dimensions 11.18" x 14.25" x 1.8" (LxWxH)
Weight 7.8 lbs
AC Adapter 120-watt AC adapter
Battery Type 8-cell Lithium Ion battery pack
Manufacturer Warranty 1 year

I strictly use it for FreeBSD, so I cannot vouch for anything Windows related. However, this machine is pretty snappy (the hard drive holds it back, definitely need a new one). I don't use the onboard wireless, but I know it works fine (I use a Linksys a/b/g in the cardbus slot). The only problems I have with it are FreeBSD related, Windows should run great with it.

Malus, as much as it pains me to say it, your laptop is a very, very good gaming laptop, and unless you're doing something processor intensive such as Blender rendering, I think that using FreeBSD kind of limits its potential.

I know, I know, really painful to say, but partly true.

Laptops are nice for college, but don't let it become your primary rig. You'll be disappointed.

Erm, I have a gaming machine at home, with a much better video card. The video card on the laptop holds back its gaming performance.

I program on it, 'nuff said. I can also browse the web, read my mail, chat with my friends, word process, watch movies, burn CDs/DVDs, etc. I suppose the only real short coming is games. Well, and the lack of Photoshop (unless I bother to get Crossover Office or Serenity or something).

I have a Dell Inspiron XPS Generation 1.

3.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor
Radeon Mobility 9800
15.4" WUXGA screen

Very sexy gaming machine, but the battery life is severely limited. It's mainly intended to be a portable machine rather than a mobile machine.

An alternative you probably haven't considered is a Tablet PC. HP makes a pretty good one: For extra portability the keyboard comes off, it has a Pentium-M processor ("Centrino") as well as wireless and a GeForce4 Go card. And yes, the Pentium-M processor is a very speedy little thing.

Geoff is ok

2.8Ghz Celeron
256 MB RAM (Damn I need some more)
SIS Video drivers, so no dedicated video card

But he runs like a charm so long as I'm not gaming

Which I rarely do anymore, and if I do, it's carmageddon 2, Civ 2, Discworld Noir and other such old school stuff. Change is bad people

My 1.5 ghz Centrino laptop (MrCoffee) compiled KDE faster than my buddy's AMD64 3500+. There's probably all sorts of reasons for that, but it just shows that Centrino's hold their own when it comes to power. I get a little more than 4 hours of battery life out of it too, and up to 5 if I dim the screen and throttle the CPU.

<_<

>_>

THINKPAD!

You will end up paying more for a ThinkPad, but trust me, its worth it. Thinkpads last forever. I just started college, and I bough a top of the line G41 for ~$1900:
P4-M 3.3ghz
512 Mb RAM
80GB Hdd,
15" 1400x1050 display (NO stuck pixels)
CD/DVD Recorder
Nvidia Go5200 128

For build quality, it puts every other laptop to shame, this thing is very solid. I get about 2.5 to 3 hours battery life, and it does not produce an obscene amount of heat (though it does warm up decently under full load). The only problems are the video card (not bad, but not great, it suffices for all the gaming I allow myself to do here at school), and the fact thst this laptop is a bit less portable than most (read: Does not fit in backpack).

I am currently running a dual boot with Slackware (still configuring it, need to finish with proper AMP and PCMCIA support). So far it is a great laptop. Plus, I can sleep easy because its a ThinkPad! (working in a laptop salvage warehouse has tough me ALLOT about laptops).

P.S. I should also mention that this thing has Kick-*** integrated wireless. From My bed in my dorm room I can establish a wireless connection to the student commons, probably ~50-70 yards away with no direct line of sight when no one else can. Plus, its Atheros based wireless, so, um… Yeah…
FUN.

I just had a thinkpad. And from my experience, out of every laptop listed here, it would be my LAST choice. Thing was an absolute PIECE. The plastic is falling apart, the performance is terrible, the support is terrible (The thing doesn't support directX. Period. I mean, ANY version. I can't even play videos fullscreen. And this is a 750mhz laptop. I have to use LINUX just to play a damn video. Its REDICULOUS). It also has NO openGL support whatsoever. Like, it doesn't even try. I don't want games, I just want decent application support for crying out loud.

And then we have the hardware defects. Besides the plastic... the CD-Rom is flaky, the pcmcia door broke off very quickly, the mouse scroll button is on the edge of breaking, the speakers are utter crap (more than usual. 1 watt. I have headphones with more power.) The screen has crap refresh rate. The power adapter has died on me.

Finally, the irony about wireless. This thing didn't have integrated, so I went to get a card. Well, NO DICE. 5 different cards, same result. Insta-crash upon connecting to the net. Not a PCMCIA problem. This was one of the reasons I got the new laptop.

Oh, and don't think I abuse this thing. It has an awesome foam pad case, and it never sees anything but the case and a desk.

And not to mention every other student at my school has the exact same laptop, with the same problems.

Yeah, no thanks.


ANYWAY, I have picked my laptop, and it is awesome. Thanks for the help, everyone!

This could easily turn into a flame war, so im goanna try to avoid that...

Basically, the directX/OpenGL/Video/PCMCIA issues, are software related. As for the hardware problems you had with your laptop, I don’t know. If this was a 750MHz laptop, its goanna be decently old, but on my desk right now is a 7 year old ThinkPad (from the salvage yard) that has gone through hell and back and is still in terrific condition (you say everyone at your school has one, where these school provided laptops?). Whatever... As I said earlier, I worked in a laptop salvage warehouse, I saw a LOT of dead laptops. We did see dead ThinkPad’s, but the only consistent failure on those were cracked plastics, or broken LCD's the guts were almost always good (well, with one exception, we did see allot of ThinkPads with dead IBM deskstar (DEATHstar) Harddrives, but then again, we saw allot of every brand of laptop that used those same hard drives and subsequently had the same problems). I cannot say that about other brands and models of laptops. Anyway, I own a ThinkPad, and will always look at them as being some of the best built laptops out there.

I hope you enjoy your new laptop and that it serves you well through college!

Jeeze Matty, if you get that for 950 US let me know. I've been poking around for a laptop myself and specs like that come with a $1500USD price tag :'(

Same hard drive speed? Same compiler options? Same KDE options selected? Same OS?

Both on Gentoo 2.6.9, his HD is a 7200 rpm, and I think my laptop HD is only 5400 rpm, and both with the same USE flags (literally copy and paste).

The 64bit linux kernel is incomparable to the x86. It isn't nearly as optimized yet, and the newer technology has been extending compile times for everything a lot.

Anyway, those Thinkpad issues were definately hardware, especially the PCMCIA. It even did it in Linux (locked up the system.)

I got this laptop (HP zv5140) from circuit city for $950 (before tax). Quite nice, just look it up.