In terms of what I'm looking for with my laptop, I'm looking for a laptop (at most $1200) that can perform decently with newer games in case I have any interest in playing them. By decent, I'm talking about running games in average settings instead of high settings. I'm also a college student who's majoring in software engineering so a laptop that's well suited for running programming IDEs and quick code compilation is a plus. Of course last but not least, reliability is one of the greatest factor.

I noticed that CyberPower has pretty good prices for the laptops that they sell. However, this fact also makes me a bit iffy of them building reliable.

In b4 30 people all saying "Macbook"

Thinkpad.

MACBOOK

macbook... PRO. (out of your pricerange though .()

Yes. Thinkpads have the lowest failure rates of any laptops on the market. Apple actually has the highest, although it's only a 3% difference.

MACBOOK

If you're a tough man who loves a tough ride at any tough times no matter how tough your problems get, get the toughbook. It's pretty reliable in a tough situation.

Like I posted in the last thread ... Thinkpads are legit business laptops and I love them, but they're not gaming laptops under any circumstances.

If you don't care about mobility --

For bang-for-the-buck, I would recommend something like this but I'm not exactly sure about the build quality of Acer's non-netbooks (I know they used to sort of suck, so ...)

You should check out Laptopmag and just browser through Newegg. Asus is another good brand you should consider.

Actually, recent Intel graphics chipsets aren't half bad, and he did mention average graphics settings.

I would go as far as to suggest that a low-end Thinkpad is precisely what he is looking for.

MacBook.

Seriously, though.

Haha, good luck. Pick two of them and you might be able to find something.

Speaking of macbooks, I just caught s glimpse of the latest mac life magazine cover. A concept of a macbook with a folding triple monitor display (tribook)? F-ing sweet.

http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/future_apple_design?page=0%2C1

No, you need, THE AWESOMEBOOK!

macbook

Agrrrrreeeeeeed.

Thanks for all the inputs so far, but I don't think I'll go with a Mac. Currently, I'm looking into http://www.powernotebooks.com/index.php3 and http://www.discountlaptops.com/index.php?section=catagory&include_type=154

Their reputation seems to be reputable according to reseller ratings.

Cloud you don't understand; saying that you don't want a macbook will only cause more people to tell you to get one. Now you won't get *any* serious recommendations.

As I said in the last thread about laptops, my Dell has been great.

I bought an HP and really like it. But I also discovered that saying something like that here on Massassi is akin to heresy.

Stay away from the low end HP consumer products. "Low quality" doesn't even begin to describe them.

Alot of things are like that on here.

What do Massassians have again HP and why do they love Macbooks so much?

Actually, Intel graphics chipsets are half-bad. They're all bad. They support DX10 now, but that is all they have going for them. Any similar solutions from ATI and nVidia (the 9300/9400M for example) absolutely destroy the best of Intel's graphics chips. And yes, I am talking only about integrated, not discrete. My previous Macbook sported the newer X3100 Intel chipset, and the performance was terrible. I couldn't even play Portal. On the new macbook with the nVidia 9400M, I can not only play Portal, but I can play it at native resolution and max detail settings (FSAA can be on too if you lower the res).

A proper quip would have been "Intel graphics chipsets aren't half-bad, they're all-bad."

I have no experience with HPs, but I do love the macs.

I could not tell you exactly. The topic is rather hypocritcal really, because I have seen a few people on this board in the past highlight the mac OS's advantages over a PC's and everyone goes in a cahoot over it like "OMFGNO U R SO IDIOT!!! WENDOES IS SO MUHCC MROE BETTARRZZ!!!11!1!!". End result is a mass thread flame and a user who either won't bother to return here, or whos initial point was buried alive under overbloated elitist opinions.

I work on a wide range of laptops on a daily basis & I would highly recommend going with a MacBook. These things are well-designed & will last for a bit if you aren't an idiot. Regardless of what you get, if it's over $1000, get an accidental service plan. If you can't afford it, steer clear of units that have onboard DC jacks & never ever crack your LCD panel (you'll exceed the value of the unit immediately if either of these fail...most service centers won't risk doing solders if you don't have a service plan). Also, if you you get something that's relatively obscure (Cyberpower, Alienware, etc.), if you don't get a service plan but you can't fix it yourself & end up sending it in to one of the more popular service centers, they'll simply send it back to you & claim that the parts are unavailable.

I recently (few months ago) bought a macbook to do some iphone programming. The more I use it, the more I hate it. Xcode is okay. Objective-C sucks. The rest of the family started using it for "regular" stuff, like importing photos and music and whatnot. iPhoto sucks, it will import duplicate images even if the "don't import duplicates" is on. Apple Mail sucks, it will take some webmail accounts but not hotmail (which is what my wife's been using for a decade)... this is important because you can't configure iphoto to let you send photos except through Apple Mail.

They can't even get a simple screen capture utility right. Sure, it can do a screen capture, but it can only do it in TIFF format. W T F who uses TIFF for anything? Then I have to open a completely separate program to convert them to png or whatever.

Most of my problems are with OSX not the hardware (although the lack of a second mouse button bites ***). If you're going to run linux or windows on it I would say sure, go ahead.

Command-Shift-3 does a screen grab in png for me on 10.4.11

I love my HP, but I'm glad I got the extended warranty. Motherboard failed on me a year in.

Mine's never imported duplicate images. Sounds to me your camera is either misconfigured or they weren't really duplicates.



This is entirely Microsoft's fault, as Hotmail does not have any POP or SMTP services. I recommend you use GMail instead, which Mail.app can handle just fine.




As mentioned above, Command-shift-3 will take a PNG image and place it on your desktop. Preview can resave an image in just about any format you want, also, which takes about 3 clicks.



I'd say the lack of a second mouse button is insignificant to the ability to two-finger tap click. After using it for so long I can't stand to be without it on normal laptops.

*shrug* I havent had any issues with it.
My screen grab uses png - http://secrets.blacktree.com/



hahahahaha wait thats a serious argument still? hahahhahahahaa

I do, on a daily basis. I work in a publishing company doing pre-press work.

But you have to admit, printscreen to a TIFF is silly. What are the advantages of TIFF over PNG besides CMYK?

I do have to agree that printscreen to a .tif is a little ridiculous, but it has plenty of advantages. Like Black & White color mode. And you can CMYK in PNG too, iirc. It's just a color mode.

That's the thing, it doesn't printscreen to TIFF. It never has. You'd have to specifically tell OS X to create TIFF. By default it creates PNGs in both Tiger and Leopard.

I have no idea what Brian was doing, but he wasn't doing it right.

I just double-checked. PNG doesn't support CMYK.

The fact that the minimize, maximize, and close window controls are on the top LEFT of windows in OSX is for some reason disproportionately irritating to me and unacceptable

Use the keyboard