Need suggestions for a new laptop

[Jim von Krieg]

You go Dawg...

I've essentially shied away from laptops for a long time because I very much desire value unless there is extreme need... and a desktop gives considerably more value for your dollar.. and when I did travel I had a government laptop to lug, so I didn't need one... Back in 2001 I bought an HP laptop at the Navy Exchange in Norfolk. It came in useful, but it never really matched up well with my much cheaper desktop...

Prior to that, on the rare occasion I travelled for pleasure, I travelled with my desktop. packing up the desktop for long trips is considerably more complicated than packing up a laptop.. LOL... Don't laugh too hard, I have packed up my desktop for travel on more than one occassion when I was traveling in my Explorer...

Recently, I didn't quite go for super-suped up $5000 laptop, but I did get one from HP for a little over $2000 about a year ago. My decision to go with HP over Dell was strictly an economic one, the HP was considerably cheaper for essentially the same capabilities in the machine...

I bought an HP9000 with 17" screen from Iraq via telephone for my use in Iraq... As neither Dell nor HP ships to APO addresses, it had to go home through the wife then to the APO.

I have generally been happy with my HP, but it does have one thing that annoys me and that is the battery on rare occassions requires removal and reinsertion for it to get juice. It took me a lot of frustration to figure this out as the AC adapter powerlight would be on but it wouldn't power up. Once I discovered this trick. I've had no issues.

One thing I would recommend, buy the extended warranty. I slept better knowing if anything went wrong I could turn it in for repair. My IPOD Nano drove that point home when it died in Iraq after less than 6 months usage in the gym. As I didn't have time to fool with it, I just made arrangements to get it fixed. It was easily replaced by a cheaper MP3 player which kept up with gym routine.

Unlike my old laptop, this new one favorably compares with my desktop in speed and power, but it offers a new mobility. Personally, I feel that a gamer must spend the extra dollars on the graphics card for the laptop. That helps with all these memory hog games about. Not everything is as easy on new machines as CS.

Only draw back is that the 17" and bigger monitors are a bit more to lug, but they make great DVD players as well as computers.

Well, enough of my rambling... I have turns to work on...

Take care,

Jim

[majog]

Dawg:

I have used HP laptops for some time and is the only way to go at work since I like the mobility. It also allows me to play from the road. The question is always do you need the portability; if so a laptop is the way to go if not go desktop as you get more bang for the buck.

Remember that the TS games do not need much processing or memory power compared to the newed first person shooters. If you are doing that or major graphic's and you don't need the portability I would go with Alienware for the money.