Need a New Laptop

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I'd rather just run one card, and not have to worry about powering two cards. Not to mention the extra heat that multiple cards produce as well as the reduction in airflow from having to give up extra room for another card.

Higher power consumption, more heat and less airflow is not worth the $20 I'd save in dollars per performance metric.

Do you even have a PC desktop? I thought just the Dell laptop and a Mac?

Anybody who is seriously considering gaming performance or going with multiple cards should have a decent case with good cooling and ventilation along with a high quality power supply anyway. Dealing with heat and power consumption is one of the "fun" aspects of building your own PC.

Having an extra card in the case does not neccessarily mean poor airflow. Each card has it's own fan and exhausts hot air out the back of the case. In reality, it probably adds to the negative pressure in your case.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Temporary_User

I have the option to buy in the states as I have an adress down there and will be down in about 3 weeks. Does anyone know a reputable site I could purchase from (thinking about the machine hack&lube posted)

My personal opinion is that I would not buy a Dell but that's probably a subjective opinion not based on fact or any experience with recent models but I had a terrible time with anything Dell years ago.

The Dell rep was feeding you the company line to get you to buy the more expensive model, it's pretty much nonsense. A gaming system with a high end mobile videocard will have to be designed in the first place with a more robust cooling system to deal with the extra heat and power consumption vs. a business system which doesn't have to work very hard at all. That's probably why business ones run cooler or last longer...because the guy is only running Excel for hours a day.

If you want the Tigerdirect laptop, it's from Tigerdirect.ca so you shouldn't have any issues with buying from the States but you could check out www.tigerdirect.com as I believe their prices are often lower than tigerdirect.ca

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...727&CatId=4938

Same laptop - $999. You save ~$100 and more (GST, environmental fee, etc.)

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by Temporary_User

Thanks for all the input and recommendations everyone.

Chatting online with a Dell.com rep he stated that business computers are more reliable because they are built to be running for 8hrs a day while a personal computer is built for 3hrs. Any truth behind this?

I have the option to buy in the states as I have an adress down there and will be down in about 3 weeks. Does anyone know a reputable site I could purchase from (thinking about the machine hack&lube posted)

Asus does make pretty good laptops. I'd put them up there with Dell, quite easily.

[Temporary_User]

Thanks.
That computer has a 1.6ghz processor. Is that enough?
Would you think the rest of the computer may be overkill considering I only need to run SC2, the rest will be word processing and basic web browsing?

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Dealing with heat and power consumption is one of the "fun" aspects of building your own PC.

Clearly, we both posses drastically varying interpretations of the word "fun."

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by Temporary_User

Thanks.
That computer has a 1.6ghz processor. Is that enough?
Would you think the rest of the computer may be overkill considering I only need to run SC2, the rest will be word processing and basic web browsing?

SC2 isn't really that big of a deal you know. I'm running it on my laptop, and all I have is a Dell with an ATI 4650 Mobility card. I have the graphics settings on "Medium" and it looks perfectly fine for me. I can run it on "Ultra" but it gets a bit choppy during certain times, so I turned it down.

If all you care about is SC2 and everything else will just be internet and email, you don't need to get too crazy with the specs.

Blizzard has a bit of a reputation for making games that look good, but can run on almost anything.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Temporary_User

Thanks.
That computer has a 1.6ghz processor. Is that enough?
Would you think the rest of the computer may be overkill considering I only need to run SC2, the rest will be word processing and basic web browsing?

Check http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-...st.2436.0.html

It's ranked much higher and is much faster than the i5 CPU in the Dell system even though that one was 2.4GHz. (#18 vs. #29). Clockspeed doesn't mean that much.

It's a quad core i7, it runs 1.60GHz but Turbo Boosts to 2.8GHz in single threaded apps. Clockspeed is deceptive. Don't look at the GHz. The i7 is a quad with double the cores, double the threads, and double the L1 and L2 cache than the i5 which is much more important. An i7 over a dual core i5 is a huge leap.

That laptop is faster than the Dell in every way.

For only about $1000, I think it's great value. It sucks more when you have a fancy laptop that was a bit cheaper, like $500-$700 but it just has a crappy Intel GMA graphics chip and all you can do is word processing and surfing and you can't play the latest games when you want to.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Clearly, we both posses drastically varying interpretations of the word "fun."

It's the same philosophy as someone who likes to work on their own car or do their own home improvements because you have control over everything and can customize to your own desire. It's "fun" to tweak or build or your own cooling system or case tailored to what you need it to do.

Some people wouldn't call jailbreaking an iphone fun but I take it from that thread that you enjoy it. Same philosophy really.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

SC2 isn't really that big of a deal you know. I'm running it on my laptop, and all I have is a Dell with an ATI 4650 Mobility card. I have the graphics settings on "Medium" and it looks perfectly fine for me. I can run it on "Ultra" but it gets a bit choppy during certain times, so I turned it down.

If all you care about is SC2 and everything else will just be internet and email, you don't need to get too crazy with the specs.

Blizzard has a bit of a reputation for making games that look good, but can run on almost anything.

I have a friend with an old 2.4GHz dual core Intel 775 CPU and an 8800GTS 320M and he has difficulty playing SC2. SC2 is pretty demanding actually but I agree that the differences between medium to ultra is really not that visible. The biggest thing in Blizzard RTS's is textures. As long as you have medium-ultra textures it looks all the same even if all the other effects and shaders are low or off. My friend runs low textures and it looks like an N64 game. I have 1GB HD5870 and I have difficulty running Ultra textures. It seems to run over the 1GB limit sometimes, I'll get error messages about running out of VRAM and the game will crash. I have to dial back down to high. Might be a bug.

[Regulator75]

Here is another interesting link (take with a grain of salt).

ASUS best, HP worst for notebook reliability.

http://www.electronista.com/articles...ple.4th.place/

[FanIn80]

Yep. HPs are a whole pile of suck.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

It's the same philosophy as someone who likes to work on their own car or do their own home improvements because you have control over everything and can customize to your own desire. It's "fun" to tweak or build or your own cooling system or case tailored to what you need it to do.

Except most people don’t really customize anything. You’re just buying off the shelf bits and pieces built to spec and sticking them together. Your "customized" system can be built by the next person in line behind you at Memory Express.

If you’re milling your own heatsinks, or building your own heat pump out of component pieces based on your own specification to handle your target power dissipation, then yeah, that’s custom. Same for case modders that put some personal design or artistic vision into their work.

The rest is just assembly at best, consumerism at worst.





Let’s face it, you can buy any sufficiently rated power supply, a basic case large enough to accomodate SLI, and a run of the mill case fan, and the system will run within spec 99% of the time.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I don't recommend products to people on this board, except on very rare occasion.

Since I've now posted in this thread, though, I will contribute to the topic by recommending the OP stay away from Acer products. Of course, I bet even that will get some arguments from some people...

Actually, I fully stand behind your Acer comment.

Junk.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Except most people don’t really customize anything. You’re just buying off the shelf bits and pieces built to spec and sticking them together. Your "customized" system can be built by the next person in line behind you at Memory Express.

If you’re milling your own heatsinks, or building your own heat pump out of component pieces based on your own specification to handle your target power dissipation, then yeah, that’s custom. Same for case modders that put some personal design or artistic vision into their work.

The rest is just assembly at best, consumerism at worst.



Let’s face it, you can buy any sufficiently rated power supply, a basic case large enough to accomodate SLI, and a run of the mill case fan, and the system will run within spec 99% of the time.

Why the constant devil's advocate? I've taken a dremel to practically every case I've owned in the last 10 years as well as fabricating parts or making custom electronics. I'm not crazy enough to make my own waterblock though.

Assembly is buying something from Ikea and following the instructions and building it with everything that comes in the box and plastic bags. Customization is choosing whatever components you want and in some cases, installing them as specified but there are a myriad of other ways to do things and that fabrication or modification is also part of the fun. Are you saying that someone who customizes his car or buys off the shelf parts @ Home Depot to work on his home is simply a drone doing assembly or simply being a slave to consumerism? You sure like to take the piss out of hobbies. Maybe you just need more time to enjoy them, but I guess your time is more valuable than others as you've said before.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Why the constant devil's advocate? I've taken a dremel to practically every case I've owned in the last 10 years as well as fabricating parts or making custom electronics. I'm not crazy enough to make my own waterblock though.

Assembly is buying something from Ikea and following the instructions and building it with everything that comes in the box and plastic bags. Customization is choosing whatever components you want and in some cases, installing them as specified but there are a myriad of other ways to do things and that fabrication or modification is also part of the fun. Are you saying that someone who customizes his car or buys off the shelf parts @ Home Depot to work on his home is simply a drone doing assembly or simply being a slave to consumerism? You sure like to take the piss out of hobbies. Maybe you just need more time to enjoy them, but I guess your time is more valuable than others as you've said before.

Lol - anyone with a dremel is OK in my books. Edit: You also missed the wink, I was being a little over the top on purpose, mostly because I had a mental image of yet another blinged out PeeCee with blue leds in the cooling fans and a blinking neon sign proclaiming it to be custom


But to answer your other question, yes, if you are buying parts off the shelf and bolting them on, its just assembly. Someone else did all the thinking, and anyone else can come along and build the same thing.

Until you’re doing some modification or fabrication, or your own innovation (however small - there are limits to what most people can accomplish), at which point its custom. The point of custom is its yours, and can’t be replicated off the shelf.

So when you say taking power and cooling into account building a PC is “fun”, I suspect its because you researched power consumption, you know how much air you want to push in CFM’s, you probably know the difference between case and junction temps on a CPU are, etc. You likely routed cables in a manner that you determined was optimal for airflow. You did your own small measure of innovation that can’t be replicated off-the-shelf.

It’s the same in other hobby endeavours - the guy that laps his own valves and is able to eke out a few more horsepower than buddy two doors down, that’s custom. The person that carefully selects the raw wood and carves their own electric guitar body - custom. But buying a kit of bolt on car parts, or a pre-finished guitar body from a website? Not custom.

[Temporary_User]

Does anyone know if I could play SC2 on the entry level 13" Macbook Pro?
2.4 ghz intel core 2 duo
4gb memory
NVIDIA Geforce 320M graphics

The graphics card doesn't appear to be that great, but you're looking at a $2000 machine if you want to upgrade that.

As a student the $1,150 price tag for the above machine isn't too bad considering I could then take my free iTouch and sell it, or give as a gift (already have ipod and iphone)

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Temporary_User

Does anyone know if I could play SC2 on the entry level 13" Macbook Pro?
2.4 ghz intel core 2 duo
4gb memory
NVIDIA Geforce 320M graphics

The graphics card doesn't appear to be that great, but you're looking at a $2000 machine if you want to upgrade that.

As a student the $1,150 price tag for the above machine isn't too bad considering I could then take my free iTouch and sell it, or give as a gift (already have ipod and iphone)

Are you considering running it as a Mac native app or in bootcamp? I think running it in bootcamp with nvidia drivers will wring the best performance out of the graphics - OS X isn’t known for having high performance drivers for gaming, relative to Windows.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Temporary_User

Does anyone know if I could play SC2 on the entry level 13" Macbook Pro?
2.4 ghz intel core 2 duo
4gb memory
NVIDIA Geforce 320M graphics

The graphics card doesn't appear to be that great, but you're looking at a $2000 machine if you want to upgrade that.

As a student the $1,150 price tag for the above machine isn't too bad considering I could then take my free iTouch and sell it, or give as a gift (already have ipod and iphone)

Word is it runs at native res on medium settings quite well. SC2 is one of the rare modern games that will run well on MBPs.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

It’s the same in other hobby endeavours - the guy that laps his own valves and is able to eke out a few more horsepower than buddy two doors down, that’s custom. The person that carefully selects the raw wood and carves their own electric guitar body - custom. But buying a kit of bolt on car parts, or a pre-finished guitar body from a website? Not custom.

I don't know, I've built guitars too but again, with off the shelf parts with almost no wood working except for sanding in case of a new paintjob but I still think it's customization if it's not something you bought in factory configuration but a hodgepodge of parts. In any case, my usual experience with anything (computers, guitars, cars, guns, etc.) is that trying to fit together parts from various 3rd party or likewise manufacturers who supposedly build things that are standardized usually results in something that needs a lot of work put into it after the fact to get parts or tolerances to fit right or for things to actually work or play nice...it's the part after all the effort when things still don't work that it stops being fun and I start giving up hobbies because they are too gay or maybe I fix too many things that ain't broke and I suck at it.

[Frequitude]

Bump...

I'm heading to Haskayne in the fall and need to purchase a laptop. Any ideas?

Needs:
-main use will be for school...notes, excel, whatever else you do at business school
-good battery life
-run MS office, including some pretty big Excel spreadsheets/programs
-will also use it for personal/work stuff like Adobe Professional, random programs, photoshop sometimes, lots of internet
-I want to be able to dock it and run 2 monitors
-no plans for heavy gaming, but don't want crappy graphics
-don't want to spend more than $1000
-no crappy HP/compaq type POS. I'd like it to last