Laptop I plan to buy.

I bet u just randomly clicked everything that was the most expensive when you built your dell

On April 17 2008 00:14 Fayth wrote: I bet u just randomly clicked everything that was the most expensive when you built your dell

Laptop buying is somewhat different from normal computer buying as you really have to shop for what you want. Why? Because performance and battery life compete with one another: the sickest quad-core, SLI graphics, 17" screen laptop is going to get owned by your low power processor, integrated video laptop in terms of battery life.

What you want, then, is the barely adequate hardware. If you plan to just play poker and stuff and are going to use it for periods where you are away from a power source for many hours at a time, dont go out and buy a super performing laptop as it will be out of batteries after 2-3 hours. The laptop you picked is pretty high performance and is going to suffer in battery life: ask yourself what you want to comp for, and then buy the minimum performance parts to allow you to do that - the lack in performance compared to the pimp'd out laptop will be made up for in longer battery life.

Of course if you don't expect to ever be away from a power source for 2-4 hours, then it's irrelevant.

just buy 3 or 4 extra batteries and your set for a good 12 hours

overkill. 4k on a poker laptop is just foolish. spend 2k and put 2k in an IRA.

Few things Cosmos,

1) Dont get Adobe Acrobat installed on it, use Sumatra

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

It is free, self contained and works better then anything adobe has to read PDFs it also doesnt have annoying prompts and long load times.

2) If that High Def audio is external do not buy it, it gets annoying as fuck to carry.

3) Im pretty sure windows XP has a 3gb memory limit unless you have the 64 bit version. So you might want to check into that.

Hopefully your car doesnt get busted into again GL

On April 17 2008 00:51 DaEm0niCuS wrote: overkill. 4k on a poker laptop is just foolish. spend 2k and put 2k in an IRA.

I agree, but I would spend even less if it just for poker. You can get a pretty good laptop for $500-$700

buying a 5400 RPM hard drive on a top of the line laptop is retarded.

On April 17 2008 01:03 Loco wrote: buying a 5400 RPM hard drive on a top of the line laptop is retarded.

I saw that too I just assumed for whatever reason they probably didn't have 7200 RPM or higher.

On April 17 2008 01:03 Loco wrote: buying a 5400 RPM hard drive on a top of the line laptop is retarded.

AGREED :D

get a macbook air...i hear cts has one so they've gotta be BALLA

Yea, if u want the best, get a faster hard drive and also a better graphics card imo (8800 GTS maybe).

Just because a hard drive is 7200 does not mean it out performs a 5400 drive when it comes to laptops I hate to break it to some of you. 5400RPM is standard in laptops because of less power consumption when compared to 7200 drives.

So buying a 5400 drive on a "top of the line" is not "retarded" at all. It's great that people in these comments think that a) laptop hard drives go higher than 7200 RPM or b) that Cosmo should buy a "8800 GTS". Its not a fucking desktop its a LAPTOP.

Looks fine enough. Have fun with your new laptop. =p

Only thing I noticed was the antivirus + office programs + adobe. You don't need to be paying for any of that. Free substitutes / torrents are free everywhere, like Sumatra, for all of that stuff.

If your getting a dell you better get at least a 2 year warranty on it too. Those things always fall apart right after your year is up. I go to a university where we have to get dells and people are always throwing them out their window on purpose to get new ones.

I work for Dell supporting XPS laptops (if you ever need to get technical support go to Chat and ask for Bennett -- let me give you some input.

4GB means that althought Windows 'technically' only can allocate 4GB of memory total, 4GB is still proven to be 15-20% faster than 3GB and is well worth the money for dual-channel purposes.

As for the HDD, you will not notice the difference between 5400 and 7200 enough to warranty buying the 7200RPM drives as they are much smaller in storage capacity. The only reason the 7200 would be much improved is for large file copies or game loading speeds (although the difference is not as much as you'd think).

Upgrade to 8800M graphics card if you can (not sure which model you're configuring but if it's the 1730 definitely go to 8800) as it is MUCH faster than the 8700.

Get a 3yr warranty + accidental damage -- it's like 200$ and it covers everything, including if you drop system and it breaks, and if you have to have ONE part replaced the warranty has paid for itself.

Everything else looks kosher. If you have more questions let me know so you can get a solid answer rather than 5 different people who don't really know what they're talking about.

The 3yr warranty is fucking tits. I suggest it, especially since you travel often and shit can just happen.

I would not use McAfee, its garbage. I'd use nod32 from nod32.com - that is the only software change I can suggest.

Enjoy bringing the power brick everywhere.
Something of this magnitude can't have more than 1hour battery life tops.
4k for a laptop is overkill, especially a Poker laptop.
When else will you need to do "serious gaming" on the road?