New Laptop Advice

thomas.berubeg · Jan 5, 2009

Hello,

well, i've finally managed to restrain myself from the temptation to spend, spend, spend all of my money long enough for it to accumulate to a sizeable $1000 US, and, as that was the amount i had decided i wanted to have before buying a laptop for college next year. This laptop will be used for College stuff as well some gameing (CIV, Sins of a Solar Empire.)

I'm Hesitating between:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0303562

A Dell Vostro 1710
$974

Spoiler :

Or

a Dell Studio 17
$999

Spoiler :

Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you.

thomas

Genocidicbunny · Jan 5, 2009

The second one is definitely nicer. They have very comparable specs, but the studio has a faster CPU which is a definite bonus, especially for only 20$ more. Everything else is basically the same ( save for the OS differences ) so if ythose are your only two choices, you might as well choose based on which one looks better.
EDIT- by second one I meant the second dell. The Pavilion kinda sucks.

Also, if you're gonna get a notebook, save yourself some money, and get the smallest HDD and RAM you can and buy those separately. You're gonna end up saving around 50$.

Quintillus · Jan 5, 2009

The Studio 17 is definitely the most powerful. The Pavilion has the weakest GPU by a good margin, and the weakest CPU (right now, AMD is slower than Intel at the same clock speed). The Vostro falls short of the Studio on both graphics, processor, and warranty for just $25, and even though it's listed in the business section, it's really the same as the Inspiron - less heavy-duty than the Studio. The only leg up it has it the XP downgrade, if you want to run XP.

stickciv's right about memory/hard drive. Both are very cheap right now, and you're best off buying the laptop with the cheapest you can get and replacing it yourself. Most of the time the cost of upgrading a retail notebook's hard drive or memory from the company (Dell/HP) is more expensive than buying the best laptop hard drive/memory available.

Macha · Jan 10, 2009

Personally I have a Dell Studio 17 (higher model than yours - 4GB of ram and T8300 Processor (2.4Ghz, 6MB Cache)) and its runs great for me.

The one problem is the mobile version of the ATI HD3650 (or at least mine) can't anti-alias. Any game with hardware rendering AND anti-aliasing on, grinds to a halt. Normally this is fine, I just have to turn anti-aliasing off but it might annoy you. Everything else I've tried runs on all high settings so far.

Also if your getting the Studio 17, buy the dual 250GB hard drives, when I was getting it, it cost €20 to go from default 250GB to 320GB or €5 to go from 250GB to 2x 250GB. This might have changed since so double check however,

Genocidicbunny · Jan 10, 2009

tonyf12 said:
Personally I have a Dell Studio 17 (higher model than yours - 4GB of ram and T8300 Processor (2.4Ghz, 6MB Cache)) and its runs great for me.

The one problem is the mobile version of the ATI HD3650 (or at least mine) can't anti-alias. Any game with hardware rendering AND anti-aliasing on, grinds to a halt. Normally this is fine, I just have to turn anti-aliasing off but it might annoy you. Everything else I've tried runs on all high settings so far.

Also if your getting the Studio 17, buy the dual 250GB hard drives, when I was getting it, it cost 20 to go from default 250GB to 320GB or 5 to go from 250GB to 2x 250GB. This might have changed since so double check however,

Most mobile GPu's dont have enough power to really Anti-Alias

New Laptop Advice

thomas.berubeg

Wandering the World

Genocidicbunny

Bug squasher

Quintillus

Resident Medieval Monk

Macha

King

Genocidicbunny

Bug squasher

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