Dell's Gaming Monster

Carpoolio writes "TechTV has a good first look at the new Dell Inspiron XPS -- the company's first foray into portable gaming systems. The notebook -- a beast at 9 pounds -- puts the company squarely against the likes of Alienware. The price tag is steep, too, at $3,350. Are you buying?"

Comments

Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember back when that would've been a super lightweight notebook.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

My first "laptop" wieghed in at around 30 lbs..

Now here's the real question, what kind of gamer uses a LAPTOP to play games??! Are they for real??

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Please refrain from telling everyone how you remember working with computers which had only 1 bit of ram which was actually the power switch in your parents' basement. Thank you.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Clover_Kicker]

Here, take a walk down memory lane: http://www.firstibmclone.fsnet.co.uk/

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. It says "not an official Compaq site!" on the front page. With that professional design, who would've thought...

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[donbrock]

I wish I knew what to do with my old Compaq Luggable. I just can't bear to trash it.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Tenfish]

My parent's basement had a light controlled by two switches. It was SMP! And there were two lights on the same circuit. A check bit!

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[kfg]

I only retired mine a few years ago. I'm afraid I abandoned it when I moved my business. The floppy drive was getting too flakey to trust.

Sometimes I miss the old girl though.

And I really don't see the point of a gaming laptop. What I want is a full sized screen transportable, and it's easy enough to build a slimline with LCD system these days that slips into a bag no bigger than the Compaq, and rather lighter.

KFG

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[SuperBanana]

9 pounds

Or you could buy a first-gen 17" Powerbook for about $2500, spend $100 and upgrade it to a gig of ram, and ignore the screen resolution since there isn't a mobile graphics card on the planet that can drive a display for a first-person shooter at either system's native resolution anyway. 802.11g, Bluetooth...it's even courteous enough to turn down the screen and backlight the keyboard for you if you switch off the lights. The whole thing is about half the height and 2 pounds lighter- with the AC adapter, which fits in your pocket. Even cranking away, the highest internal temp I've recorded is about 140 degrees; the fan comes on periodically and cools it right quick. Average temps are about 120 with it sitting on the rug or similar insulator; 100 on a cool table. Also nice- sitting in a meeting, minding its own business, it'll last a good 5-6 hours on the battery. Did I mention the DVI out and dual-head display(it'll drive virtually any monitor plus the builtin screen, both at full color).

The second-generation 17" is still $3k and change, but has a better graphics card, faster processor, and supports USB2 among other things.

I just played the UT 2004 demo on my 1st-gen 17" powerbook. It's awesome...

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[EMH_Mark3]

One word: LAN party.
(ok so that's two words heh)

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Take it apart and see if you can use any of the electronics for your own projects. The display maybe?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Attaturk]

Sure the notebook only weighs 9 pounds, but the batteries are a bitch.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[a.deity]

I own a second-gen. Couldn't agree more, couldn't live without it.

Plus, Dell doesn't have the OS. :)

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

You loser moderators wouldn't recognize a good joke if you paid $1000 for it. What's really funny is that this post was unmoderated for quite some time and then got downmoderated twice very quickly. Are you really that insecure that you have to resort to this stupid groupthink?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[AmigaAvenger]

you are kidding, right? just got back from a 150+ person lan party, guess how many macs there were? yup, ZERO!!! no serious gamer even thinks of a mac, why, hmm, most of us don't want to wait 6 months to a year to get the game, and that is if it is even released! personally, i like mac and hope this situation would have changed, but look around at the popular online games now, desert combat/bf 1942, rise of nations, many others. (RON might be out on mac by now, but the point is the pc version has been out for a year...)

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[ionpro]

Mobility Radeon 9700. 'Nuff Said.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Lane.exe]

My UT2K4 for my G5 has already shipped. Should be in any day now.

I've never been kicked out of a LAN party for either my PB or my G5.

Funny.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you call it a "girl"? You do know that the term is "disk drive," not "dick drive," right?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried this site out at 800x600 with MSIE 6, like they suggested. It still looked like shit.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

serious gamer

Isn't this an oxymoron, you know like, "work party", "pretty ugly", or "microsoft works"?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[badasscat]

Or you could buy a first-gen 17" Powerbook for about $2500, spend $100 and upgrade it to a gig of ram, and ignore the screen resolution since there isn't a mobile graphics card on the planet that can drive a display for a first-person shooter at either system's native resolution anyway.

(spit-take)

What what what??! You really have no idea what level of technology the rest of the world is actually using.

A mobile Radeon 9700 is more than powerful enough to play any fps at the native resolution of this laptop. I have a brand new laptop with a 2.4ghz non-Extreme P4 and the same res. screen as the XPS and I can play UT2K3 and Max Payne 2 at native resolution at around 60fps with a Radeon 9000. So your statement is clearly ignorant, and false.

There's nothing wrong with buying a 17" Powerbook if that's what you want, but you're fundamentally misunderstanding the market for the Dell XPS if that's what you'd think that audience would want. Mac people always say "or just buy a Mac" for pretty much every situation, as if their machines work best for everything. The simple fact is the XPS would be a far better gaming machine than a 17" Powerbook - it has a faster CPU and it has a faster graphics card (and it's upgradeable). The PC market is a specialized market, with a lot of different machines for different purposes. The whole point of a gaming laptop is to have a laptop that's good for playing games, not to have a laptop that's a catch-all device with gaming as merely one of the possible functions. This is not a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none... this is a master of one trade, and that's it.

That said, I wouldn't buy an XPS myself. It's fugly, for one thing. And heavy, and unnecessarily expensive. When I can play games like those I listed above at good frame rates at native res. on my $1,200 widescreen laptop that doesn't weight 9 pounds and also looks better than the XPS, what the heck am I spending $5,000 on? Which is not to say I think these things are silly for everyone, I am just not their target market. I do have a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none machine. If I really had some extra cash to waste, I'd at least go for something like this or even this. At least they're somewhat portable and don't look like they were designed in 1989.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Junior J. Junior III]

Yeah, well I can remember when it would have been some really big company's mainframe.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[kuleiana]

...and all three people that this machine is targetted at will run out and buy it immediately! Please, WHAT target market? I hope they manage to at least empty out the spare bedroom in Michael Dell's house when they cancel the line's manufacture.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

The better gaming machine isn't determined by the "faster" CPU and (horribly expensive) upgradable GFX card; it's determined by the availability of games, which the PC wins hands down. Buy a Mac for business and light gaming, if you want. But the PC is just better because of the available gaming software titles, not necessarily because of the hardware.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Espectr0]

RISC processor and all, you can't compare a 1.33ghz ppc chip with a 3.4 intel monster. I would like to see your frame rates compared to that one, i bet you get less than half.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[ddavis]

UT2k4 is awesome on a PowerBook? YEAH RIGHT. I am running it on my 1 week old 15" AlBook 1.25ghz with a Radeon 9600 at it runs like crap (19fps at 1024x768). You must be at 340x240 resolution.

Regarding the Dell benchmarks... who in the world buys a 3k machine to play games and runs them at 640x480?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Eskarel]

As a side not 60 fps is not a decent frame rate, though it's far more tolerable on an lcd than on a crt.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[BhAaD]

How many laptops did you see?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[zaffir]

Shuttle (or any small form factor PC) + LCD Much cheaper, more upgradable, and more tweakable (overclocking etc.). This laptop is for people with too much money and too little sense.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

As a side not 60 fps is not a decent frame rate

You should be shot for trying to incite another 60 fps is/isn't enough war.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

[squinting eyes suspiciously...]

what do you mean PB?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[HD Webdev]

swappable DVD+RW optical drive

Bleeding edge...WTF?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[n3k5]

As a side not 60 fps is not a decent frame rate, though it's far more tolerable on an lcd than on a crt.

Either you're mixing up frame rate with refresh rate, or you actually mean that while 60 fps is a little too low for the really 31337 gamerz, higher frame rates don't make that much of a difference on an LCD. There's no way that an LCD would make a low frame rate more tolerable in any way, except if the fps were _really_ low (like 10) and the LCD was bizarrely, absurdly crappy and blend the single frames into each other, hiding the jerkiness of the animation.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Lane.exe]

PowerBook. You know, the laptop that Apple makes? It's shiny, made of metal... they gave it to me when I started working for them.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[dchamp]

Roger that. I've seen at most 2 Macs at a LAN at a time. They can play some of the games, but often end up playing with themselves (er, in game...) when all of the Windows players are playing BF42.
I can empathize, because I'd rather be using a linux PC for gaming, but I use WinXP for my gaming rig, just because there are more games available.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[minusthink]

Do you have to complain about everything? Honestly, we can't take you anywhere.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[drauh]

May I suggest: "elegant Perl", "simple C++", "compassionate conservative"...

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with perl. May I suggest "witty drauh" ?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[MeSoCal]

We have one of these things at work. I plugged it in about 6 years ago, and it actually fired up. Is there a museum that would want it?

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid teenagers with very rich parents is quite a bit bigger market than you make it out to be.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Perl, not elegant? Behold the source code to 'cat':

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
print <>;

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[starman97]

60fps quoted is an average number, that's not good enough for a FPS firefight. A rig that gets 60fps average is going to drop to less than 15 in a big melee with several onscreen players and all the bullets/explosions. Most gamers run setups that can get at least 130fps on average and then cap the refresh at 60 or so. The truly l33t can cap at 125.

Screen refresh rates arent that big of a deal, it's how fast the game's engine can update the frame buffer and take player input and compute shot trajectories. If someones running past you ingame and you're turning your point of view, the distance between frames of thier player model is pretty large, even at 60 fps.
Work it out, a player model 50 pixels across on a 1024 wide screen that crosses the screen in 1/4 of a second is only going to get 15 places to be shot at, even at 60 fps. There's gaps between the frames on their motion that swallow up bullets even when spamming.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[drauh]

You confuse brevity with elegance. Perl only just edges out sed/grep/awk in my book:

# -- awk
{print;}

Same character count.

See this from the ActiveState haiku contest:

Dishonorable Mention
Name: Geoff Kuenning
Haiku:
Unreadable code,
Why would anyone use it?
Learn a better way.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious Gamers have more money than brains. Just like SUV owners.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds

[drauh]

Hang on, here's the sed script:

p

That's it. One char.

Clever.

[American AC in Paris]

Aaah...it seems Dell is going after the coveted gamers-who-leave-the-basement demographic...

Re:Clever.

[Anonymous Coward]

All 4 of them.

Re:Clever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see, that would mean their target market consists of 6 people?

Re:Clever.

[wittyesotericmoniker]

Or the ones who are tired of wheeling their desktop setup over to the toilet.

Re:Clever.

[euxneks]

Which is approximately, what, 0.05% of the gaming population? =P

Re:Clever.

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>> Aaah...it seems Dell is going after the coveted gamers-who-leave-the-basement demographic...
> Which is approximately, what, 0.05% of the gaming population?

Surely I'm not the only one playing wireless Total Annihilation during those endless delays at SFO?

"Eat these missiles Core Scum." Hmm... could get entertaining if a TSA packet sniffer picks that up.

Re:Clever.

[WeblionX]

Hey now, some of us live on the second floor.

Re:Clever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually alot of PC professionals play games and work off the same PC. I can code on my alienware P4EE far better than any PC I have ever used AND I can play Everquest easily AND I will be able to play EQ2 when it comes out... all on a PC I take to work and then home and then to a friends house....

that's all fine and dandy.

[ooby]

But can it run Tetris?

Re:that's all fine and dandy.

[ClippyHater]

You should see the Solitaire winning screen, cards flying around like there's no tomorrow!!

9 pounds?!

[Anonymous Coward]

At nine pounds thats the cheapest machine I've seen in ages - or are we not all talking British?

Re:9 pounds?!

[Stonent1]

At nine pounds thats the cheapest machine I've seen in ages - or are we not all talking British?

Nah the british couldn't figure out how to make it leak oil.

Re:9 pounds?!

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly Mr British here just worked out he blew +5 funny points by posting AC. Dammit.

Re:9 pounds?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny don't count. Something about smart vs. smartass.

This is unfortunate, as humor will usually add something to the discussion.

Ouch

[ikewillis]

For that much money, I think I'd rather own a car

Re:Ouch

[macmaniac]

To charge that much money for a laptop AND have it weigh in at 9 pounds, Dell must be out of their mind....

I personally think it's probably destined to be remembered about as well as the Macintosh Portable, or the "Luggable"....as a fairly useless and/or non-portable laptop....

Re:Ouch

[WankersRevenge]

just remember, unlike gta3 - you stay in jail after being arrested for running down pedestrians.

Re:Ouch

[TheLinuxWarrior]

If 9 Lbs is really going to hurt you that much, perhaps you should consider a trip to the gym once in a while.

Essentially that laptop is as fast as most recent desktops on the market, but 5 X more portable.

The pricetag isn't all that bad either considering that the XPS desktop model would probably be roughly the same cost if you get the monitor and speakers which are of course, built into this laptop.

Re:Ouch

[Lord_Dweomer]

You know.....its funny you should mention GTA3, because the other day I was driving in the parking lot outside of the grocery store when a woman and her child started to walk past the front of my car (no crosswalk or stop sign, I swear!) and while it was near impossible for me to hit them, I came much closer than the lady thought comfortable and she proceeded to give me a salty look and say something which I didn't hear. Later on I realized that I have developed such a mentality from driving games where:

"You can come as close as you want without bad things happening as long as you don't actually touch it. You could even be a pixel away."

Unfortunately, people in the real world have larger "personal spaces" than people in GTA3. Whoops.

Re:Ouch

[Fiz Ocelot]

I bet this thing gets hot enough to make grits! Although the battery life may limit your grit making ability.

Re:Ouch

[gilrain]

What? The people in GTA curse at you or dive out of the way if you drive within a few feet of them.

Re:Ouch

[wed128]

no...you can actually hit them...you're thinking of 'driver'

Re:Ouch

[Afrosheen]

No, he's talking about GTA3. If there's one thing I learned in the 2 weeks I played it using Winex, it's that if you don't drive too fast and honk, people will run or jump out of your way. Depends on what part of town you're in also. Mainly in the beginning, near the police station, they'll jump.

Re:Ouch

[theycallmeB]

Tell that to the Chicago Transit Authority bus I saw driving on the sidewalk tonight.

It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[jeblucas]

Marty! This thing must take One-point-twenty-one-Giga-watts!

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

jigga-watts, it's pronounced jigga-watts

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[pgp4privacy]

Let's see if these bastards can do 88...

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's spell gigawatts. Most of us don't write phonetically.

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch Back To The Future, moron.

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[-Grover]

Actually, IIRC The quote was...

"Let's see if these bastards can do ninety"

Maybe it's just been way too long ;)

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[DavidLeblond]

Uh, no he's right. Its spelled with a g.

Really, what metric unit would a jigga be?

So to take myself down to the Anonymous Coward level:

Buy a dictionary, moron.

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[DavidLeblond]

88 Ghz???

No wonder its 9 lbs!

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Dr. Mojura]

From the imdb trivia on Back to the Future:

In the films script the word "gigawatt" is spelt "jigowatt". Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis had been to a science seminar and the speaker had pronounced it "jigowatt".

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Dr. Mojura]

Also from imdb...

The prefix "giga" was formerly more commonly pronounced as jiga, just as Doc Brown pronounces it.

and from mirriam-webster:

Main Entry: gigawatt Pronunciation: 'ji-g&-"wat, 'gi- Function: noun : a unit of power equal to one billion watts

So, I think either way's ok.

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[El]

So don't use it unless it's plugged in... but the question is, does it burn your hands when your try to type on it?

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[wickedj]

Now all they need to do is attach an ethanol reactor to it, that or a MR.FUSION.

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[DavidLeblond]

Right, but just because they can't spell doesn't mean thats the correct spelling. :)

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Dr. Mojura]

Try telling my boss that ;-)

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, if you're an English speaker and have trouble pronouncing 'giga'

whaddya 'no, next we'll be seeing 3JHz (JigaHertz!!!) G5 beasts or something

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[yomegaman]

Is that a jillion watts? I think it's more like a ziga-watt!

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Trejkaz]

Even if we did write phonetically, it would be gigawatts.

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[Anonymous Coward]

JiggleHertz breasts! The power consumption is killin' me!

Re:It's the power consumption that'll kill ya...

[i chose quality]

don't mess with nucular power, son!

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Darsovit]

I'm no mac lover, but I do know that the 17" Powerbook Mac starts at $2999, which is less than $3350 in most ideas of "less than" out in the world.

No, it's too much

[PotatoHead]

money.

Part of the joy in high-end PC's (and that is an oxymoron for me) is building them.

If I have that kind of money to blow, then its going to be a trip to FRY's hands down.

Re:No, it's too much

[*weasel]

Not having a Fry's around my location, pardon me if I'm missing something.

But rolling-your-own laptop is not exactly something you can do with a trip to the enthusiasts store.

I'd love to roll my own laptop or PDA the way I can with a desktop - but that's just not the way the bits are sold.

Re:No, it's too much

[Awptimus Prime]

Agreed. My friends and I all build all our own systems, and most take some sense of pride in having a nice, custom system once it's done.

I tend to update some components at times when I need to squeeze every bit of power out of the system. For instance, I will often buy a next-generation graphics card when it's line is brand new, but hold off replacing the CPU, Mobo, and RAM. This way, there's a constant rise in FPS and system speed, without having to throw down a big chunk of change for a new system every year.

There is also the visual appearance of your machine. There's no point in replacing a stylish Lian Li case you spent a lot of time working on with a dremel or adding sound dampening materials to. If the case looks good, functions well, etc -- then it can remain a fixture on your desk until the ATX standard is no longer used. The same goes with your PSU, assuming you get one that is of premium quality and has enough wattage to safely power a system for several more years.

I often refer to the cost of upgrading my gaming system to upgrading my secondary computer, which will inherit all of the main system's components. Any parts that aren't immediately used go into the closet as spares, loaners, or freebies for friends.

None of this is possible with a $3300 laptop. When you want a better video card in 2 years, then you have to go spend another $3k for a whole new laptop. None of the parts, except for the HDD will likely be useful. Even then, a 7200 RPM 60GB drive won't be something you will want to put in a brand-new laptop in a couple of years. You could stick it on Ebay and hope some sucker bids more than it's worth.

Re:No, it's too much

[Rude Turnip]

You can upgrade the graphics chipset on Dell laptops.

Re:No, it's too much

[RugbyHoe]

All valid points but the article indicates that they are at least trying to address the laptop vid card issue. "Dell also takes the step, for the first time in its notebook line, of offering upgradeable graphics for people who need the latest and greatest." My job forces me to spend way too much time in airplanes and hotel rooms - I would love to have the option of replacing the Radeon 7500 I have in my current laptop.

Re:No, it's too much

[FurryFeet]

Yeah, you build your own laptops too, I guess.
Check the article.

Re:No, it's too much

[brkello]

You build your own laptops? :P Actually, if you are going high end, then it is almost always cheaper buying through Dell. I used to build my own machines too, which is a lot of fun. It is very worth it if you are building a mid-range PC. But if you try to buy the fastest processor, latest ATI card, etc, you are going to actually spend more on your PC than ordering it through Dell or some other vendor. Building computer != always cheaper.

Re:No, it's too much

[MoonBuggy]

Fair point, but look at the monitor on that thing. Bearing in mind the resolution compared to the size it makes the rest of the system seem damn cheap compared to any comparable desktop with a screen like that.

Re:No, it's too much

[Lazyhound]

Whoa, since when?

Re:No, it's too much

[jftitan]

Well since, the Inspiron 8100, GeForce2Go to a Geforce4 MX 440 64MB DDR.

plus if you spend enough time on ebay, you could actually upgrade the whole 8100 to a 8200 for less than $400, that includes 1GB RAM.

Re:No, it's too much

[Lazyhound]

...

Naturally, I own an 8000.

Re:No, it's too much

[bhtooefr]

Roll your own PDA will never happen any time soon, unless you build your own board. However, I'm actually working on designing a roll-your-own laptop spec. Here's what I've got so far:

12.5"x11"x1.5"
Up to 15" LCD @ .5" thick
LCD module will be in two pieces - module and hinge, hinge will be 12.5"x1"x.5", will connect to back of laptop
Graphics can be embedded, however, a Mini-AGP slot is recommended
Will use notebook HDDs, slimline CD drives, NO floppy drive
Two PCMCIA slots

I'm not buying...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

..But I'm open to donations.

Personally, if I get a laptop I'd rather get one that isn't wasting cpu cycles on a >ghz cpu and crazy graphics card. I'm a gamer, sure, but thats not what laptops are for. LCDs suck for gaming, as does laptop keyboards, and requiring a real usb mouse.

Re:I'm not buying...

[hobbesmaster]

I have a friend that plays exclusively on his Sager 4080. Hes far better at using a touchpad in FPS's than a mouse, and is one of the better gamers I know. Just because you can't beat Half Life on hardest difficulty in the back of your physics class doesn't mean that everyone can't.

There is a market out there for these notebooks, but I would rather have a clevo of some sort (sagers appear to be the best), but I guess some people would want to pay more for Dell...

PS. LCDs are pretty good for gaming these days, the LCD gaming problems were with the older ones.

Re:I'm not buying...

[Pizzop]

I don't know what mouse you are talking about. I love the USB IntelliEye explorer mouse by m$. Really, most of the good gaming mice are usb...

Re:I'm not buying...

[Rude Turnip]

Laptops are for whatever you want to use them. I use my Dell Inspiron 8200 for gaming. As long as you get their "Ultrasharp" LCD's, then the images will be crisp and fluid. The keyboards on their larger systems are full-sized and I have no problem using mine. You do need to get a separate mouse, of course. Another good thing about the better Dell laptops is that the graphics chipset is upgradable via a daughterboard.

That said, I think $3,350 is way over priced. If I'm spending that kind of money, I'm going for Apple's Lapzilla.

Re:I'm not buying...

[g-doo]

Laptops aren't for gaming? Says who? Notebooks are rapidly catching up with desktops, and in the future, we could possibly have gaming notebooks that are both powerful and light. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that laptop keyboards aren't suitable for gaming. I don't know about your experiences on a laptop, but for me, it seems pretty similar to a keyboard on the desktop (aside from the lack of a number pad). A real USB mouse? As opposed to? Both notebook and desktop users use mice. I don't see what the argument here is.

Re:I'm not buying...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm happy with my Hitachi CML174SXW. There is minimal color distortion around the outer most edges if you are displaying a solid screen of certain colors. But for any normal use, it's not noticable. And the clarity you get from DVI for Desktop use is (to my eyes) night/day. As for gaming, well ... I don't know exactly what you would be looking at but I don't notice any difference between my LCD and my old 19" CRT as far as "ghosting", image smearing, or anything like that goes.

I don't think I could ever go back to owning a CRT. Big, bulky, heavy, hot, waste of energy, blurred displays (compared to LCD).

Re:I'm not buying...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just bought one of these here Sager 4080's. It's frickin' great.

But I'm not a gamer (well, not a PC gamer. Gamecube yes). I'm a 3D/CAD guy, an Architect, and a geek.

Anyone who needs serous moble power, and doesn't care about the limited hour-and-a-half battery life, should really look hard at the Sagers. They are the same as the Alienware & this new Dell, but are a lot cheaper.

Heck, most laptops are made by the same six companies anyhow and just rebranded prior to sell (even Dell's). I think only Apple & IBM actually make everything for thier own laptops, some others like Toshiba farm out some stuff, and people like Alienware and Dell farm it all out. The 'old' Area 51 moble was nothing more than a tested & overclocked Sager after all...

Re:I'm not buying...

[Anonymous Coward]

Beating Half Life single player doesn't make you a good gamer.

No serious, competitive gamer uses a touchpad. Your man would get 0wned in a real game vs real people.

Re:I'm not buying...

[homer_ca]

I agree. Not a good value for the money. I priced out the same config for their closest non-gaming laptop, the Inspiron 8600, and it's $2500 after mail in rebate. It has the same screen. The CPU is a Pentium M 1.7 instead of the P4 3.4 (only a little slower and much more practical for battery life). The video chip is a Radeon Mobility 9600 instead of the Radeon Mobility 9700. The Gig of RAM and 7200rpm hard drive are pricey options. You could save $500 by going to 512MB and 5400rpm. Still, if you had to have better gaming performance than the Pentium M 1.7 + Radeon 9600 and damn the battery life, the XPS is the only way to go from Dell. Not my money.

Re:I'm not buying...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Yeah, but having to carry around a mouse for gaming kind of defeats the purpose of a laptop. Portability + big clunky mouse with large cord just doesnt fit.

Re:I'm not buying...

[timeOday]

I'm a gamer, sure, but thats not what laptops are for. LCDs suck for gaming, as does laptop keyboards, and requiring a real usb mouse.

"That's not what laptops are for" is the conventional wisdom they're challenging with this machine. From the benchmarks I'd say there's some credibility to their attempt. And an upgradeable video card is a great feature for a gamer.

They don't state the response time of the screen, but LCDs have come a long way. Regardless, I'm sure it has a vga output just like every other laptop and desktop system out there, so if you still find the need to haul your CRT with you, go right ahead. I don't see the problem with a laptop keyboard for WASDX. As for the mouse, I trust it has a USB port!

Re:I'm not buying...

[mbourgon]

And FYI - the Sager is the same as the Alienware gaming laptop.

Re:I'm not buying...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

But then whats the point of using a laptop if you're hauling around a mouse and monitor? I suppose lanning would be easier, but it just doesnt feel like a laptop. Now, if someone case mods this laptop into a monitor with external jacks for headphones/mouse/keyboard, that might be kinda cool.

Re:Did Anyone See that Brief Test Story on Slashdo

[1019]

Well of course it's Offtopic, where else can I post it ;) Just thought it odd.

Carry on.

Would I buy it?

[heironymouscoward]

No. For entertainment, give me a cube PC and a projector. Just as portable, ten times the fun and cheaper.

Re:Would I buy it?

[morcheeba]

tell that to the bald guy in the airplane seat ahead of you while you project Quake on the back of his head. Oh wait, you're right -- it is ten times the fun!

Re:Would I buy it?

[Gherald]

Okay, cubes and projectors are all well and good, and probably cheaper, but "Just as portable" ? What are you smoking?

The displacement of a projector (even a mini) and a cube is like 5x that of Laptop. Plus you have to lug around a keyboard and several cables. And for the projector, you need a white wall or screen.

With a laptop, you only need a mouse+pad. Plus you can set it up anywhere easily in mere seconds.

Re:Would I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who mods up comments like this?

Re:Would I buy it?

[tgd]

"Hi, Miss Flight Attentant? Can you move my seat so I'm behind that bald gentleman up in row 7?"

Re:Would I buy it?

[Epistax]

Sadly in the society I live in, I can probably be arrested on charges of terrorism and sedition for playing a first person shooter on a plane.

Has anyone actually done this recently?

Re:Would I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's for carrying on the plane, you're not going to take a 9lb monster with you, are you? Too large, too heavy. There are _way_ better notebooks for entertainment in the air.

So this is luggable is for the ground: home, office, presentation. And quite frankly I'd prefer a projector at home and for presentations, and a normal pc/keyboard with a flat screen for the office.

Or perhaps you're thinking of the car?

Re:Would I buy it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot moderators, that's who.
I guess you're new here?

Re:Would I buy it?

[Gherald]

I'm thinking car, plane, coffee shop, class, work, and maybe bicycle if I can figure out some way to mount it ;)

I've owned heavy laptops in the past. It is not a big deal. Just get a good backpack or carrying strap.

That is a LOT of money!

[obotics]

For that much money, I don't really see how you could pass up an 17-inch Apple PowerBook G4. One of these babies could be optained for about 3000 USD. :-)

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[Brahmastra]

It's supposed to be a gaming machine.. and there are way more games for x86 PCs than MACs.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully it comes with a spellchecker as well.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[paranode]

You forget that this is intended for use with games.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking back at a Dell Invoice from January 2001, this new beast runs nearly the same price as the Insprion 8000 I bought when it was top-of-the-line -- That was the price you had to pay to get 1600x1200 on a laptop screen and some other decent components in an easy-to-carry 8.5lb package.

Sadly, it does a better job collecting dust now, as it's no superpower gaming rig with it's 800Mhz chip and four year old 32MB ATI graphics card.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[stratjakt]

The Dell: (from the TechTV article)

* Intel Pentium 4 3.4-GHz processor
* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 128MB DDR Memory
* 1GB DDR 400-MHz dual-channel memory
* 60GB 7,200-rpm hard drive
* Swappable DVD+RW optical drive
* 15.4-inch WUXGA display (1920x1200) with 16:10 aspect ratio
* DVI output
* Integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
* Gigabit Ethernet
* Subwoofer integrated into battery
* 4-pin IEEE 1394
* Interchangeable covers for a custom look

For $3350

The 17" Powerbook: (from Apple's store)

17-inch TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
1.33GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
ATI Mobility Radeon
9600 (64MB DDR)
Backlit Keyboard
Gigabit Ethernet
FireWire 400 & 800
AirPort Extreme built-in
DVI & S-Video out

For 3 grand.

The dell has a (much) faster video system, faster CPU, twice as much (faster) ram. The Apple has a bigger screen (frankly I find the 17" powerbooks too blurry for gaming, but thats just me and I haven't seen the Dell), and a slightly bigger HDD..

Of course, if you were to buy it for gaming, PC does have the edge so far as game selection. I know Apple's selection isnt as awful as say, linux, but noone can deny the PC library is much bigger.

The Apple is about 2 lbs lighter, but then the Dell has interchangable chassis plates to customize it to impress your friends.

Of course, one should realize that the Dell's price is likely to keep falling as competition increases and production costs drop. I've never seen Apple's prices drop (not counting second hand units).

To me, both are a waste of cash. But then, I hate laptops.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[DOCStoobie]

UMM lemme see, its a MAC, thats why I could pass it up ....

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[DavidLeblond]

Maybe pass it up to wait for a G5...

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[trentblase]

Hey, there are plenty of great games for the Mac! Breakout, superbreakout.... photoshop.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[trentblase]

never seen Apple's prices drop

Apple announces price drops twice a year at MacWorld. Not every product gets a reduction every MacWorld, but it happens fairly regularly. For instance, announcements about higher capacity iPods often preceed announcements about the old ones being cheaper.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[LoudMusic]

Because it doesn't play Half-Life?

Gaming Laptop ...

Gaming on a Mac

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[lambent]

For a second there, i though you said it came with a subwoofer .... holy shit, you did.

Subwoofer on a laptop? That's like putting nitrous boosters on a vespa.

And integrating it into a battery? Heaven help you if your battery dies, and you have to get it replaced. I'd hate to see the replacement charge for that unique oem component.

Last time I checked, intense vibrations were definateley not good for, well, anything.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[Anonymous Coward]

For that much money, I don't really see how you could pass up an 17-inch Apple PowerBook G4.

Easy. I want to play gameS. (Plural)

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[docbrown42]

Hey, there are plenty of great games for the Mac! Breakout, superbreakout.... photoshop.

Yeah, the end guy is hard.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[karnal]

"Last time I checked, intense vibrations were definateley not good for, well, anything."

My girlfriend would probably challenge you on that statement, showing you one of her "toys".

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[clbyjack81]

Here is the video he's referring to...

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[clbyjack81]

Stupid me! Here's

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[MalleusEBHC]

You know, for the 95% of us who don't play games 10 hours a day and actually use our computers for other purposes, there are plenty of games for the Mac. Sure you don't have Half-Life, but if you can get burned out on Raven Shield, Warcraft 3, UT2k3/UT2k4, Jedi Academy, etc., I think you need to take a breather every once in a while.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[Lord_Dweomer]

I was waiting for someone to bring this up. While I'm a PC fan (I'm a gamer), Apple does have the edge here. Seriously, for those of you with decent gaming setups, do you remember the last time you played a game on a 15" monitor? I don't see why the hell they couldn't just make it a 17" machine. I understand it would way a tad more, and be a bit more expensive, but look at who uses this. They're obviously willing to carry a 9 lb. laptop, whats a few more ounces. And if this thing already goes for a cool $3350, do you really think most of the people who can afford to drop this money on a gaming laptop really care about a price difference of a couple hundred dollars? No, of course they wouldn't. So I say to Dell, if you really wanted to put out a no holds barred high end gaming laptop, you shouldn't have skimped on monitor size. Pretty graphics aren't as pretty when they're super small.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[delus10n0]

I love that Switch parody ad. Fricken hilarious, and so true.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[Anonymous Coward]

well, doofus, as this guy is looking specifically for a gaming laptop, not a laptop for every day use, then it's safe to assume he may well be one of the 5% who really gets into his games. So he wants a system that will get him the largest library of games. Which isn't a Mac. Macs are fine and good for normal everyday use, but they are just not where it's at for real gaming.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[fafaforza]

And with UNIX underneath the GUI, you can add to that library the classic and venerabe nethack.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I want to know what you are "playing"/editing.

Geesh. My mind needs numbing now.

Re:That is a LOT of money!

[steeviant]

Well I'd certainly pass up the powerbook if I was planning to play games on it. This system would offer superior performance for games than anything that Apple are offering at the moment.

But since I don't plan to play many games on my laptop, I'll keep using my powerbook, and take pleasure in the fact that I saved lugging around those few extra pounds, and people who buy these things can feel smug about how many more frames per second they can't see on their Dell.

Whatever floats your boat, I say.

Dude...

[after]

You've got a total waste of money. This is slashdot, who here actually -baugh- their computer as one whole?

What Windows does it have? Windows XP Pro, Home, or Open?

Re:Dude...

[Cyno01]

Desktops... you have a point. Its easy and cost effective enough to build your own desktop, unless you dont have a lot of free time and want something that just works. But do you know anyone whos built their own laptop?

*sigh* i shouldn't feed the trolls...

Re:Dude...

[Moofie]

I've never "baugh" anything at all.

The person who told you that spelling doesn't matter was wrong.

Re:Dude...

[glpierce]

"Its easy and cost effective enough to build your own desktop, unless you dont have a lot of free time..." (Emphasis added)

A lot of free time? If you know what you want, it takes almost no time at all. Order the components from a single, reliable online source to avoid headaches, and sit back and wait for the packages in the mail. It shouldn't take more than one night to put it together, install applications, replace documents, and configure everything properly.

Re:Dude...

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to picking it up and spending maybe half an hour driving? That's a large time difference to someone with a stressful job who just wants to relax at home - unless of course you find assembling PCs with your free time relaxing (hint: not everyone does).

Re:Dude...

[glpierce]

Actually, your numbers aren't equivalent. I was including installation of applications (how many Compaq's come with Firefox?), replacement of documents, and configuration. Build time shouldn't exceed an hour unless you've bought incompatible or poorly-made components. You should be able throw it together in half of that if you have any experience, which would make installation of the OS (assuming you're using what the vendor sells pre-installed) and drivers the only real time difference.

Personally, I enjoy the sense of accomplishment - knowing that I built my machine and saved a few hundred bucks doing so is quite nice.

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Anonymous Coward]

is $3350 cheaper than the $1599, $1999, or $2999 powerbook? Or the $1099 iBook G4? Oh yeah, I forgot it comes with a pentium, so I guess it's cheaper than all of them.

Size _doesn't_ matter.

[normal_guy]

When pricing laptops, the executive types always pick the smallest size. You wouldn't believe the amount of thought that went into extra power vs. 8 extra OUNCES. The younger game-playing employees always price out the laptops with the most power, knowing that an extra few pounds means _nothing_ when you're rolling it down the concourse. To me, it's all about desktop replacement.

Re:Size _doesn't_ matter.

[All Names Have Been]

...when you're rolling it down the concourse.

The fact that you've got to roll the damn "laptop" down the concourse instead of carrying doesn't make it a desktop replacement; it makes it a fucking expensive desktop with inferior parts.

Re:Size _doesn't_ matter.

[normal_guy]

...it makes it a fucking expensive desktop with inferior parts.

Well, you aren't very well going to keep it on your lap while walking down the concourse. With a desktop you're bringing your screen, keyboard/mouse, and speakers. Modern laptops aren't the pieces of shit you're used to, and it's all contained in a nifty package.

Re:Size _doesn't_ matter.

[nightsweat]

We stopped a lot of bitching by weighing the bags the whiners were using and replacing them with lightweight bags with almost no storage space beyond the laptop itself.

Complaints stopped, and the execs had to carry more bags and more total weight to bring all the crap they brought before.

Man, are people annoying.

Re:Size _doesn't_ matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree... I got a Toshiba Satellite 2200.... 'multimedia luxury edition'.. 1600x1200 with nvidia 5600 64 meg video...and a dvd burner..wtih remote control for dvd:) Great game machine...well for the games I play...and it is 2.2 Ghz P4... my home machine is 800 Mhz...so this thing is sweet.... my boss has the T1... go figure. (although my CTO is getting the P30 widescreen.. 3.2Ghz) ..we're strictly Toshiba here.. Dell sux.

Re:Size _doesn't_ matter.

[PPGMD]

knowing that an extra few pounds means _nothing_ when you're rolling it down the concourse.

Unless of course you travel on terrain where you can't roll a laptop bag, then suddenly size makes a difference.

I had a Dell Inspirion 8100, fantastic computer but just too damn big unless you can roll it around constantly.

I have since purchased an imported Toshiba 12.1" mini-laptop that does everything that my Dell did (except play 3D games) and more (DVD-RW) for about the same cost. At a much lower weight that doesn't break my back.

Re:Size _doesn't_ matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's crazy. If you ever have to carry it (and I mean carry it, not roll it) the difference between 7 lbs and 3 lbs is huge. I went on one trip with a 2.9 lb Vaio (in its own shoulder bag) and it was amazing, like carrying nothing, effortless.

Maybe it's different if you weigh 250 lbs yourself and enjoy weightlifting.

LCDs are fine for gaming

[ikewillis]

Check out the Dell 2001FP. With a 16ms response, it's more than adequate for gaming.

Re:LCDs are fine for gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

1000/16=62.5fps, not adequate. Don't most people use 72 nowadays? Most people I know do.

ouchy

[cubyrop]

at that price point it had better come with a firewire vagina.

Re:ouchy

[DirtyJ]

firewire vagina

As long as it isn't scsi, I guess it would be ok.

Re:ouchy

[andih8u]

something about fire, wire, and vagina all in the same sentence brings up terrible mental images.

Re:ouchy

[Boing]

firewire vagina

And the "Painfullest-sounding Term Ever Invented" award goes to...

Re:ouchy

[WarDancer]

I'm not so sure, the firewire port is just way too tight for my taste :)

Re:ouchy

[rune2]

at that price point it had better come with a firewire vagina.

Talk about being hot pluggable!

Re:ouchy

[webslacker]

You guys are so nasty, making scuzzy comments about seedy slots.

Re:ouchy

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Let's not be picky. Even a 300 baud serial vagina isn't to be sniffed at.

Re:ouchy

[FurryFeet]

Wow, I guess that tells us a lot more about the size of your dick than we wanted to know.
I wouldn't settle por anything less than a 3.5" bay vagina...

Re:ouchy

[Mikey-San]

I wouldn't sniff that SCSI vagina that the parent was talking about, either.

Re:ouchy

[JoshWurzel]

ex girlfriend?

I'm sure it's going to be asked

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

if it hasn't already by the time this question is posed, but:

What kind of Real World battery life would you get?

And I agree gaming on a laptop blows goats, squishy keyboard feel, odd layouts and (at least up to this point) iffy graphics cards put them firmly in the MAME, not DOOM3, category.

Re:I'm sure it's going to be asked

[CFTM]

I read an article from PC-World (I'm not sure where the slashdot article pointed because I had already read a story on it) and they said it gets an hour to an hour and a half, aka it's worthless.

Re:I'm sure it's going to be asked

[El]

And I agree gaming on a laptop blows goats, squishy keyboard feel, odd layouts So attach a good USB keyboard and mouse.

Re:I'm sure it's going to be asked

[onyxruby]

Hate to tell you this, but most people with laptops don't run them on battery power that often. Even on airplanes many seats come with power plugs for laptops. If you have a laptop it just means that your looking for a portable computer. In fact some laptops don't even come with batteries. This laptop is not marketed at somebody concerned with battery life any more than a full size truck is marketed for fuel economy. If someone wants that they'll just get one of dell's many other laptops that are lightweight and capable of good battery time. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

Re:I'm sure it's going to be asked

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the specs? This machine is a beast. It looks like it could run nearly any currently released game. Don't like the keyboard? Use a USB one. 12 cell lithium ion battery would last a long time with the right energy saving settings.

I'd rather have a powerbook for less money, but this laptop would definitely scream.

Re:I'm sure it's going to be asked

[Carnildo]

It's an apples to oranges comparison.

Judging from the comments on the article, it's more of an Apples to Dells comparison.

Re:I'm sure it's going to be asked

[Photon Ghoul]

I've got a Sager (they compete with Alienware in the "custom" power laptop market) with a 3.2ghz P4 and ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility. The thing is definitely a desktop replacement when it comes to games - it's the fastest machine I've ever owned.

But your question about battery life is a very important one. Maximum life doing minimal activities (firefox, ssh, e-mail) or a lightweight game (non-3d) it only lasts about 20-30 minutes on the battery.

Now... most of the time when I take my laptop with me, I'm not running on battery but someone else's plug so it's no big deal really.

Re:I'm sure it's going to be asked

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

Of course, the moment you start attaching external devices to a laptop, you lose the whole idea of "portable" and you might as well go for a Shuttle XPC instead

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but add some memory to that since the powerbook only ships with 512. The Dell has a 60G 7200rpm hd compared to the powerbooks 80G 4200rpm as well. I'd say they're pretty comparable.

Except for SPEED BABY! Wooooooooooo!

Mmm....

[foxtrot]

WUXGA+ screen, which is 1920x1200 pixels.

What I want to know is, why is it you can buy a laptop with that flat panel installed, but you can't buy an LCD monitor for your desktop PC that can do that?

-JDF

Re:Mmm....

[Moofie]

I wonder who's responsible for these stupid screen resolution acronyms.

"Wicked Ultra X-Treme Graphics Array"...wow. How l33t.

Re:Mmm....

[GeckoX]

I've wondered the exact same thing!
I recently purchased 2 samsung SyncMaster 173T 17" monitors, which are 1280x1024, which is good, but I was _really_ looking for something around 1600x1280.
They exist, but really for 21" and greater, and really break the bank.

Shortly thereafter we had a coop student start here and he had a dell laptop that did 1920x1200, and I was like WTF? I really don't get it...kicks ass over my samsungs for the most part. (Viewing angle is not as good, brightness and contrast not quite as good, but for a freaking LAPTOP?)

No, I don't get it at all.

Re:Mmm....

[funny-jack]

"Wicked Ultra X-Treme Graphics Array"...wow. How l33t.

WUXGA = Wide-Ultra Extended Graphics Array

Re:Mmm....

[SlashdotLemming]

WUXGA+ screen, which is 1920x1200 pixels.

Bought one of those as a demo laptop. Problem is, no-one over 40 can read the screen. And those are the people with the money!!
whoops

Re:Mmm....

[rmarll]

It's a poor match to boot.

That many pixels in that little space is going to be difficult to use "native" when gaming. Add to that even a mobile 9700 will have trouble driving it at a reasonable frame rate with many modern games.

Scaling will be all kinds of ugly if you run at a lower resolution, not considering the oddball dimentional ratio.

It's a nice machine, but for myself (and I think a lot of others), I'll wait for a version with a smaller screen, and a smaller price.

Re:Mmm....

[LoudMusic]

WUXGA+ screen, which is 1920x1200 pixels.

What I want to know is, why is it you can buy a laptop with that flat panel installed, but you can't buy an LCD monitor for your desktop PC that can do that?

I've been asking the same damn question ever since Dell started using the 1600 x 1200 15" displays. What's up with that? And at that point why can't they put three of them together and make it 3600 x 1600? That'd be one hell of a display!

Re:Mmm....

[the gnat]

That many pixels in that little space is going to be difficult to use "native" when gaming. Add to that even a mobile 9700 will have trouble driving it at a reasonable frame rate with many modern games.

Right, it just doesn't make sense at all. I have a Gateway M500; most of the time I just run Linux and use it for programming and 3d scientific apps. It's just a GeForce 4 Go 420, but that's usually fine for the actual work I do. The screen is the same format as the 15" powerbook; took a little tweaking to work under Linux, but now it's fine.

On either Windows or Linux, UT 2003 is playable if you go down to 800x600 resolution. MOHAA is great at 1024x768, and would work at higher resolution if the screen supported it. In either case, I'm running it at reduced size and a different aspect ratio. I've set the BIOS not to expand the screen, which means the ratio is correct but there's a lot of black space. On the Dell, the highest it would possibly support is 1600x1200, leaving large bars on the sides. But many games won't actually go that high. So you could run MOHAA at 1280x1024 - even larger bars on both sides and top/bottom. What's the point?

I know plenty of people who could use a laptop like this; they're all protein crystallographers. I can't imagine a gamer who would buy one of these. For the same amount of money, you could buy both a real PC that was just as fast (or better) and a large monitor, and still have enough left over for a decent laptop with a GF FX Go or Radeon 9x00 and a more normal screen. Heck, a friend of mine just bought an Inspiron 5150 for well under $2000, and it's not much slower than this beast.

Re:Mmm....

[AssClown2520]

Yeah, I've got a 1920x1200 screen and scaling is a bit of an issue on these, but not as much as you may think. There is some proportional issues, but they are mainly due to being accustomed to seeing the same game in the more standard screen sizes.

The clarity and the speed of the laptop display is IMO amazing.

Re:Mmm....

[Elwood P Dowd]

But if you're lucky, when you're under 40 sometimes you get to spend the bosses money.

Re:Mmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen those laptops with 15" screens that do insane resolutions like that. Why would you want that though? I'm still young and I have perfect vision but I think 1280x1024 on my 17" LCD is about as tiny as I can take. I find myself zooming in on web pages all the time just so I can read them.

I can't even imagine trying to read a laptop screen at 1600x1200 or more. And if you don't use the native resolution, you get all that LCD interpolation funkiness.

Re:Mmm....

[Junior J. Junior III]

Apple's 23" cinemadisplay will do 1920x1200.

Re:Mmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell names these technologies? What ever happened to descriptive acronynms that were useful? If I saw WUXGA+ listed in the specs I would have no freakin idea what it was.

Re:Mmm....

[thehink]

look for widescreen LCDs, or 16:9...

for instance:
Samsung 172W

granted it won't do 1920x1200, but its the right AR, at 1280x768...

Re:Mmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he has even more "perfect" vision. Maybe he sits closer to the screen. Maybe there are advantages to higher resolution even if individual pixels aren't easily visible. Maybe he's dumb and likes to waste money on resolution bragging rights but doesn't have room for a 23" monitor.

Re:Mmm....

[Splendid Turd]

Easy solution (Windows anything):

Display Properties > Settings > Advanced > General...

Change the DPI setting to 120 or higher.

Saw the notebook today and it was using a higher DPI setting. (not the default 90dpi).

I see too many LCD users lowering the resolution in order to make the text larger. Artifacts and other garbage are the usual result.

Use the LCD's native resolution, with 32-bit color, and crank up the DPI setting until your eyes are happy.

BTW: greater than 1080P resolution on a notebook...niiice.

Re:Mmm....

[prockcore]

Saw the notebook today and it was using a higher DPI setting. (not the default 90dpi).

This is one thing that Ximian Gnome does right that no other OS seems to do. It sets your DPI to the correct value. It knows what monitor you have hooked up, it knows what resolution you're at.. therefore it knows what the DPI is.

Thus, fonts never look too small, regardless of the resolution. I work at a newspaper, so there's plenty of pica poles around. You literally can hold a pica pole up to the screen and verify that the 12pt font being drawn really is 12 pts.

Re:Mmm....

[Cecil]

WUXGA = Should be banned, and the marketing executive responsible should be shot.

They managed to come up with a term even more meaningless to the average computer buyer than the number of pixels, while also being completely meaningless to most geeks. Hooray, everyone wins!

I absolutely despise that method of naming resolutions. I keep praying that it will die, and quickly. But it never seems to.

Re:Mmm....

[SlashdotLemming]

Change the DPI setting to 120 or higher.

Windows can't handle that well. It wacks out some of the fonts. The text in some of the standard dialog boxes don't fit into the window. IE looks weird too.

Re:Mmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

People say this to me, but then I pull out the local newspaper with a 9 pt article. Voila! They can magically read it, despite it being printed on shitty newsprint.

Why can't they read text that is EXACTLY the same size on the laptop? Because *they aren't used to it*, and, like most people, are naturally resistant to change.

wow.

[fireduck]

that's awfully expensive... i was recently pricing a new computer for my brother and for a semi-decent gaming rig (2400+ athlon, nforce2 mobo), the price was around $800. this is 4 times that amount! all for the convenience of portability?

i feel bad looking back at the $2000 I spent on my gaming rig that now is worth $1000...

anyone know how fast can one build a mini-atx gaming rig and for what price? I presume the biggest limitation is heat: processor + vid card in a small space is not ideal. any small form factor cases with lots of fans?

Re:wow.

[plover]

anyone know how fast can one build a mini-atx gaming rig

I can build one in about two hours.

[ *RIMSHOT* ]

Thank you, I'll be here through Sunday. Tip your servers, they work hard for you...

Re:wow.

[Cyno01]

Never look back on computer hardware you bought. I'm working on a killer gaming/multimedia rig to last me through college. Already the prices i got a week ago are down by as much as $5 on some parts(video card).

Re:wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out http://www.sfftech.com and peruse the Shuttle forums for more info.

Personally I just put together a shuttle unit with a 3.2 P4, 74GB WD Raptor HD, Radeon 9800, Plextor 708a, 1 GB Mushkin RAM etc. etc. and it can game just fine with low noise and acceptable heat. (Just make sure you get one with the newer 250w PSU).

With some of the older model Shuttles people had to rig their kit so that they could turn the power on for their vid card after powering up the system because simultaneously it'd cause their system to just shut itself down.

Re:wow.

[plover]

Totally off topic, but I followed your link to your rig. Very nice. You might want to consider a Zalman GPU cooler to go with that Radeon (and add the optional fan.) I've got those cards in both of my machines, and they run hot! I cut holes in the sides of the cases and added 80mm fans pointed straight at the card edges. I wish I'd have known about that heatsink earlier, and I might still add them. (Given the amount of heat coming off those Athlons makes me wonder if I shouldn't just watercool the damn things.)

My problem now is my desk doesn't have enough airflow around my case... :-(

Re:wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never look back on computer hardware you bought.

I disagree. I use to spend top dollar, or near top dollar on hardware justifying it as the cost of my hobby. But *in* looking back - I came to realize how much money I was pissing away on the latest and greatest stuff. So I kicked back a few notches and started looking for the best value. I still buy quality hardware, but it doesn't have to be the latest $500 video card, or the newest $400 CPU.

Watch how fast the prices on those go down and it will (it should) make you sick to your stomach. I spent roughly $95 - $100 on my last CPU back in May of 2003. Athlon XP2500+ And today it is only marginally less. About $85 last time I looked. (Which is a good indicator that I didn't over pay.) Whereas the Athlon XP3200+ which cost $459 last May now costs (about) $210. I could give away my XP2500 to someone for nothing, buy the XP3200 now and still be saving money.

So I think you should definitely look at your old hardware purchases and evulate whether or not that $500 video card really gave you $500 worth of gaming fun compared to the $180 card you could have bought that would have given you 2 or 3 fewer frames per second.

Re:wow.

[Cyno01]

The case i'm ordering has excelent airflow, 92mm fan up front, 120mm in back. Should cool the card pretty well.

Im NOT buying

[t0ny]

IMO, buying a laptop is the height of stupidity. Im not saying Ive never had one: in fact, Ive had at least ten of them.

But, to quote one of my former bosses, I do not pay for disposable technology. I only have a laptop if the place I work for buys one for me. If I need appliction or document portability, I own a 256mb USB key. Much lighter, and cheaper, than a laptop.

I guess stuff like this laptop is nice if you have more money than you know what to do with, but for a regular working guy (even in tech), thats a pretty big, and non-justifyable expense.

Having said that, its still pretty fucking cool.

Re:Im NOT buying

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, desktop PCs aren't disposable technology. So how does UT work on that 386 you're using?

Re:Im NOT buying

[Anonymous Coward]

But when you want to view p0rn from your bed, the damn desktop weighs too much, so you have to buy a laptop.

Re:Im NOT buying

[Alan Shutko]

If you don't pay for disposable technology, what computer do you buy? They're all worthless after a while. Sure, you can keep replacing components, but after a while, you've replaced everything anyway. What's the difference?

I've had my laptop for over three years now, and plan on getting at least another year out of it. And it means that I can do stuff anywhere in my 3-story house I want to. I can bring it on the road to get programming in when my wife is driving. I can watch DVDs in hotel rooms. It's got a lot of uses, but the fact that I'm not tied to a specific location at home is the reason I have it.

(Now, I wouldn't buy this laptop... Inspirons have low build quality, and I don't want a 9 lb luggable. But that's no indictment against other laptops.)

Re:Im NOT buying

[jwsd]

Many tech managers will disagree with you. I wouldn't call them stupid as they command higher salary by doing less useful work. But you may argue they are not regular because they are pointy-headed...

Re:Im NOT buying

[Cyno01]

Depends what you use it for. Gaming lapto... i dont know if its worth $1k more to not have to lug your tower to lan parties, but i have a tiny cheap ($200) laptop i got used that i use with wireless on the couch for browsing, IMing and e-mail while watching tv. Not everyone wants a super expensive desktop replacement for a laptop.

Re:Im NOT buying

[kill-hup]

IMO, buying a laptop is the height of stupidity.

...unless you want to be mobile. My wife and I each have newer Thinkpads and love the convenience of being able to work anywhere. Even in our own home, it's nice to take your work outside on the deck or even into another room. Wireless networking and good batteries let you cut the cables and get even further from the office/desk.

That said, I can't see spending over $3k for a portable gaming machine. That's what the WinXP desktop is for!

Re:Im NOT buying

[egomaniac]

IMO, buying a laptop is the height of stupidity.

Yeah, my desktop w/ 19" monitor works great when I'm on the plane. Sure, I get a few funny looks from the flight crew, but I can't understand why anybody would bother with a laptop when desktops are so much cheaper.

It's also really cool using a desktop while in the john.

Re:Im NOT buying

[t0ny]

As I said, HAVING a laptop isnt stupid. But BUYING one, for me, is. As always, YMMV, but I have never had to purchase one, they have always been purchased for me.

Re:Im NOT buying

[petabyte]

I have 3 desktops and a laptop. One desktop I built, one I pulled out of the trash (its actually a fairly decent machine) and the laptop I bought refurbed for 400 dollars. Its a 366 pentium 2 that I'm typing this on ... outside, sitting next to the pond on 802.11b.

When I need power I'll sit at my desk with the athlon but sometimes its nice to sit outside and work.

Re:Im NOT buying

[AKnightCowboy]

As I said, HAVING a laptop isnt stupid. But BUYING one, for me, is. As always, YMMV, but I have never had to purchase one, they have always been purchased for me.

There's nothing wrong with BUYING a laptop. My PIII-650 Dell Inspiron I bought in 1999 still works just dandy. In fact, I just bought a new battery for it so I could use it unplugged from the AC outlet again. It didn't suddenly become obsolete because it's 4 or 5 years old. It still runs Windows 2000 fine, Internet browsing is speedy over the ancient D-Link 802.11b card I bought years ago, the 20GB hard drive is more than sufficient for all my apps, and 256MB of RAM is enough to keep me from swapping all the time.

What is so obsolete about it that I should regret paying $1800 I've gotten almost 5 years of good service out of it and I imagine I'll get another 5 years since it's more than fast enough for e-mail and web browsing.. it's not like e-mail will suddenly require a 3GHz P4 next year or Mozilla will suddenly require an Athlon 64 3400+ to run sufficiently.

Re:Im NOT buying

[g-doo]

IMO, buying a laptop is the height of stupidity

Speak for yourself. Are you going to haul your desktop to cafes and coffee shops and airports to take advantage of the skyrocketing number of WiFi hotspots?

Or what about bringing a computer to someone's house for troubleshooting problems? Or for one-on-one gaming with a crossover cable?

Re:Im NOT buying

[MakoStorm]

"IMO, buying a laptop is the height of stupidity"

I am not a big fan of laptops but they do have their place.

In the field, measurements, data collection and so forth, where sometimes power outlets and mobility and small size can be an advantage. Example, between large industrial machines, where there is no room for a desktop system and hardware, or outdoors taking measurements and tests, where there is no power.

Also, using a serial port to configure a new Cisco device is a lot easier with a laptop in a computer room then using anything else.

In apartments and dorms: Space is limited, and my wife has thankfully let me have my computer desk with my desktop, and also she has let me put my Mandrake machine under one of the end tables with a monitor on top with a mouse and keyboard. Space is pretty limited here, and having a laptop to do what we want would be nice, I would really enjoy not having the mandrake machine under the end-table or having 1/3 of my living room being taken up with my computer desk.

But, I don't have money, I do have however is two tower computers that run..........

Anyhew,

Like I said, laptops have their (expensive) place.

Re:Im NOT buying

[Anonymous Coward]

As a high powered attorney, the company gives me a BMW. Therefore buying a BMW would be stupid for me. Therefore, anyone who buys a BMW is really stupid! After all, I get one for free!
Work on your logic assrod.

Re:Im NOT buying

[t0ny]

Even now, Frodo and Sam are fighting their way through Mordor to throw your "One True Opinion" into the fiery maw of Mount Doom.

Re:Im NOT buying

[t0ny]

Please read the parent post better. To wit-

IMO...
...Im not saying Ive never had one: in fact, Ive had at least ten of them.
...I only have a laptop if the place I work for buys one for me.
...thats a pretty big, and non-justifyable expense.

I never said laptops are useless. I only said that I have never found them useful enough to actaully spend my own money on.

Especially, given the situation where employers will purchase them for me.

IMO- In My Opinion

My statement was never expresses as anything other than my opinion.

Re:Im NOT buying

[Anonymous Coward]

Therefore, anyone who buys a BMW is really stupid! After all, I get one for free!
Work on your logic assrod. Your own logic could use some work. He never said anybody was stupid for buying a laptop.

Feel free to quote where he said that, ass-fucked.

Re:Im NOT buying

[pipingguy]

It's also really cool using a desktop while in the john.

While taking a core dump?

Re:Im NOT buying

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not pay for disposable technology.

So you don't buy anything then? It's all disposable you jack tard. Digital cameras, stereo equipment, televisions, beta/vhs/dvd players, printers, cars, microwaves, cell phones, portable music players, record/8-track/cassette/cd players, !COMPUTERS! ...

Re:Im NOT buying

[blixel]

IMO, buying a laptop is the height of stupidity.

I don't know about that. Have you ever tried climbing a latter with a Desktop computer in your backpack? Then unpacking it all, setting it up ... and then quickly packing it all back up and running like hell when building security finds you and realizes you aren't authorized to be on the premises?

Re:Im NOT buying

[MakoStorm]

I see this is your opinion, but yet, I find you made generalizations and your point is rather fuzzy.

I am glad your workplaces have bought you laptops, I am sure you must be proud.
However laptops are expensive computers because of the portability. This one here is a rather high price but it is a gaming machine, or one could use it as a portable engineering computer for applications such as AutoCad or maybe Pro/E.
for a traveling engineer that might be the ticket they need.

I am sure you wouldn't buy a laptop with your own money; I wouldn't either at the current time. But times change, and you might indeed have a reason later.

Just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's a waste of money.

Re:Im NOT buying

[iotaborg]

If you really wanted to get serious, you should take tips from this guy; I'll take this one any day :)

Re:Im NOT buying

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, how about:

"IMO, buying a laptop is the height of stupidity."

I've got to say, that's pretty much the same as saying that someone is stupid for buying a laptop.

Re:Im NOT buying

[Anonymous Coward]

"IMO, buying a laptop is the height of stupidity."

I think it was right about there ^^^^^^

Re:Im NOT buying

[nyseal]

I always thought that the point of being at home was to be away from work. If you're doing that much work away from your place of employment than you're either underpaid, overpaid....or a moron. My apologies if you're self-employed. BTW....WinXP is NOT a good gaming platform; Win98 was and still is much better.

Re:Im NOT buying

[MadAnthony02]

I need appliction or document portability, I own a 256mb USB key. Much lighter, and cheaper, than a laptop.

Which is nice in theory, but not always practical. You can't always find a computer you can plug into - many public terminals are so locked down that you can't plug a USB key in because it will look for a driver. Or maybe the only computer available is one that is too slow, lacks an application you need, ect.

I have a Powerbook as well as a desktop PC. While I use the desktop more, it's nice being able to take the Powerbook with me when I go on trips, visit the parents, ect and have a computer I like with everything I need on it.

Re:Im NOT buying

[t0ny]

I am glad your workplaces have bought you laptops, I am sure you must be proud.

Nothing really to be proud of, its not like I cured cancer or anything.

However laptops are expensive computers because of the portability

They sure are. Thats why I wont buy one.

Just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's a waste of money.

I realize that. But until such a time comes, which I cant envision presently, I dont see any reason to purchase one.

I waste enough money keeping my desktop up to speed, and there are always other expenses like tech books, trying to get adequate furniture, fixing my vehicle, etc.

maybe i should RTFA but...

[Anonymous Coward]

if this is really for gaming, what kind of graphics capability does it have? this more than cpu power is what games are looking for. think about it, if youre going to be gaming for a period of time, you'll probably have to plug it in, so that battery isnt really an issue, sound? cmon most of us use headphones. so why do they advertise a gaming laptopm but not tell us hwat the graphics card is?

choice of processors

[Gherald]

I would buy if it was an A64. I am looking for something to run 64bit Gentoo... no good options right now, other than Voodoo, and they take like 2 months to ship.

High ghz P4s just aren't interesting anymore (I have a 2.6 P4 OCed to 3.2 and it is quite boring actually)

Re:choice of processors

[petabyte]

I'm looking at one of these:

http://www.emachines.com/products/products.html?pr od=eMachines_M6807

64-bit and plenty fast though the reviews complain of weight and battery life but I guess that is to be expected.

Re:choice of processors

[Gherald]

Yeah, I've kept tabs on the M6807.

It's largest flaw is only 64megs of video ram. That was the problem with the original Voodoo Envy M855 as well, though they fixed that quick.

Who the hell wants the latest in greatest in processors if the video ram size was standard four years ago?

Well, Emachines was the first to market. Hopefully other brands will follow suit in the near future.

Re:choice of processors

[acidrain69]

There used to be a laptop with an Alpha chip. I've seen pictures of it.

I have an alpha for my server, it's very geeky. It handles my network, file sharing, ICE casting, and some light game server duties (battle net) but other than that I find it a little limited. Can't run wine. Or maybe it can, but I havent' setup em86. Runs bochs, but not very fast. Can't run most media stuff like Xine or MPlayer that requires x86 for half the codecs.

I just bought an Alienware Area-51m

[TerraFORM]

..and I'm very happy with it. P4 3.2GHz desktop proc, 1 GB PC 3200 RAM, 128 MB ATI 9600 Pro, 60 GB 7200RPM HDD, 16.1" XUGA TFT, XP Professional. I bought it because I like to GAME. Sure, powerbooks are great and are beasts in their own right, but very few current OL games are supported and that is the ONLY reason I didn't go Mac. Alienware is certainly expensive, but you get what you pay for. They really know how to engineer their systems for optimal cooling. Dell realizes Alienware's success (witness AW is on Forbes' list of the fastest growing businesses this year) and is entering the foray. Methinks that they'll do well initially, but the quality that gaming systems require may or may not be met through Dell's uber-assembly line format.

Re:I just bought an Alienware Area-51m

[maxbang]

why didn't you build one? who cares about what place they have on what stupid business list? gaming's all about the building, tweaking, and eventually upgrading for screaming speed, not pre built crap. that's why they started the upgradeable mobile gpus with these suckers, to offer at least a limited degree of diy for early adopters, of whom gamers are a considerable subset.

Re:I just bought an Alienware Area-51m

[paulm]

I bought an alienware 3 yrs ago. I don't remember the model name, but it was the best system they had at the time. Two of my friends also bought the same system.

I have to say that alienware is one of the worst companies I have ever had the misfortune to be a customer of. EVERYTHING on that system broke multiple times (Poor ESD control in their mfcting?). But beyond that - they absolutely hands down have the worst support of all time in the whole universe. I think they kept changing who they outsource their support to, so stuff would be in mid fix, and then some whole new set of clowns would get involved.

These were all big things, like (multiple) motherboards burning out, cpus dying, video cards dying, everthing.

Last year I bought a Dell, and have had 0 issues.

I sincerely hope you are happy with your system and won't have problems, if you do start having issues, make sure you write down exectly who you talked to in support, and how you got to them (you will usually be bounced all over the place, and won't end up in the same place twice). If they do wind up shipping you new motherboard and cpu, make sure you take pictures of what you ship back to them. On one occasion their own tech shipped a motherboard/cpu back to them in the motherboard box. They claimed that there was no CPU when it arrived, and wound up charging me for it (never mind that their own tech packed it and shipped it, and declared it dead before it left).

Good luck.

To everybody else - don't buy aw. They suck.

Re:I just bought an Alienware Area-51m

[MadAnthony02]

I noticed that the current alienware laptops look different - I don't know if they are from a new supplier now or just redesigned - but the earlier Alienware laptops were just rebadged clevos. Identical laptops were available under the Sager brand for considerably less - but without the hype or bright colors.

Seriously... what's the point?

[Dragoon412]

With the speed that hardware becomes outdated and unsuitable for gaming, coupled with the inability to upgrade anything terribly performance-enhancing on a laptop, why on earth would anyone spend the money on a machine like this?

For literally a little over half the cost you could custom-build a desktop gaming monster machine; 10k RPM drives in RAID-0 with an Athlon64, more RAM than you know what to do with, and a video card that outpowers that entire damned notebook.

Dell seems to be aiming at a really small target market with this machine: people who are serious gamers but also need to travel and also have so much money that they can piss it away on a laptop that's already underpowered by the day's gaming standards, and can't be given any meaningful upgrades in the future.

And to top it off, it weighs a ton, probably has the heat issues even low-performance laptops do, and it doesn't even look as nice as the Alienware competition.

Really... I just don't get it.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[TerraFORM]

Great selling point for Alienware is the ability to upgrade the GPU, which is arguably the one thing that is most needed when upgrading a laptop.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA; you can replace the video card on the DELL.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[theLOUDroom]

I'd love one.

I'm an electrical engineer, and need to do some pretty resource intensive simulatons. I also work with 11x17 sized drawings.

Currently I have a laptop, but the performance is somewhat lacking. Even so, there's no way I'd give it up and switch to a desktop.
At the end of the day, I hit a button, pull a lever and take all my work home. This morning, I spent the first four hours working at home via the company's VPN.

With my laptop and a VPN connection, putting in a 60 hour week on a critical project no longer means that I have to spend 60 away from home.

I couldn't give a rats ass about the weight or battery life of my laptop. I use it on my desk at home and my desk at work.

If someone was willing to double the width and weight of my laptop in excange for twice the sceen area and processing power, I'd go for it in a heartbeat.

And as for price, it's not that big of a deal when you consider the cost of my time waiting for a simulation to finish or the price of the software that I actually run on the laptop.

When my laptop is obsolete, they can pass it on to someone in finance, shipping, or wherever.

Right now, I'm looking at an HP ZD7000 series "notebook." Sure they're huge, but that mean they actually have a decent sized keyboard, and a nice big display. As long as I can carry it with one hand, it's portable enough for me.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell Inspiron laptops have upgradeable video cards.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this laptop for your needs.

Also check out www.resellerratings.com for background on the vendor.

Notebook info to save you money

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently I have a laptop, but the performance is somewhat lacking. Even so, there's no way I'd give it up and switch to a desktop. At the end of the day, I hit a button, pull a lever and take all my work home. This morning, I spent the first four hours working at home via the company's VPN.
[...] I couldn't give a rats ass about the weight or battery life of my laptop. I use it on my desk at home and my desk at work.

Sorry, but you didn't make clear at all why you wouldn't use desktops, one at work and one at home. You can always keep your work on an external FW/USB2 HD and take that to work. Unless you're working somewhere different all the time, or during your travelling, there seems to be little reason to carry your heavy laptop to and fro like you're doing.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[theLOUDroom]

Sorry, but you didn't make clear at all why you wouldn't use desktops, one at work and one at home. You can always keep your work on an external FW/USB2 HD and take that to work. Unless you're working somewhere different all the time, or during your travelling, there seems to be little reason to carry your heavy laptop to and fro like you're doing.

That means I would need two whole computers! How in heck is that better than having 1 computer that's a little more expensive?

My company would also need to buy liscences for two machines instead of one. Two PCs would need to be maintained instead of one, etc, etc.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[P2PDaemon]

You're forgetting about college students. At my university, engineering majors are REQUIRED to have a laptop. So instead of buying a laptop and a desktop, save a few bucks and combine em.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[Pulzar]

Yeah, you're right, Dell doesn't know what they're doing. They have a history of making machines that nobody buys. They don't do any market research, and simply put random parts together and hope somebody makes a mistake of ordering them.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[ilsie]

With my laptop and a VPN connection, putting in a 60 hour week on a critical project no longer means that I have to spend 60 away from home.
...
And as for price, it's not that big of a deal when you consider the cost of my time waiting for a simulation to finish or the price of the software that I actually run on the laptop.


Sorry, but why do you need more processing power to do sims if you're vpn'ing? You and I sound like we do a lot of the same stuff- I run a lot of verilog sims & do schematics & layout thru vpn, but the power of my computer doesent mean squat going thru vpn, since all the sims are running on the linux farm at work anyways.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

google for "portable workstation". Some are the size of a briefcase or piece of carry-on luggage, but much more powerful than any notebook. Dual-xeons, even unix workstations...

Take a look

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[Ymiris]

Take a look at www.pro-star.com I swear I should get paid by them I promote the damn thing so much. I just bought the 4774 for work, and I couldn't be happier.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[Lost Race]

That means I would need two whole computers! How in heck is that better than having 1 computer that's a little more expensive?

Bigger screen, full-size keyboard, dual processors, faster disk drives, faster GPU, incrementally upgradable... need I go on? You could get two whole computers with better specs than your notebook, for less money than your notebook.

Not to say that a notebook has no advantages, but if it's always sitting on your desk, always plugged in, then you're not getting those advantages.

Re:Seriously... what's the point?

[theLOUDroom]

You could get two whole computers with better specs than your notebook, for less money than your notebook.

Not when you consider the cost of two licenses for software.

It burns! It burns!

[UncleBiggims]

I don't know about anyone else, but I am so NOT laying that beast on my lap. I don't care how good the games are, it's not worth scalding my boys.

Are you Corn Fed?

Am I buying?

[smkndrkn]

Hell no. "Price: $3,350 as tested." Thats nuts. Iv'e been known to spend over 3k on a computer before, for home use, but those days are long gone. What are you buying really? The ability to bring a small machine to LAN parties? Less desktop space? The benefits of compact space do not outweigh the hefty price tag for me.

But it is VERY tempting to have this puppy for pure "HAHAH I GOT ONE AND YOU DON'T" factor :p

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Anonymous Coward]

cheaper than which powerbook?

12" Combo Drive - $1,599
12" SuperDrive - $1,799
15" Combo Drive - $1,999
15" SuperDrive - $2,599
17" SuperDrive - $2,999

the 17" specs are:
Mac OS 10.3
iLife '04
17-inch TFT Display
1440x900 resolution
1.33GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache
512MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100
ATI Mobility Radeon
9600 (64MB DDR)
Backlit Keyboard
Gigabit Ethernet
FireWire 400 & 800
AirPort Extreme built-in
DVI & S-Video out


this from a machine 5 months old, yes... but a powerbook update is expected soon and usually stays at the same price range.

Price discrepancy?

[Txiasaeia]

Interesting how the base unit is $2799 *CAD*, and yet the reviewer emphasises the (obviously tricked-out notebook's $3350 USD) huge price tag.

I remember reading a review for an IBM T41P the other day -- the reviewer's test machine retailed at something like $5500 CAD. Very few people can afford these monstrosities; most of us go for the $2500 "bare bones but still a Mercedes" IBM notebook instead.

Re:Price discrepancy?

[akhaksho]

I just bought a T41p. It's an incredibly nice machine. The graphics are very fast and it's built like a tank. 5 lbs. and a 5+ hr. battery life. I've never seen another laptop that can compare to a ThinkPad. It's pricey, but you get what you pay for.

Re:Price discrepancy?

[Txiasaeia]

How much did you pay for it?

Re:Price discrepancy?

[NT_blows]

It depends on what you are using it for. If for engineering work, especially high end hardware design the cost of the hardware is irrelevant compared to the software licenses. If you can get a couple more hours of use/day out of CAD licenses (via home use) the payback on a 5-7 K laptop is really short....

Re:Price discrepancy?

[akhaksho]

It was about $3200 for model 2373GEU w/1GB RAM.

Re:hello

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this offtopic?? I stated that I can play games on a Powerbook that costs half as much as the laptop in question, I think that's pretty on topic. And it's true, too.

Alienware

[Kimpak]

This Dell can't compete with the Alienware laptops, I'm a gamer and if you look at both laptops the Alienware is way cooler. And, if you were a gamer that hangs out with other gamers they would laugh at you for owning a Dell. You wouldn't get laughed at for an Alienware. Just my to bits -Kimpak

Re:Alienware

[maxbang]

i'd laugh at anyone with a computer with a logo that was cool in 1994. i have a belt buckle with an alien logo on it that i wear when i listen to my soul asylum audio cassettes, always making sure to flip the dolby NR switch firmly to the on position.

Re:Alienware

[Nazmun]

Yeah... I'm a gamer and I laugh when i see people with alienware laptops. Knowing that alienware's best laptops are just rebadged sagers for a higher cost.

Re:Alienware

[nyseal]

That's pretty sad when you're laughed at by basement mongering gaming nerds because of the brand name they choose to buy....but I wouldn't own a Dell either for the same exact reason!

it's under 3 grand

[cubyrop]

i can't seem to find where poster got the 3,300 price tag. From dell.com:

New Inspiron XPS Starting at $2599 After $250 Mail-in Rebate
Pentium(R)4 w/HT Technology 3.4GHz,15.4 WUXGA
512MB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
60GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA Hard Drive
4X CD/DVD burner(DVD+RW/+R) including Sonic RecordNow and MyDVD LE
$2,849

2600 bucks is actually fairly well inline, and a huge difference from 3,300 in the makes-the-eyeballs-bulge dep't.

Re:it's under 3 grand

[stratjakt]

The system tested in the TechTV article was 3350, it had 1 gig of RAM and the optional battery/subwoofer addon, and some other bells and whistles.

Also, after note the "after $250 mail-in rebate", which I dont think TechTV included - they reported the actual out-of-pocket cost.

Re:it's under 3 grand

[Dragoon412]

According to Dell's Site, the "Essential Solution" is $3279, down from $3259. The "Extreme Solution" is $4129.

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but how about 2x as fast? (going by real performance, not Mhz numbers)

Oh and have fun trying to get games to work on a PPC.

I would settle for a 1600x1200 17" LCD... but find

[Shivetya]

I have an Inspirion with a 15" 1600x1200 display. For the life of me I cannot find anything similar in a stand alone display. When I can its large and unreasonably priced.

There is a serious disconnect between LCDs on laptops and desktop in regards to pricing.

The only real concern is ghosting, even on 20ms displays it gets noticable.

But the mac has great games!

[Anonymous Coward]

Games like Warcraft 3, and ummmm that puzzle game with the apple logo! I mean, I beat it but, it's still fun!

Sure you can...

[Cyno01]

They're just expensive as hell. Froogle.

Re:Sure you can...

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent was referring to "WUXGA+ screen, which is 1920x1200 pixels."

Not WUXGA, which is 1280x1024.

No WUXGA+ LCDs come up on a Froogle search

Re:Sure you can...

[Elwood P Dowd]

Yes, they're expensive as hell, but they're 23" large.

And the 17" ones are all 1280x1024. I want a 1920x1200 monitor that's only 15", too, and no one will sell me one. Why?

I'm not buying, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

... it sure looks like Dell is now buying placement ads on Slashdot!

Re:DOES IT RUN LINUX

[Anonymous Coward]

you bet!! go buy one, it will run your Lindows just fine...

$$$ for that 'guess outsourcing costs are going up

[FerretFrottage]

I got a Gateway M505. It's no desktop replacement, and only has a Mobility 9600 with 64MB, but it play RTCW with no problems. Then again, I got it to do work while on the road. Sure it could use a faster HD, but it was $2000.

Can't Afford It

[osewa77]

No, not even if I wanted it.

Sorry, dude

[slobber]

I recently purchased the following system:

Athlon64 3200+
1G RAM
200G Maxtor HD
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
DVD ROM, 1 Gigabit Ethernet

The total was $1,280 (including shipping)
So why would I want to pay almost 3x to get a 9 pound monster? The 2K+ premium for (semi)portability is simply too high...

Re:Sorry, dude

[f0xb8]

No sound card,speakers,monitor, or keyboard? What kind of gaming can you do on that?

Re:Sorry, dude

[Anonymous Coward]

You built a laptop?

Impressive.

Re:Sorry, dude

[Jeremy Erwin]

Not paying attention, are you? The poster who speced out the machine opined that a 2K premium for semi portability was excessive. Logic dictates that his $1280 Athlon64 was therefore non-portable, or what you might call a "desktop" machine.

Maybe you should RTFC before responding.

Whoa

[93 Escort Wagon]

Let's see, that's a non-mobile Pentium at 3.4GHz, and Dell says it's 9 pounds. So in real life we're looking at an 11 pound computer that you won't want on your lap, plus it'll have maybe 60-90 minutes of battery life?

Maybe one of the optional accessories will be a lead-acid car battery with adapter and carrying case!

Re:Whoa

[puto]

Actually I would say most computer geeks could use the weight in their laps or to carry it around for excercise. Unless you are really ancient or feeble then what is 9lbs?

As a geek who works out and enjoys physical fitness I think we ought to make them heavier.

I see my contemparies in their early 20's(i am 34) huffing and puffing after carrying their gear up one flight of stairs to lan parties. Shuttle pcs and lcds.

IF you are complaing about 9lbs(4.5 lbs on each leg) you have a serious problem.

I let the mountain dew and sedentary lifestyle hit me for a couple of years. Got extremely out of shape.

Plbs pffft.

Puto

Re:Whoa

[93 Escort Wagon]

My concern about having this on one's lap wasn't weight-related; it was concern regarding the heat being generated by a desktop Pentium processor running at 3.4GHz. :-)

Not for the Price

[cheeseSource]

Why pay that much when you can get an Alienware with a good customization for $500 less. Plus Alienware tends to make all the right tweaks. I've seen the inside of a normal dell and it's a mess. Compare that to a "normal" Alienware or even Gateway and the answer is an obvious: "I'm not buying".

Re:Not for the Price

[NotAnotherReboot]

...or you get something that's nearly identical to an Alienware for far less...
check out Sager notebooks, a good site for them is Pc Torque. This particular company even allows you to order it without an operating system.

You'll notice that the cases are completely identical (Sager and Alienware). A lot of them seem to buy the base components from one company. If you remember Liebermann Computers (a lot of people thought they might be a hoax with some of their products), even their laptops look the same.

You'll get the same specs, and probably practically the same system for far cheaper. Bottom line: Alienware is not a good price/performance ratio, especially for notebooks.

Re:Not for the Price

[Trick]

Yep, Sager's laptops kick ass. I just picked one up myself from PC Torque last month, and got a 3GHz P4, a 17" widescreen, a gig of RAM, and a 128MB ATI 9600 Pro card, for about $2000 -- *way* below the cost of a comparable Alienware or Dell machine (though there's currently no 17" Alienware machine available).

I wholeheartedly second the Sager recommendation. And no, this is not an ad. I'm just really, really happy with my new laptop.

Re:Not for the Price

[cheeseSource]

Sager does look pretty nice. Up until now I was haading toward LethalPC. Which cost only slightly less than Alienware but come with many more options.

Tom Jones covering Snoop Dogg

[StuWho]

Dell trying to make an Alienware clone is frankly laughable, like Tom Jones in the subject line, or like your Grandmother buying skin-tight leather trousers.

As for the price... Even if I'd won the lottery I'd still think it too steep.

Re:Tom Jones covering Snoop Dogg

[MooseByte]

> your Grandmother buying skin-tight leather trousers. Ach! My Mind's Eye! It burns!!! Dude, why don't you have mercy next time and just put a link to the goatse guy?

Re:Tom Jones covering Snoop Dogg

[MooseByte]

(Pardon the lack of formatting - typing blind....)

Re:Tom Jones covering Snoop Dogg

[StuWho]

I'd never heard of the goatse guy before you bastard. I googled it... You have your revenge.

Offtopic, but WTF!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaargh!

Whiskey... I need whiskey.

Re:Tom Jones covering Snoop Dogg

[mikelambert70]

Alienware is a poor lap-top because it has air vents on the bottom. This means you actually cannot use it on your lap, because the vents will get blocked. Or put it on a soft surface like sofa seat, bed, carpet - many places where you actually could use a real laptop because of fun/comfort factor. I love the specs of Alienware/Sager, but not the way it has been executed.

I've got a Dell laptop with 3 year warranty and on-site service. I've had some minor trouble with it 2 times, and it's been corrected less than 24 hours later by a guy who came into my home to fix it.

I can appreciate good service and am willing to pay for it. I don't think you will get service like this from Alienware/Sager. Ultimately this is what will limit my purchasing options in the future, because I love Dell's service so much I am not willing to settle for anything less.

Then again, some people are willing to wait for weeks or even months for service in order to save a couple hundred bucks. If I remember correctly the extended on-site warranty cost less than 200 dollars for my machine, and it has paid itself back in speed and comfort already, and I still have almost 2 years left. Each to their own.

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[ShipsToday]

a little trick you can do is choose the superdrive 15 inch model, then choose the combo over the super, and the smaller hardrive over the 80gb, and you get an extra RAM than the combo 15 inch, a backlit keyboard and 1.25 over 1.0 Ghz. factor in a student discount and you've saved a couple hundred dollars.

$3,350

[donbrock]

That's still less than I paid for my AT&T 6300 with a 8088 and 20MB HD in the early 80's.

Re:It burns! It burns!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have more than one? Curious.

Re:I agree with these people

[Anonymous Coward]

}/New egg is lower still. Directron does have a few things that new egg doesn't./{

9 pounds, no thanks but how about 5 pounds.

[Iamwin]

Good old IBM to the rescue. Ibm T41p, may have a smaller screen and be ugly, but at least I don't have to go to the chiropractor after lugging it five feet.

Re:9 pounds, no thanks but how about 5 pounds.

[kill-hup]

I think the T-series is pretty cool but, man, that UltraNav is freaky!

"You got TrackPoint in my Touch Pad!" "You got Touch Pad in my TrackPoint!"

Just trying to please everyone, I guess.

Am I buying?

[st0rmshad0w]

In a word... NO.

Not when I can build a nice Shuttle stlye system for cheap and still have enough for a video projector as well.

Halo life-sized anyone?

I have a AW

[Str8Dog]

I have an Alienware laptop and would gladly trade it in to get one from Dell. Alienware can take up to 2 months to deliver anything you order from them. They have no way of verifying what is in stock and what is not, this includes their phone sales people. They have a 15% restocking fee on all returns. You have to send the machine in to them to get repairs which can take up to 2 months as well.

My wife bought mine for me and we had to change the order two times to get something that was actually instock. It still took over a month to get here and when I did get it the backlight switch failed with in 2 weeks. Oh and it came preinstalled with a MS RPC virus...

Re:I have a AW

[Str8Dog]

You can read the entire sordid tale here.

Re:I have a AW

[zerochance]

I know, I had trouble getting a confirmed ship date for my Area-51 too. But it did actually arrive. Since then the machine just screams along, despite the weekly need to clean cat hair out of the vents.

Now with my wife's Dell laptop, what arrived was not what we ordered, and it took almost 3 months of constant phone calls, 3 shipments from Dell of the wrong replacement parts (including a desktop DVD drive that they expected me to hack onto the laptop I guess), before the DVD drive that should have been on the laptop from the beginning arrived. Then after 14 months of mostly okay service, the darn thing turned it's screen off and died.

My son has a Dell desktop, which is still running, but he also got to go the rounds with Dell's "award winning" customer service. They eventually told him that his bundled Windows recovery CD they customized and sent along with the computer being in reality a blank unburned CD wasn't their problem and they weren't gonna replace it. On a lark, he called that company we all love to hate/dislike here, and a couple days later an XP CD showed up on our doorstep.

Anyone who is thinking of buying a Dell should remember that Dell's service is capable of making Microsoft look good.

Re:I have a AW

[Teribaen]

This is true, Alienware has quite a few customer service problems

Re:I have a AW

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, don't need to tell me that.

I've got an Alienware laptop. Sadly, I didn't go with Falcon NW or Sager (didn't know about that until literally five minutes ago, though). I just knew that the CGW magazing loved their stuff (probably corporate sellouts).

Okay, so I order it, and like three weeks later the status of the order online hasn't changed. I e-mail, and *finally* I get a response that some parts were delayed while being shipped in from Asia (?). So, like a few weeks later, stuff finally gets moving, but I don't get the computer until at least two weeks after it's due.

My dad calls Alienware, and to make a long story short, the guy agrees to send us $75 in giftcards at Best Buy. He can piss off, but we do get them.

However, as soon as I open up the laptop, I noticed the Shift key is all farked up. A phone call later, I'm taking the keyboard out, which ends up being a total misdiagnosis. I end up prying off the Shift key, removing the little bar that holds it up somehow, and just praying that it'll work right. I dread the day when the Shift key dies.

Additionally, at least one of the pixels on the LCD is out--it glows a bright green when on. This problem is unresolved.

Fast forward a few weeks. I get "Enter the Matrix," do the whole Alienware $100 rebate+proof of purchase mail-in thing, and hear nothing. About a month later, I get out my digital camera, take a picture of the remaining Matrix stuff (no longer had receipt, duh), and send it in demanding the rebate. I get a check soon thereafter for the promised $100.

I've never spent more time on hold, even with Comcast when they switched over from whatever they were before! I hate Alienware, I've balled up the shirt they sent with my order and thrown it into the corner of my room, and I'll never buy from them again.

I'd never heard of Sager, but if I get another laptop, then it would possibly be from them, but more likely a small form factor PC.

However, beside the above problems, gaming laptops are way too farking expensive compared to gaming PCs. My next computer will almost certainly be a nice, big, *stationary* monitor and tower.

No way

[fudgefactor7]

No laptop can compete with a desktop. Never.

It may not be portable, but you can pick up a Dell 400SC, 3.2GHz P4, 1.5GB ram, then plop in a killer vid/sound card for less than $2000.

I'd do that rather than get this laptop. Oh, you want portable? Ok, how about a Shuttle XPC? Screen? A 15" LCD is pretty cheap now too. And that's better than a laptop too.

Until notebook prices come down significantly, and the battery life is extended much longer, they're not going to replace a real, good, gaming desktop system. Never.

Wahhhhhh!

[mrshowtime]

Man what a bunch of whinny bitches we have become. "Three grand" too much for a state of the art desktop replacement? The thing is a friggin' monster! 3.4 ghz and a 9700 card to boot! And it has a greater than HDTV resolution screen! I paid about $2,200 for my then state of the art Sony 1.7 ghz last year, why is paying a grand or so more for a laptop that can do everything! And when is 9 pounds considered to be a "beast?" Yeah, you can get a really good lcd screen/projector and a cube and possibly get better results for cheaper, but then again, that's the poing of laptop: portability....

Oops?

[RealityThreek]

12-Cell battery with Subwoofer for incredible sound.

This is where it really stands out. No one else has ever thought to put a subwooder in the battery. They need to pay someone to proofread. :)

Re:Oops?

[trick-knee]

> No one else has ever thought to put a subwooder in the battery.

actually, it's a separate power source for the subwoofer. it requires extra power because it's kinda loud.

the problem is that if you use it at anything approaching max volume, it starts causing your hard drive to get read errors. sometimes certain keys get accidently activated, like ESC (which is on a corner where the vibrations seem to accumulate).

you could get a car cig lighter adapter, put this thing in your trunk and give the other cruisers on Main Street a run for their money. and you could then just unplug and move to another car as desired.

so it's the usual story: on the cutting edge you sometimes bleed.

Re:It burns! It burns!

[UncleBiggims]

Yes. You know, frank and beans. 1 frank and 2 beans... Hello?? Is this thing on?

I hope I'm not breaking some really bad news to you. :)

Well, if you have the money...

[Lord_Frederick]

Nobody needs a Ferrari, but if you have the money, it's nice to have.

My gaming machine is in a full tower, an old steel case that weighs a ton. I don't like spending money on something I can't upgrade either, but I start to think about it when I'm lugging that case + a 19" CRT to a LAN party.

I'd put my money on a Sager

[fatwreckfan]

A friend of mine recently bought a Sager 5680 and it's a beautiful desktop replacement. Not only does it run circles around every other one of our friends' desktops, but it was considerably cheaper than the equivalent Alienware. The truly amazing thing was that we found a picture of an Alienware in an issue of Maxim when they did a laptop comparison, and it was exactly the same machine as the Sager! (From what I understand, they use the same manufacturer.) The sole advantage to an Alienware is the ability to swap out video cards, something pretty much exclusive to them I believe.

Notebooks are not your only choice.

[openSoar]

If you want raw power as well as luggability, big hulking laptops like this aren't your only choice. The current generation of ultra small form factor pcs from Shuttle et al can fit this much power into a tiny case that comes with a cool carry bag. Add in a really nice 17" 12x10 lightweight lcd monitor and you're set with a lot more dosh left in your pocket - you can even splash on a dell 2001fp 16x12 lcd for $750 and still be way under budget. You pay a large premium to pack it all into a "portable" space and then it's difficult to upgrade.

Re:Notebooks are not your only choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

lot more dosh left in your pocket

you can even splash on a dell 2001fp 16x12 lcd

Can I snap up a 256MB DIMM for my memory-hungry applications too? Work in sales or marketing by any chance?

Re:Notebooks are not your only choice.

[Night Goat]

Can I hire you to lug around my monitor? What the hell, man, we're talking two different markets here.

Subwoofer batteries

[hottoh]

I think this is the most amazing fact from the product line up.

*Subwoofer integrated into battery*

Re:Subwoofer batteries

[DavidBrown]

*Subwoofer integrated into battery*

Great for playing acid rock.

Alienware

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone see the notebook they're offering here? One of the color options is "conspiracy blue". ;-)

Re:I'd put my money on a Sager (forgot price diff)

[fatwreckfan]

I forgot to mention, the Sager was around $600US less than the Alienware.

Shuttles are a superior alternative IMHO

[Attaturk]

I strongly recommend Shuttles. For a fraction of the price of the Dell you can buy a barebones Shuttle matched to your requirements, stick in a drive, some memory, a chip and the graphics card to meet your 3D needs and you're laughing. They're light and compact (ergo portable) and really beautifully made.

FWIW, I used to be an editor at PC Magazine (in the UK) and if I was still a hack I'd be raving about these boxes on a monthly basis. =)

P.S. No I don't have stock nor any other interest to declare - but these things are now performing wonders for me everywhere from our server farm to high end gaming PC's (well, games-testing PC's). I am simply a happy bunny. =D

Try this on for size...

[diesel66]

http://www.apple.com/displays/acd23/

DVI output

[slobber]

For some reason I haven't seen many laptops with DVI output. This is a very useful feature especially if you have a dedicated home theater and would like to occasionally hook up your laptop to use the "big screen".

Re:DVI output

[fafaforza]

Apple's PowerBooks have DVI output.

Two reasons...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. LCDs on laptops are digital. On most LCD panels they are analog with a VGA connection. You need both a DVI card, connector on the panel, and the expensive cable to see the pure brilliance of an LCD. Analog just aint cutting it.

2. Laptops give higher resolution because you sit much closer to them, never more than half arms length away because you need to reach the keyboard. An external LCD could be anywhere, maybe a 2 feet away. You don't want to get trapped in a resolution that is too small.

Re:Two reasons...

[lcracker]

There is no such thing as a resolution that is "too small".. only window managers that don't rasterize text/widgets properly for the current DPI.

Re:Two reasons...

[Anonymous Coward]

> There is no such thing as a resolution that is "too small"

Yes there is. Smaller pixel displays are normally less bright, so there is a bit of a tradeoff.

Yeah Right!

[unsigned integer]

You know what kind of a desktop beast I could purchase for $3500???! Sheesh. "Gaming Laptops" are for spoiled rich people with nothing better to do with their money.

molten laptop.

[RubiX^3]

supported by a super-fast desktop Pentium(R) 4, 3.4 GHz processor

Yay. I've always wanted to burn a giant hole through my lap and penis.

Re:molten laptop.

[jshift2work]

Its all marketting the matching heat foil pants are an add on in the customazation screens

Same performance, much cheaper:

[Ummagumma]

I just bought one of these:

Sager np5680

And for under $2000, you get almost exactly the same machine. Its a highly respected brand, also, they just don't have the marketing fluff of Dell or the other big guys.

The only difference I see, is the video card (9600 vs. 9700), and no DVI out on the Sager. For $1K, you can keep your DVI :)

Add in Win XP as an os, to add $250, and you are still $1k cheaper. Or go free, with Linux, your choice.

Re:Same performance, much cheaper:

[Zed2K]

Add in the bigger 7200 rpm hd, the uxga screen (no choice of widescreen on the sager, the wireless and bluetooth, and add xp pro, and the sager is $2596.

Granted its not the 3300 of the dell but it isn't the under 2k that you claim.

The HD and widescreen display are pretty big items (feature wise) as is the wireless.

I'm just sayin'...

Re:Same performance, much cheaper:

[BadDreamer]

Doesn't have the 1920x1200 screen as an option. No matter how much money I'm ready to add.

I'm looking at the Dell Inspiron 8600, and at the XPS, because of the screen. Good performance is easy to find, but that screen is just in a class of its own. That the 8600 also gets 6+ hours battery with the media bay battery doesn't hurt.

I'll take the Ferrari

[jshift2work]

That one at least went vroom vrooom

Several at dell.com

[aclarke]

Here's one
20.1" 1600x1200 LCD, MSRP $999.99

Re:Several at dell.com

[cens0r]

but his laptop screen isn't 20". Where can I find a 17" screen that does 1600x1200? or even 1280x1024?

Re:Several at dell.com

[Elwood P Dowd]

I guess the confusion expressed by the idiots here on /. is a good example of the reason these screens aren't marketted.

Whenever coworkers look at my screen, their initial reaction is always "everything's so small! Why don't you make your screen bigger?"

If display makers are going to have trouble explaining that it's the things on the screen that are smaller, not the screen... I can't imagine how they'd try to sell a 15" 1920x1200 display to those jackasses.

Re:Several at dell.com

[cens0r]

I agree with that statement. What I don't understand is how they can market laptops with those resolutions. And why, if they can market those laptops displays why they can't sell a few as a desktop display.

Re:Several at dell.com

[aclarke]

Good point. I should have read a little closer.

Re:Several at dell.com

[Lost Race]

Where can I find a 17" screen that does ... 1280x1024?

Newegg

Select "17 inch" and "1280x1024" and hit Search.

AFAIR, when I bought my 17" LCD, 1280x1024 was the only choice!

Re:Several at dell.com

[cubic6]

I have one of the Dell's with a 15" UXGA (1600x1200) display. I have shitty eyesight, but I can read normal Windows font sizes with no problem. It's just that clear. The Dell laptop screens are far superior to anything you can find as a desktop LCD.

Re:Several at dell.com

[Elwood P Dowd]

We're on the same page.

At least we were, until last night, when I took a plane flight from SF to DC. The character sitting next to me on the plane was dressed real sharp, had his hair perfectly done up, and had the expensivest Dell laptop they made. It seemed as if he just had to have the best of everything.

When it started up, I noticed the WinXP Pro boot screen had to anti-alias like crazy, but it still looked pretty good.

Then he got to his desktop, and started up Outlook, and it was all I could do to avoid stabbing myself in the eyes. He'd set his beautiful 1600x1200 LCD to display 1024x768. Everything was a blur. If he seemed like a nicer person, I might have imposed to point out how he could configure the fonts to display larger and set the resolution higher. But he was a jackass. So I'll let him suffer. I was mildly tempted to tell him that he wasted $1000 on that laptop screen, since a cheaper screen would look better at that resolution.

But he could have beat me up. Anyway, maybe Dell really can't market laptops with those resolutions. Maybe 0.5% of their laptop purchasers wanted to buy ultra high resolution displays, and 5% of their laptop purchasers want to buy the best of everything, and see that the "WUXGA+" screens cost mad bank, so they have to have it.

Maybe. Iduno.

Awsome..

[Mindcry]

12-Cell battery with Subwoofer for incredible sound..

I love the killer sound of that there 12-cell ;)

Gaming laptops

[painandgreed]

I like laptops for gaming. At LAN parties I would be set up, ready to go, and eating snacks while my friends were still carrying their computers in from the car. The thing I really learned to appreciate was the same resolution screen in a smaller physical space. Everything was in my center of vision and I never needed to look around on the screen. Playing games on my desktop, I get irritated that I have to look around on the screen because action is happening in my periphial vision. I've been looking around and debating if should go for small and light or desktop replacement. I quickly found that the best desktop replacements out there seemed to be gaming computers because they had the top kit. Alienware looks good for a desktop replacement not only because it's beefy but because it looks cool. I don't think Dell is going to put out computers in Cyborg Green or Saucer Silver. Money is an issue and I don't think the mobility will convince me to buy a laptop that costs that much unless I would need the power and mobility for work also. of course, now that Dell is putting one out, I probably have a better chance of getting work to buy me a Dell laptop than an Alienware one.

Re:Gaming laptops

[fafaforza]

Maybe you should move your head to a respectable viewing distance away from the monitor. Like, say, more than your current 5 inches.

Re:Did Anyone See that Brief Test Story on Slashdo

[Bendebecker]

The bold was of course just what i thought of the issue before the mods pulled the test. Never submitted it cause the story went away before i could post to it.

Compitition is good...

[way2slo]

Hopefully the compitition between these high powered portable game systems will force the price down a bit. $3k for any system is a bit much, I 'd say. However, portability is worth a little extra price. I was pondering a system like this for a while and ended up going for an Area 51m from Alienware. It's sweet! Yeah, I paid through the nose, but I use it all the time on business travel, let alone ad-hoc LAN parties at my friends, so for me it was worth it. If the price can come down a grand or so, I would probably be able to talk some friends into them which would really open up the possibility of some nice LAN parties. Seriously, most people I know do not want to take their desktop and monitor all over creation just for one evening is too hard*; for them to do.
[* The Rule of Hard: Any task that is or precieved to be too dificult will be avoided.]
But portable systems like these laptops are much better and with XP, the network is plug and play (usually) (Also, wireless networking is great). All you have to lug around is a backpack and setup is as simple as taking it out, plugging in the mouse and turning it on.

Performance wise, my only issue is that some games do not render quite right on my Area51m and an occasional few don't work at all. They work fine on my desktop so I would have to say that there is a difference between the PCI and the laptop version of a card. Fortuantely, they were odd games that I did not need to have portable.

Re:Compitition is good...

[jshift2work]

I was wondering about that same laptop been toying with the idea of picking one up. but riddle me this. Have you played with other OS's, either linux or even so far as popping in a knoppix cd to see if it all will work? i just worry about that cause some of that hardware seemed to be alienware only.

Re:Compitition is good...

[way2slo]

No, I have not. For me, my laptop is a gaming platform first, which means XP, and a business tool second, which also means XP. As for other OS's....I don't know. I would imagine it is possible to get the basics up, but having only toyed with Linux in the past I would not even begin to know how to figure out what the devices are or how to configure them. I always have to call my linux guru friends and ask them to configure stuff for me. I could do it myself, but it's too *hard. My advice would be to find an older system to ensure that Linux had support for it's hardware. Even with the cheaper Dell, it is still a big chunck of change just for something to toy around with an OS. * Rule of Hard - Any task which is or percieved to require too much effort will be avoided.

or purchase a macintosh

[Anonymous Coward]

that's not expensive.

that's about the price of an Ipod

If its a notebook

[Bendebecker]

Chances are the screen still has ghosting whenever you try to play games. Same porblem with the flat-screens. You get ghosting and the things looks like crap at least 5% of the time. CRT's are still the best way to go for gaming and for 3 grand you can build yourslef 2 super kickass desktop computers.

Re:If its a notebook

[fafaforza]

It depends on the LCD. If you have a cheesy XGA LCD, you will see ghosting, but I don't see that issue on my PowerBook's LCD and I think current PC-land LCDs are starting to get close to Apple's.

CRTs are better for games, but more in terms of color depth. For example, playing Thief on an LCD I had a hard time distinguishing objects in shadows, and there was no detail in objects and areas that were completely black.

That's No Beast

[molafson]

Nine pounds? That's no beast. This here is a beast! And I thought it was so cool when my dad brought it home... Of course, this is what I use these days.

DUDE, WHY GET A DELL?????!!!!!!

[poofyhairguy82]

Why in the world would a person buy a Dell gaming laptop. Sagers are cheaper and better at playing games. Just go to pctorque.com and get a better laptop for less money. Quality difference isn't an issue because no laptop manufacturer (except for IBM I think) actually makes their own machines. All of them no matter which brand is made by one of three big manufacturers in the east. I don't work for Sager, but I hate how little publicity they get. Especially compared to this nice ad slashdot is giving Dell for free (I assume they get nothing in return but probably not).

Hard Drive

[Richard Allen]

Nice specs, except hard drive looks fairly small and slow for a gaming monster.

60GB 7,200-rpm hard drive

Re:Hard Drive

[spooky_nerd]

7,200 RPM is fast for a laptop hard drive. Keep in mind, most laptops are still shipping with 4200 RPM drives with 5400 as an option. 7200 RPM drives have only recently been available on laptops.

Re:Hard Drive

[Zed2K]

Like the other person said. 7200rpm is fast. Wish their latitude notebooks had an option for a 7200rpm hd. But the 60GB is small, I wonder if its as large as they can currently get in a laptop hard drive that runs at 7200rpm.

money eating monster

[kyshtock]

Yeah, I really feel I am gonna throw 3+ grands on that plastic brick... C'mon! When I want to play, I have my desktop, and, well, 5.1 sound is pretty cool to have around you, not to mention the CRT. If I want portability, there goes my 256 MB USB. If I want portability AND processing power, a regular (as in cheap) priced laptop will do. If I want to pick a chick, some wine and smooth talk will do. Pardon me for mentioning chicks on /.! If I want a LAN party - dammit, I have cable access. I don't have to haul 30 kg of computer, monitor and accesories around. Nor a 9 pound plastic brick that definitely will need a CRT, keyboard and mouse for an as close to enjoyable as possible experience.

Not to mention the other issues: battery life, heat dissipation, and the fact that the difference between 3+ grands and a cloud of smoke is only a spilled beverage. Upgrades! God in heavens, how do you upgrade such a thing? Selling it? are you kidding? Who's gonna buy that in 6 months? And for what amount?

What a blinking ripoff!

[Anonymous Coward]

For that price I'd at least expect it to play the sound of an engine revving up when Windows starts.

It's pronounced SCUZZY

[vasqzr]

It better not be ultra-wide, either

Re:It's pronounced SCUZZY

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember to use a terminator, or else you're in a world of hurt in 9 months.

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Bi()hazard]

Then let's go to the Apple store and do a comparison. The new dell has a 15.4 inch display, so it's going up against a 15 inch Powerbook.

Dell: 9 motherfucking pounds. Mac: 5.6 pounds. That's an enormous difference, many people would simply be unable to carry the Dell with them wherever they go. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to pretend to be macho. Why don't you drag around a destop with you if you don't care about weight?

Dell: ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128 MB Mac: ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 64 MB. The Dell has a better card, but only incrementally better-it's still a Mobility, and it's only 9700 vs 9600, with more ram. Any game you can play on the Dell will work on the Mac too, and almost as well.

Dell: 60GB 7200 drive Mac: 80GB 4200 rpm.
The dell has a much faster drive, but the Mac's is bigger. And a 60 gig 7200rpm usb 2.0 drive can be had for $80 on pricewatch. The Mac has two 480 Mbps USB 2.0 ports, the article doesn't say what the dell has.

Dell: 1GB DDR400 ram Mac: 1GB DDR333 ram
Slight performance advantage to the Dell.

Dell: DVD+RW drive Mac: Apple SuperDrive, same capabilities.

Dell: DVI output, a first in windows notebooks. Mac: DVI output, standard in powerbooks for some time.
Both have integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and gigabit ethernet, and IEEE1394.

Dell: Subwoofer integrated into battery. Mac: Uses standard batteries interchangeable with any normal battery. Which one is a win here? How many people need a subwoofer while they're on the road, which usually means being in public places where you have to use headphones anyway? Anyone that cares about audio will use external speakers while at home anyway. And the Mac uses standard batteries, not some weird model-specific thing you won't find in most stores.

Dell: Interchangeable covers for a custom look. Mac: Brushed metal Titanium style only. That's right people-now if you want to spend more money just for looks and style, Dell is the way to go. How did that happen? Assuming the interchangeable covers don't suck, we haven't seen pictures yet.

Dell: Read about it in an article. When will you actually be able to get your hands on one? This is Dell's next-generation notebook.
Mac: Been out for a while, using current-generation technology. The matchup will look a little different if we compare them the day Apple releases the specs to the next new powerbook model.

Dell: $3350
Mac: $2999

The Mac is substantially cheaper than the Dell.

In conclusion: with Dell you pay hundreds more for incremental performance improvements (slight video card upgrade, DDR400, faster but smaller drive)
The Dell weighs nearly twice as much, but has interchangeable covers.
And remember, this is a newly announced Dell vs a Mac that's been on the market for some time.

Best bang for your buck: The Powerbook.

Best bang for people who like paying too much just because they read about it on Slashdot and it has interchangeable covers: The Dell.

Apple Store and specs. Dell and specs.

But the parent post does have one good point-As a mac lover, when I read what he said I fell over laughing and bumped into the side of the desk, so it *does* sting.

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[teamhasnoi]

Two times as fast at one third the battery life kinda makes this moot. Who wants to play Unreal 2004 for a half hour?

"Wheeeee! Wheee! Oops, my battery's dead."

And the tired 'PPC doesn't play games' troll is more over than Farscape.

Bzzt. Try again.

Vanity

[Martigan80]

That is all this is. I'm old school here but WOE would anyone want a laptop for gaming? I thought that whole purpose for a laptop was to take you work with you. I did'n now you needed a $2k+ laptop to run some office suites, and do some graphics work. If you need anymore your work area should be more permanent. Besides if you are worried about a 1-3 hours plane ride how about reading a book? Cheaper yet can also be fun too.

WTF? I must be on crack! Why on earth do I not want to take UT2003/4 every where I go?

P.s. I would be to scared to let it go through the x-ray machine and have a TSA person keep me back cuz my freakin shoes look funny.

Re:hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait!!! It can't be flamebait if it's true!!

laptops make crappy gaming systems

[Billly Gates]

The keys all stick together and the keyboards are cramped. Not to mention its harder to see dark objects and the screen blurs more then a desktop LCD or CRT.

If you have this kind of money it might be better to build a monster gaming station at home and a moderate gaming laptop that is cheaper and has longer battery life for the occasional game on the airplane away from home.

Re:hello

[Anonymous Coward]

But thank you to the one good moderator around here with the Interesting mod. I'll stop replying to my own posts now...

Two words:

[Anita Coney]

Lan parties

Samsung 24" + ATI = 1920x1200 under Linux

[FreeUser]

WUXGA+ screen, which is 1920x1200 pixels.

What I want to know is, why is it you can buy a laptop with that flat panel installed, but you can't buy an LCD monitor for your desktop PC that can do that?

Actually, you can, for about $2500. My 24" Samsung does 1920x1200 and works beautifully under Linux with my ATI Radeon 9100, using the xfree DRI drivers.

Re:Samsung 24" + ATI = 1920x1200 under Linux

[Elwood P Dowd]

You all seem to misunderstand. What if he wants a 15" 1920x1200 display?

He can only buy it on a laptop. Yes, he can buy a giant LCD with that resolution, but that's not what he's talking about.

... unreal tournament

[Jay9333]

http://macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=18034

Ouch indeed

[rsborg]

Not to mention, there are many other respectable gaming class laptops available, for much LE$$.

Besides for that much, I'd go for something with better ruggedness, like a thinkpad, or a powerbook.

Re:Ouch indeed

[ophix]

LOL
a link to emachines labeled respectable LOL

i can say, as someone who has worked doing pc repair and related for 8 years, emachines is the new packard bell.

Re:Ouch indeed

[Zerbey]

Thinkpads are not rugged. I just spent the day rebuilding a Thinkpad (not mine) that was dropped, which in turn killed the hard drive and the CD-ROM.

Course, it gave me a good excuse to put Linux on it (was previously running XP *spit*) so not all bad. :-)

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Anonymous Coward]

The $2999 for the powerbook includes an extra $400 for the additional 512 megs of ram, you could save a few hundred by buying it third party instead of from Apple.

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep hearing that Apples are quality machines, yet they put in a crappy radeon 9600? I'm sure the backlit keyboard more than makes up for it

The more I hear, the less I'm convinced of this alleged quality.

T41p does it for me

[Anonymous Coward]

9 pounds seems heavy..I was lucky to get a T41p from work (really begged the boss) Pentium M 1.7, 1GB RAM, 60 GB 7200 RPM and 128 MB Fire GL T2 (aka Radeon 9600), 802.11 /a/b/g all at 5.5 lbs. If you want power to go, and have $3K to burn, THIS is the way to go.

Noise Level?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody know if this notebook is loud or not? I want a gaming notebook that I can take to class and take notes...

Here is What Comparisons of Laptops and Desktops a

[cmacb]

I've had several laptops and many many computers (in addition to the many more inflicted on me at work).

My computers slowly grow obsolete and get thrown out while still in a working state, but it's hard to forsee current systems becoming useless any time soon. I've been through dozens of monitors, keyboards (especially) and mice though.

The display on my 2 year old Compaq laptop has gone bad once already, the lettering on the keys is now unreadable from use. Both my laptop and desktop systems are quite useable from the perspective of "horsepower", but the laptop will much sooner become useless without one form of expensive repair or another.

In the mean time there is a store near me that will practically GIVE me an old style 17-inch monitor and NEW keyboards and mice are priced in the teens.

So, what's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong is that laptop keyboards should have developed an industry standard form factor and connection standard long ago. Likewise, the small card that is the video card for my laptop should be easily replaced, and easily connected to the monitor, which should also be easily replaced. At that point I'd have no problem justifying $3000 or more for a machine that I could be confident would last (with some easy end-user repairs and upgrades) for many years to come. Further integration of IO devices as is the case with notepad computers is insanity. Of course, if you have an unlimited money supply (spending your companies money for instance) insanity is par for the course.

I'll stick with my desktops and use the laptop in emergencies until the peripherals issue is addressed. (For any company that wants to implement this, please contact me for information about where to send the royalty checks.)

Powernotebooks.com

[mrgrey]

Wow... Check the prices out at Powernotebooks.com

Check out the Sager 8890 Specs and then rethink alienware and dell.

I have the Sager NP5680 P4 2.8GHz with the ATI Radeon 9600 with 128MB DDR... and it cost around $1800.. (thanks to work for picking up the check)

Check out the 17" laptops for around $1500. Nice!

This is going to work....

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell is used to create new trends... This system is going to work in the market. Though seems for small piece of market, it's not. There are lot of bunches of people who will be crazy for this system. People need trend-creating items. People need to look and live differently. People will save money to buy this item. Believe it or not.... Not!!!!! The "Not" people will envy.

Wary of Dell's "new" v1.0 Offerings

[delus10n0]

I remember when they released the latest and greatest 8000-series of the Inspiron, and it was plagued with problems, such as power/battery issues, video card issues (GeForce2Go required a different/higher voltage than the ATi cards.) I personally had to deal with all of this junk, along with Dell claiming it wasn't their fault. Searching their forums, I could find at least 25 others having the same exact issues as me, with the same exact hardware (first release of the Inspiron 8xxx series, 8000.)

So in the future, I'm wary to buy any series/model from them that's "brand new", especially if it's a laptop. Seems like they iron out the kinks and them release a newer revision (8100, 8200, etc.) that works pretty darn well.

I am saying, I would not pay that

[PotatoHead]

amount of money for the Laptop, and if I did, it would not be for gaming.

Better to get a reasonable laptop, and build a nice game machine with the rest of the dollars.

Totally doable:

[Kiyooka]

just get a desk with rollerballs on the table legs. Portable computing!

The telling part though .....

[taniwha]

is when you try and order one it comes with a non-optional backpack specially sized to hold it ....

...and who could forget...

[Dalcius]

"Hey, there are plenty of great games for the Mac! Breakout, superbreakout.... photoshop."

Word Munchers!.

Anyone else find the spiral to their low light basement dwelling lifestyle rooting back to this dreadful classic?

"Come on, Timmy, it's time to do geography. Now, Timmy."

Emachines????

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

"Not to mention, there are many other respectable gaming class laptops available, for much LE$$.

Emachines? Respectible? Good lord! You must be kidding. Put down the crack pipe!

Re:Emachines????

[IndependentVik]

You obviously haven't used an emachines product lately. They've been under new management for awhile now, and the last few models of their laptops have been reviewed as good machines from most of the usual suspects. Check out epinions, for one.

I just bought the M6807 about a month back, and I was very impressed with the raw speed and quality of the display for the price.

They've completely fixed up their support, too. I called once about a minor issue (turned out to be a weird power management setting) and the hold time was about 5 seconds--I was extremely impressed. I heard they just got bought by Gateway, though, so who knows how long the good times will last :(

Re:Emachines????

[HD Webdev]

Emachines? Respectible? Good lord! You must be kidding. Put down the crack pipe!

We had our newest tech here brag about his emachine on his application. With so many calls about problems with them, we thought 'what the heck, we have an emachine expert now, hire the guy'

Now, every time someone calls and mentions 'emachine', we route the call to NewGuy. His hourly time spend on boxes is double any others here. I think he'll either a) disown emachines soon, or b) show up with an AR-15 and mow us all down.

Gotta go, I'm browsing web sites that are offering good prices for body armor.

Catchya later!

Re:Emachines????

[Pionar]

I have an eMachines T2482 running RH 9.0 right now. It's a great machine. Had one problem, the HD failed (Western Digital 80GB) about 4 months after I bought it. Got through in 2 minutes on the day after christmas!!! Got the replacement drive in 2 days.

Emachines doesn't use shitty components anymore.

Re:Emachines????

[SlamMan]

Sorry, they already lost thier chance to get my dollars from thier previous horrible products.

Re:Emachines????

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't buy it just because the name is freakin retarded. It was a cheap product aimed at ignorant consumers with a trendy name. Makes me want to throw up.

Re:Emachines????

[Soul-Burn666]

If we're talking gaming here, the red armor is the best, at a whooping instant +200 armor!

Re:Emachines????

[i chose quality]

ah, that explains!
every manufacturer gets grumpy if you don't pay him... :)

Re:Emachines????

[Night Goat]

Fuck 'em. Maybe if they hadn't already lost all credibility with the worst PCs this computer repairman has ever seen, I would consider recommending their products to people. But when they put these tiny, underpowered power supplies in their computers and put 64MB of RAM in their PCs, well, they deserve the bad name. There are better companies to spend money on.

No thanks...

[justsomenick]

That'll be a notbook for me, please.

No big deal...

[Vrallis]

I already have a Sager NP4780 from PowerNotebooks.com. I think all of these are just rebranded Clevo D470V laptops (I know the Sager and Alienware one are).

For a little under $3k I got:

3.2Ghz P4/HT (I'd prefer AMD64, but...)
1GB RAM
60GB 7200RPM HD
DVD-RW (2x)
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro/128MB
802.11b
Modem
Gigabit ethernet
6-in-1 flash reader
External USB floppy
Car power adapter (as well as AC, of course)

Here's where we stand--I'm a Gentoo user.

Video: I can get video working okay with the ati-drivers under the 2.6 kernels, but any serious OpenGL use locks up the system hard (Enemy Territory, Postal 2 demo, etc). The system locks up hard whenever I try to insert the ati-driver modules under the 2.4 kernel.

Networking: Perfect under 2.4, useless under 2.6. The NIC ceases to work after a few megs are transferred.

Audio: Works great
USB: Works great
802.11b: Everything loads, but I have no wireless networks to use it on to test it.
Firewire: Untested
Flash reader: Works great
DVD-RW: Works great

WinXP: (Jesus christ, I can't believe I'm admitting this...)...works to the greatest extent you can hope anything M$ related can work

Marketing?

[zurab]

Wide-Aspect 15.4" UltraSharpTM WUXGA LCD, the largest available notebook display size ...
[emphasis mine]

Is a bold faced lie. Apple, Toshiba, HP, and many others make wide-screen 17" display laptops. I don't know what their respective resolutions are, but as far as display size, 15.4" is not even close to "the largest."

Re:Marketing?

[agallagh42]

If you're going to quote them, quote the whole sentence.

"Wide-Aspect 15.4" UltraSharpTM WUXGA LCD, the largest available notebook display size and highest possible resolution offered by Dell"
[emphasis mine]

It's the largest display you can get on a Dell notebook, not the largest display you can get on any notebook.

Re:Marketing?

[zurab]

It's the largest display you can get on a Dell notebook

Ahh, makes sense - confirming that people (or at least I) pay closer attention to the beginning of sentences/phrases and possibly ignoring the endings.

Still, I am guessing 17" would have been a better offer at that price, considering that you get a much larger display especially for the games that offer widescreen support. It's not as portable but you would be getting a better deal.

Re:Marketing?

[agallagh42]

Good point. I think anyone who's willing to carry around a 9 lb notebook probably wouldn't mind if it was a little bulky too :)

Prices

[fughdat!]

Look one more time:

1. Alienware stuff is SAGER stuff with added:
Warranty
Pretty colored case
Tons of gay software

2. Dell makes shitty computers
3. Sager's are CHEAP!

My sager: p4 3.0ghz HyperThreading.
1gb memory, radeon 9600 (128mb video memory)
two batteries, dvd reader, cdrw, 15' lcd wide angle screen, resolution way more than i can imagine (1900xsomething), 40gb 7200rpm disc, gigabit ethernet, ps2 port, 4xusb2 ports, 1xparellel port, svideo out, rgb out, jukebox function. price: 1900 USD. And yes i play games on it, the latest and greatest, and yes they run like milk.

Re:Prices

[GrodinTierce]

Sager may be better than Alienware, but if price is what you care about, check out iBuyPower. Their prices $1000 less than Alienware, and probably a few hundred less than a Sager or Clevo. They really are in a (price) class of their own.

NOT Sager!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm sorry, the two Sager laptops I've personally seen are shit. They are kind of flimsy, look plasticky and all around, IMO, not durable. Even the Dells I've seen were twice as good construction quality, IMO.

Re:NOT Sager!

[vermicious]

Mine isnt. Graunted it would fail a drop test, but it hardly gets picked up that often either... Its constructed very well. Every connector, hinge, and seam is solid. Its also the fastest machine ive used to date, and has every feature i had in my desktop in a portable (read: luggable) package. And what the heck does 'plasticky'? All laptops are made of plastic (save the few titanium or aluminium machines)...

Re:NOT Sager!

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>the two Sager laptops I've personally seen are shit

LOOK OUT EVERYONE...WE HAVE A TREND!

Prostar

[SillySnake]

Anyone every heard of prostar? My rig from them rocks all, and it's a lot cheaper usually from them than anything Dell or Alienware like.. www.pro-star.com or I got mine from www.xtremenotebooks.com..

Hell before Dell!

[mr_resident]

This whole argument is moot IMHO since I wouldn't use Dell if my life depended on it.

I have spent far too much time dealing with Dell's shoddy design, incomplete testing and completely clueless support for my clients to spend dime one of my own cash on their crapware.

*

Alienware Upgradeable Graphics

[Anonymous Coward]

Alienware's new line of mobile computers have a do-it-yourself upgradeable graphics module. Take out a few screws, remove card, insert new card, replace cover. It's supposed to take about 10 minutes. There's a demo at www.alienware.com

From the web site

[6ULDV8]

"12-Cell battery with Subwoofer for incredible sound"

I guess so you can hear the batteries being sucked dry. Or maybe so they can scream with that last gasp of current. My batteries don't even have speakers.

Re:Alienware - wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

The old alienware 51-m were Sager-based.

The current (upgradeable) alienware 51-m is a clevo-based laptop.

Bleah

[Space_Soldier]

I'd rather buy from Alienware!

Alienware Notebooks == Sager

[bran6don]

If you're looking at buying an alienware notebook, first look at this site.

Alienware rebrands the Sager line of laptops, by adding cool logos and color schemes. If you
don't care for these extras, the same notebooks can be had for much cheaper.

Athlon64 laptop

[Sivar]

The cost is... Absurd. Even for a top-end gaming laptop.

Let's see. For $2,500, I can get an Athlon64 laptop which:
1) Dominates gaming performance (games, you know, the point of the Dell laptop's existance)
2) Will run for more than 45 minutes on battery, becaues of Cool'n'Quiet technology. Mine runs for about 3 hours on battery. Honestly, a high end Pentium IV in a laptop? While we live in infinite battery land, why not add a 21" CRT monitor?
3) Isn't a Dell laptop.

Or, if I still like Dell (they aren't bad for the price sometimes), and am not one of the 95% of the world's clueless that still believes the CPU clockspeed = performance, I can buy a Dell Inspiron 8600 with a 1.7GHz Pentium M (which is very close or equal in performance to a 3GHz Pentium IV in most tasks), with an ATI Radeon 9600 Mobile and 1GB of memory, for about $2,600.

I have to say, this new Dell laptop is clearly targetted towards complete idiots with too much money on their hands. It isn't even a "just for rich folks which can afford the finest things in life" unit, because those "rich folks" can get a hell of a lot more laptop for the price, and not have the cheap stigma that is attached to every Dell laptop (except the admittedly very good Dell Precision series (which is made by the same ODM that builds some of IBM's laptops).

I actually NEED one of these, but not for $5,700.

[SlashNut]

Add 2 GB RAM, 80GB hard drive, emergency edition processor, and OUCH!

Subwoofer?

[Bobman1235]

Subwoofer integrated into battery

There's a subwoofer in the BATTERY???? Kind of ironic, considering the power a sub woudl suck FROM the battery, but seriously... what?? Just seems an odd place to integratea subwoofer. Is this common practice? I've never heard of it before.

The real question is...

[jocknerd]

Can you fry an egg on it before the battery runs out?

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[skinfitz]

Any game you can play on the Dell will work on the Mac too, and almost as well.

You mean like Photoshop?

Bah

[praedor]

Wont pay that much for a laptop. This is like the bad ole days when just about ANY laptop cost an arm and leg.

It's obsolete within minutes of acquiring it, cannot be upgraded in any real way. No way would I cough up a lung for such a laptop. I DO need a laptop with a decent graphics card in it, one that can handle some OpenGL for my job (and sure, I would play a few lower end games to blow time at an airport or on an plane) but this is overkill for too little.

I am looking at Element Computer laptops. They have a "No Windows" policy and will sell you a nifty computer or laptop sans winders. They even have a really cool tablet-type laptop. I am holding out for a newer iteration that they say will have a 3D capable video card.

Alienware is overpriced

[S3D]

For price/perfomrmance ratio Sager(Clevo reseller) http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/professional_sy stems.html considerably better. It was discussed at length at talknotebooks.com

Re:Alienware - wrong

[Trick]

What's the difference? Sager's laptops are Clevos as well.

considering the Dell quality

[the_2nd_coming]

I will be buying an Alienware befor I think of Dell.

Dell is good at cheap, not good at quality.....*sites this month's Consumers Report, last year's Consumers Report, etc.*

how long will it take.....

[unclefungus]

before this things boils itself through the desk?

Re:hello

[Anonymous Coward]

It's offtopic because it has nothing to do with the story. I play games on my Gamecube that cost 20 times less. So fucking what?

Photo

[wrt]

The photo of the guy hunched over the computer gives insight into the target demographic.

First Forway? Nah.

[Icephreak1]

First forway into portable gaming systems?

The Inspiron 8200 which I bought in June 2002 would beg to differ. With a 64-meg GeForce4 440 Go and a crystal clear native resolution of 1600x1200, the XPS is /not/ Dell's first forway into portable gaming systems. Though mine has a 1.6 gig CPU, it runs Quake3 Arena with all effects turned on just fine.

- IP

Re:Im NOT buying... then do what I did.

[Combuchan]

I'm more in favor of this hacked-together contraption I assembled three years ago--SuitcaseNuke.
Funny how many .mil sites have hit that website.

Overpriced!

[Ymiris]

It's funny that Dell gets all this publicity over their new gaming laptop, they are just to expensive for what they offer. Look at prostar laptops, www.pro-star.com, they offer a much better price with a lot more features. I don't understand why someone would pay so much more for a dell, who I would wager can not out performa prostar or alienware laptop.

Re:Overpriced!

[nyseal]

"....they are just TOO expensive...."; sorry, that error just drives me nuts!

Re:Overpriced!

[Ymiris]

you also forgot to correct "performa", just FYI :) Stupid coffee fingers, always moving faster then the brain.

How many FPS does it get...

[ErnstKompressor]

...When you play Duke Nukem Forever...

Oh, yeah, sorry...

Well, maybe when DNF comes out, we'll have 10Ghz Pentium 8's with 1GB graphics cards driving 31" LCDs on our laptops...

Or maybe we'll all have CAVEs...maybe that is what's holding up the release...

Dell servers

[Kernel Kurtz]

Does the website run on them?

Not a good sign.

Re:Heh, a beast at 9 pounds w/ or wo/powersupply?

[ITR81]

On TechTv the power-supply looked like it weighed 5lbs atleast.

Performance laptops not just for gaming

[emarkp]

At my company, we write scientific simulation software using OpenGL for visualization. We need a fast CPU and powerful video card (with good drivers). A good laptop solution is what some people want, and when they're paying $50K+ for each license, a $3K laptop vs. a $2K desktop is chump change to them.

We've found that the gaming laptops have just the right combination of CPU/Video power.

Alienware graphic chipset upgrades

[emarkp]

When you want a better video card in 2 years, then you have to go spend another $3k for a whole new laptop.

At least Alienware is offering a video module that you can change yourself.

I'd love it if an OEM produced a standard form-factor laptop that could swap all (or most) of the components, even if it was bulkier/heavier. More people are using laptops as desktop replacements (or 2nd computer) and would like this (I've counted 10+ at our office who would buy something like this if it were available and somewhat reasonably priced).

No

[rixstep]

Are you buying?

Never. Will not touch an x86 ever again.

And certainly not from Dell.

Re:It's still cheaper than a Powerbook

[cubic6]

Mac: Uses standard batteries interchangeable with any normal battery.

AA? C? D? Doubt it. There is no "standard battery" for laptops. And that's just the most obvious of your mistakes. If you like Macs, that's nice. Looking at the rest of your little comparison, I see the Dell wins out in specs, but every time it does you say it doesn't matter. Don't get me wrong, I love Macs... but don't try and say they're better than everything else just cause you say so.

P.S. - Laptop hard drive speed is *much* more important than capacity. A 5400 rpm hard drive will be the limiting factor for most things way before the CPU or GPU ever comes into play.

For that money...

[zpok]

If I had that kind of money to spend on a computer, it certainly wouldn't be a Windows compatible.

Shees, tell me again Apple is expensive.

OK, it's a game computer. Good. But if I really really wanted to have the coolest game right now instead of a few months later, I would definitely go for a desktop, and it most definitely wouldn't be a Dell. For that money? Man.

Oh, who am I kidding, I'd still go for Apple. And use the extra money to buy a GameCube and an XBox to complement my PS2. That would be the ideal game situation, an Apple G5 for The Brutal Slaying of My Enemies (you just can't play Quake with a stupid controller) and all the gameboxes for the rest.

Since I don't have the money, I'll settle for Dr3ver on PS2...

What's with the PC bricks lately?

[v1]

I work at a mac/pc repair shop, and we have seen a number of those new HP Pavilion lapbricks come in lately... about twice as thick as a powerbook, huge grills for the dual -blowers- to keep the processor from melting down. They weigh a ton too. Then you look at the screen and it's smaller than the 17" powerbook. I really don't see the market niche for them. (tho I will admit, the 17" powerbook is a "tv dinner tray" and sacrifices ease of physical portability as a result)

As for screen res, 1900x1200, good lord, your icons are going to be like 1cm x 1cm if you're lucky. The filenames will be what, 2mm tall? How is anyone going to read that, or find any advantage in it? I keep my display at 1280x854 and that's about as high res as I would go without going blind trying to read things.

And rounding out my rant, I'd be curious to know the battery life of these behemoths. I will give them kudos for having a swappable bay that can take a 2nd battery, (I miss that from my Wallstreet powerbook) but that is going to make the weight problem only get worse. I know all too well how the PC processors burn through batteries... the last PC laptop I clocked at just over 35 minutes with the "energy saver" extras turned off and playing a game. You get the processor and the video chip up to speed and you can practically hear the meter spinning in the unit, spending battery charge to try to set your table on fire.

A laptop is of little value as a portable if it doesn't have good battery life. That would leave physical portability as the only good point, but at 9 lbs (sans 2nd battery) even that is lost. I don't see any point in these monsters. If you're going to make a portable, make it light, durable, compact, and run long on a charge. After you've worked all that out, do what you can to make it fast, powerful, etc. If you can't at least do that, you've missed the point... get out of the laptop design team and go back to the desktop squad.

Don't build my own laptops

[PotatoHead]

though I seriously wish I could. As an alternative, I would be very interested in a portable computer that could make use of batteries.

I do agree that building your own machine is not always cheaper, but getting exactly what you want is worth a price premium to me, because I am picky.

Also, I want to support people that support Open software and hardware. Buying my own bits, or working with a base system from somebody I want to support, helps me do this.

I would rather not give Dell any of my money. Better it go locally to somebody who needs it. This BTW is one of the primary reasons I like OSS. --It gives the little guy a chance. And with the little guy, I can call somebody on the phone with a reasonable expectation that they will remember my name.

Maybe, but

[PotatoHead]

you only have to purchase a monitor once.

I have a couple of pretty decent ones right now that have lived through a few systems.

Here is another bizzarre thought. Take that money and invest in a plasma that can handle computer inputs. --Very nice gaming experience! Though not portable.

I suppose for some people, this makes good sense. It is an attractive bit of tech, but for me it is just not that important. I do travel and value a nice laptop, but just don't value it that much.

Now, if the company would chip in... :)

dell supports george w. bush

[Anonymous Coward]

Michael Dell is a supporter of Bush. So is Carly Fiorina (sp?), the ceo of HP.

Bleh

[TWX]

I have one of those, you insensitive Clod!

8088 processor, 128K RAM, dual 360K 5.25" floppy diskette drives (with belts between the motors and spindles!), an 8" display capable of displaying sixteen different shades of green at 80x25. It's a suitcase for sure. I think that my keychain has more usable computing power nowadays.

I'd Buy

[tgraupmann]

I'd buy if it has a 17" monitor. 15" is too small. My eyes are futher apart then that.

Re:Here is What Comparisons of Laptops and Desktop

[SmackCrackandPot]

What's wrong is that laptop keyboards should have developed an industry standard form factor and connection standard long ago. Likewise, the small card that is the video card for my laptop should be easily replaced, and easily connected to the monitor, which should also be easily replaced.

Amen to that! After having the opportunity to disassemble my laptop in order to replace the backlight of the 14" LCD (a $15 miniature fluorescent tube). This required removing four plastic tabs, removing four screws to the bezel, removing another ten screws holding the LCD in place, removing another two screws holding the backlight in place, fiddling around with metal and plastic holders, unsoldering the old custom connector and insulation, resoldering the new connector, fiddling with the metal and plastic holders, resealing the LCD frame, reattaching the LCD to the backplate, refixing the bezel and putting all the sticky tabs in place.

Given the fragility of this component, I do wonder why it is necessary at all (couldn't it be replaced by something solid state like LED's or microlasers, or at least have a access panel at the back of the laptop.

Re:Alienware - wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they are made by Uniwell, maker of some of the worst laptops ever produced.

Very specific market

[ogreinside]

Everyone is complaining about size, weight and battery life. None of you have to sit in airports or hotels for more than 50% of your work life. I play most fps at 640x480 with all options turned down, because that's all the built-in ati 7500 can handle.

This is the laptop I've been waiting for. Sure there are alienware and other pcs, but with a Dell, I can get a 10% discount, and carry a coporate blessed brand.

This laptop isn't indended to be lightweight. I could play any MMORPG or fps downstairs, in the bathroom, in hotels, or airports. All of these have outlets nearby.

Definitely a good move by Dell. I'll be getting one.