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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?"
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.
Blogging because I can...
..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.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
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.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
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?
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.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
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)
The unofficial
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.
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".
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
As for the price... Even if I'd won the lottery I'd still think it too steep.
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
That's still less than I paid for my AT&T 6300 with a 8088 and 20MB HD in the early 80's.
The Truth About Slashdot
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...
Str8Dog
using System.Darkside; public
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
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.
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...
Please help metamoderate.
One word: LAN party.
(ok so that's two words heh)
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
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?
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
Because it doesn't play Half-Life?
...
Gaming Laptop
Gaming on a Mac
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I own a second-gen. Couldn't agree more, couldn't live without it.
:)
Plus, Dell doesn't have the OS.
Option-Shift-K.
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...)
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
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.
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.
IAALS.
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.)
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.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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.
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.
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.