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NYT: The New Breed of Gaming Laptops Get Serious
securitas writes "The New York Times' Seth Schiesel writes about hardcore gamers and the growing trend toward high-performance gaming laptops. Traditional enterprise computer manufacturers like Dell and HP are entering the gaming markets dominated by VoodooPC and Alienware, with the specialty high-end PC makers going the other way and breaking into corporate markets. There are some accompanying graphics and quotes from hardcore gamers about the Alienware Area 51m, Dell Inspiron XPS, and VoodooPC Envy m:750."
I have a Dell 600m and I have to say, that laptop LCD displays have improved 10 fold over the last few years. A couple years ago I would never want to play a First Person Shooter on a laptop due to the horrible refresh rates.
On this laptop I can play Enemy Territory with no problems. The display is excellent and even seems clearer then my NEC MultiSync CRT. The laptop has a Radeon 9000 (64mb) which can handle RtCW:ET with no problems (and the new Linux ATi drivers are very good).
Using a USB mouse, there is not much difference in gaming on a laptop then the desktop. The big plus is that there is a lot less to lug around to a LAN party.
I haven't tried new games like UT2004 on it, and will admit I'm afraid to due it being underpowered for a game like that, but overall they do make decent gaming platforms.
But there is no way I'm paying $3000+ for one!!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
They used to sell one of Sager's notebooks for $500-600 more and call it their own simply because they spraypainted it grey and inserted an "Alienware" label where it used to say "Sager."
One of my friends spent $2600 on that Alienware and my other one spent $1999 on the equivalent Sager. Both of them ended up having problems after a year because the Sager has a badly designed cooling system.
The bottom line is, Alienware doesn't even pick good models to resell at high prices. I wouldn't trust their notebook. They need to find shitty manufacturers who will let them resell their notebook for a profit by putting a rubberized stupid-looking cover on the top of the LCD screen.
Not to mention that when I bought an Alienware desktop (this was like 5 years ago--that computer definitely didn't last me for life, kiddo), AW was a small company that actually had real tech support (i.e. my GeForce overheated and died, and when I called them they overnighted me a new one, no charge). Nowadays, they are just like every other tech support troupe--probably based out of India, but if not, just as bad.
Stay away... and please do your research.