Laptop Help

[Jared Mriad]

I'm lookin' into getting something to or similar to the Dell Inspiron XPS, but I know several folks who haave had some trouble with dell, so I don't plan to go straight through them unless I have no other option. Anyone know of a site or company that can or has a similar built laptop for around the same price?

I've tried through tigerdirect.com and could get a nicely priced laptop with near the name, but it lacks the ATI Raedon video card that I'd like to have in it to play games or whatnot on. Here's a link to the Inspiron XPS.....

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_xps?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Help? :(

[Morgan Evanar]

Toshiba, IBM or Mac. Dell laptops just aren't as well made. www.newegg.com carries both Toshiba and IBM. Gaming on a laptop just isn't worth it. Buy a lower end laptop and upgrade/new PC with the money you would have saved buying a silly higher-end laptop. Better performance, too.

Jeebus, that weighs 9lbs, TO START. You're buying more of a brick than a laptop.

[Jared Mriad]

I understand gaming on laptops isn't the best idea, but what I'm looking for is a laptop that I can do just about anything I could do with a PC and yet have the advantage of being able to do it on the job, classes, trips, whatever. Mainly to play games like SecondLife or whatnot wherever I liked to go, plus keep with basic functionability. The laptops on newegg don't seem to carry any with graphic cards in them at the higher end processor speeds, unless I'm not looking good enough. =\

[Morgan Evanar]

You want portability but you want to play games. Pick one. Lugging a 9lb laptop with crap battery life to class doesn't work.

[Jared Mriad]

# Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 2 (32MB RAM) or higher, or ATI Radeon 8500 (32MB RAM) or higher
# Computer: 800MHZ or higher, 256MB RAM or more
# OS: Windows XP/2000
# DirectX 8 or 9

If I can find something that'll run a game with those specifications decently, I don't care. Weight isn't a problem with me, I carried eight books around four years of my school-life because they stuck me with the cruddly malfunctioning combination lock. I noticed a few attention-snagging IBM's on newegg I'll look into - processor speeds are upgradable if desired, yeah? - tonight.

[Morgan Evanar]

Also, do not, under any circumstances, buy a laptop with a P4. They are terrible mobile proccessors. The P4 was designed as a marketing ploy (intel has admitted this). the Pentium M/Centrino is a much faster chip per clock. a 1.7ghz centrino is about as fast as a 2.8 P4, or something like that.
Two IBMs
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=34-146-046&depa=3
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=34-146-058&depa=3

They're both under six pounds :cool